Brow Beat

Craig Ferguson Left the Late Late Show With a Quirky, Deeply Referential Farewell Video

Craig Ferguson left the Late Late Show on Friday, marking the end of a 10-year tenure. Ferguson was late night’s best host, one who routinely inched the genre toward improvised and experimental territory, so it’s only proper that he bid farewell with a bizarre video that eschewed nostalgia and instead referenced the endings of several other TV shows.

The video employs a dream-within-a-dream gimmick, wherein Ferguson ponders what he’s learnt in his decade as host. Not much, is the answer—but we do learn that Bob Newhart was the man in the Secretariat suit. It all ends with a delightfully meta riff on Ferguson’s Mr. Wick character in the Drew Carey Show, as well as references to the famous endings of St. Elsewhere and The Sopranos. All in all, a great and strange goodbye from late night’s great and strange innovator.