If you didn’t think The Late Show could get any more cringe-pelling than last Thursday’s episode — during which Dave admitted to sleeping with younger underlings — then you were completely wrong, you idiot. Last night, he made heartfelt-seeming apologies to his wife and staff (plus Sarah Palin, because why not), claiming he hadn’t realized that reporters might ask current Late Show employees whether they were sleeping with him (for the record, he is not). Also, though, since self-deprecation is his specialty, he played it for laughs, making himself the butt of every monologue joke (“I get in the car this morning and the navigation lady wasn’t speaking to me”; “It’s fall in New York City and I spent the whole weekend raking my hate mail”; “There’s a possibility that I’ll be the first talk-show host impeached”) and acknowledging that he knows he seems hypocritical (he started jokes about Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford, and Eliot Spitzer, trailing off each time). And later, unprovoked, he brought up his scandal in interviews with both Steve Martin and Lea Michele. We’ll admit, we’ve never really seen anything like this on television, but we also won’t be disappointed when he goes back to beating Conan with just “Stupid Pet Tricks” and “Will It Float.”
Here’s his monologue:
And here’s the apology:
