Stephen Colbert:

It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV, so I’m grateful to be here on Monroe community media before they also get acquired by Paramount.

Colbert hosts an hour-long program that is quintessential low-budget public access TV (no audience, unpaid camera operators, and the door between the studio and the office opens mere inches from the edge of the set) and he leans hard into the vibe. (His “volunteer musical director,” Jack White, mans a reel-to-reel and boombox to play interstitial music.)

The appearance is a callback to when Colbert first guest-hosted Only in Monroe in 2015 as the “first episode” of The Late Show.

The guests for Colbert’s return were again Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko Wilson, the regular hosts of Only in Monroe, and Jeff Daniels. Steve Buscemi appeared in a public service announcement to clarify that he’s unaffiliated with the local pizza joint that shares his name, while Marshall “Eminem” Mathers cameoed to approve a destructive end to the episode.

The entire hour is a surreal blast and a reminder that, at his core, Colbert is an absurdist.

(Via Jed Rosenzweig at LateNighter and CK Smith at Salon.)