There was a time when there was nothing like David Letterman on television.
Letterman was the guy who dropped bowling balls and watermelons from the roof of a tall building. Letterman was the guy who had a writer come on to read, straight-faced, from “The Family Circus.”
Letterman was the guy who let his stage manager recap “Melrose Place,” let two Bangladeshi gift-store owners named Mujibur Rahman and Sirajul Islam serve as “roving correspondents” and always — ALWAYS — bit the network hand that fed him. (Or, perhaps, gave the “GE handshake” to his corporate bosses. )
He took elements of Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, Johnny Carson and Mad Magazine, ran them through his own skewed perspective and came up with something new: the anti-talk show.
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With Jimmy Fallon’s takeover of the “Tonight Show,” commentators have been making much of a “return to earnestness,” playing up Fallon’s niceness and wide-eyed wonder. Fallon himself has named Steve Allen as a model, not so much Letterman. (Conan O’Brien would never have said that.)
And there’s something a little awkward about Letterman, the King of Absurdity, still presiding over his anti-talk show circus at the age of 67. (He turns 68 in April.) It’s not that he can’t pull it off; it’s that he’s been doing it for so long that his original college student audience now has children (and grandchildren!) of their own. They have so many more options, and Dave is now one of many.
Stephen Colbert, who created his own kind of looking-glass show, will take over this year. No doubt he’ll bring his own absurdity to the role.
But nobody will replace Dave. That was obvious 33 years ago.
