Maybe It Is Time to Cancel Colbert, After All

Just as a hermit crab must jump from shell to shell as it grows, so must a comedic genius jump from network to network in his or her path to stardom. In this case, we're talking about Stephen Colbert potentially hosting the Late Show . My heart leapt and fell at the same time when I heard the news, because Colbert moving out of The Colbert Report would mean the death of one of the most beloved television personas of our time. When and if the time comes, how will Colbert slide out of his Colbert Report personality and back into himself?

The only solution, I believe, will be to have Colbert fake his own death in his final episode. It is only be doing so, and by participating in a national day of mourning, that he and his audience will be able to move on. I'm thinking about the final scenes of Fight Club, after Tyler Durden has miraculously survived a direct, self-inflicted gunshot to the face (and, upon perusing Wikipedia, I can now see that he fired through his cheek). The spirit departs, but the body remains.

How, then, will Colbert achieve this ritual separation? Perhaps he can succumb to a resurgence of wrist violence, one that tears his conservative spirit out of his body and releases it into character afterlife.

Alternately, Colbert could gorge himself to the point of sugar coma on his very own Americone Dream. Yes, Colbert reflects, this is "the only ice cream endorsed by sociopathic white supremacists." Colbert could emerge from the saccharine clutches of his coma with no recollection of his past self, and dive into the Late Show with gusto.

Ultimately, as Mashable points out, Colbert will be interviewing a very different crowd if he does choose the Late Show as his next venue. Instead of political guests, he will be bringing on and interviewing celebrities. My final solution to the problem of "Where goes Colbert?" is this: have him go undercover. Instead of killing off his persona through any of a number of conservatively-inspired deaths (having to sit through a gay wedding, going on Welfare, and so forth), Colbert can simply become a liberal in conservative's clothing in liberal's clothing. He can do for the Hollywood elite what he did for the Republican party, by diving into their world and adopting their mannerisms to the nth degree. His whole-hearted embrace of their culture would allow him to expose the extreme voices and occasionally ridiculous suppositions, and his warm persona would keep them coming back for more. More than anything, a Late Show with Stephen Colbert may be what Hollywood needs. If they can Colbert it.