Some familiar faces turned up at The Late Show on Tuesday for Stephen Colbert’s Daily Show reunion, which brought together some of the show’s most beloved correspondents during the Jon Stewart era to celebrate 20 years in late night. First, Stewart himself sat down with Colbert alone to discuss farm life and the end of The O’Reilly Factor. He even mock-chastised Colbert for his “potty mouth,” in reference to the Late Show host’s now-infamous joke about Trump and Putin. “The things that you say, even if they’re crass or even they’re not respectful enough to the office of the presidency—we can insult. He can injure.” said Stewart. “For the life of me, I do not understand why in this country we try to hold comedians to a standard we do not hold leaders to.”
Next, the pair was joined by some famous Daily Show correspondents from over the years, all of whom are now hosting their own shows or starring in blockbusters: Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Ed Helms, and Rob Corddry. The reminiscing began with Stewart recalling the first time he ever met Colbert, at a press conference announcing his new position as host of The Daily Show in 1999. (“How does this effect my chances of becoming host?” quipped Colbert at the time, posing as a member of the press.) The other correspondents then remembered their early field assignments, from Oliver’s experience as a war reenactor to Bee’s gay penguin reporting to the time Colbert had to flee the Ku Klux Klan during a cross-burning.
They wrapped things up with a look back at Colbert’s last day at The Daily Show in 2005 in a sketch that included plenty of “there will never be a president as terrible as George W. Bush” jokes, as well as a no-holds-barred roast on another former Daily Show correspondent, who wasn’t in attendance: Steve Carell.
