The Last Awkward Pause: A Fond Farewell to Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show

In a surreal situation where Community's Dean Pelton interviewed the boss from The Drew Carey Show, Jim Rash and Craig Ferguson took the stage at the Paley Center in Los Angeles on Monday to bid The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson adieu. During the chat that ensued, Ferguson talked about how Americans have allowed a strange Scotsman into their homes for a decade, and how he brought along plenty of off-beat monologues, a two-man horse character, a skeleton robot sidekick, impromptu game shows, and so very many awkward pauses. Awkward pauses that celebrity guests tend to ask for emphatically. It's been a weird 10 years.

The theater in which the event took place could easily be described as "quaint." It was certainly smaller than the studio in which Ferguson tapes The Late Late Show, though to be fair, those tickets are free. Everyone in the audience had paid for the opportunity to squeeze into this intimate room and give themselves at least one more shot at witnessing Ferguson work during this era of his career. He leaves The Late Late Show at the end of this week.

It seems like it can't possibly have been so long since Craig Kilborn left yet another show in more capable hands and we watched The Late Late Show's transformation into something unique and slightly insane. Rumors may swirl about why Ferguson is leaving now, just as Stephen Colbert prepares to take David Letterman's seat at the Late Show, but Ferguson maintains, as he did on Monday while sitting five rows away from me, that it's a strictly creative decision. That it was time. That he's explored "the box," pushed into all of its corners, and now it's time to leave irrespective of the real or imagined ghosts of promotions and opportunity.

That's something I can respect. Because Ferguson also maintained that he's never understood the competition part of late-night television. Letterman, Jay Leno, and, later on, Conan O'Brien were marked with a cutthroat nature that isn't really represented in the current landscape. Sure, maybe there was a time when hosts got stabby over the thought of coexisting. But Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Colbert, and particularly Ferguson have never been warring types. There's seemingly room for all their voices. And thus, when Ferguson says he leaving because—and only because—he's ready, it's with a heavy heart that I tell him that'll do.

I don't want to say Ferguson was the heir to Conan, particularly since he was on a different network. But once Conan took over The Tonight Show, got fired, became a brand, toured the country, went all-in on that brand, and then moved to cable to deliver his late-night schtick, I lost some interest in "my guy." Ferguson only followed in Conan's footsteps because he was someone who used that 12:30am space to its fullest. He took chances and pushed the envelope of what a host could do on American late-night television. You want to take your show to Paris and conduct interviews in a bookstore and then perform improvised sketches with celebrities in a museum? Let's go. You want to do a Doctor Who-themed episode? Yes. You want one of the guys from Mythbusters to build you a robot sidekick that occasionally speaks in a Morgan Freeman voice, even when, and okay, especially when, Morgan Freeman is a guest on the program? Heck, a robot sidekick couldn't be more inconsistently funny than Andy Richter is, right? (I love Andy Richter, by the way, but I find that he's sometimes a non-contributor).

The result was honest-to-goodness chaos. Rash asked Ferguson about his routine, how he prepares for each show, and to no one's surprise, Ferguson revealed there's very little of that sort of thing. He described himself as impatient and not good at planning. And of course, there's no aspect of The Late Late Show that better illustrates this notion than the celebrity interviews in which Ferguson rips up his notecards, ditching whatever information they contain and throwing them on the ground to join the emailed and tweeted questions he read in earlier segments (the stage of The Late Late Show is very messy). Of all the elements that make Ferguson's show work, from the personal monologues to the bizarre characters, the conversational tone he maintains with his guests is one of the most remarkable.

I obviously can't speak for you, but to me, almost everyone in late-night TV who's not Letterman or Colbert doing a bit is terrible at conducting interviews with celebrities. Everyone. The discussions typically comprise a bunch of pre-interview questions jammed together into what would be an incoherent mess of human interaction if it aired anywhere other than on the shows we watch at our sleepiest and/or drunkest. Instead of playing nice with a publicist and lobbing softballs, Ferguson always strives to just have a nice chat. He's a weird dude, so he'll occasionally ask questions like, "Do you believe in ghosts?" or "Have you ever ridden a kangaroo?" but that generally only happens when a guest is either careening toward unintentional awkwardness or hellbent on predetermined talking points. Everything else is organic.

Ferguson describes his interview style as his attempt to humanize these larger-than-life figures. And it works. You don't need another reason to love Kristen Bell, but your love will reach new depths after watching his many bits and interviews with her. There's something different about the way people talk on The Late Late Show. There's a sense of comfort and ease, a certain disarmament, when they step onto a stage covered in paper and sit down in that chair across from a desk covered in toys to talk to a smirking Scotsman. Even Kristen Stewart looks downright personable while in conversation with Ferguson, and that, as I can attest from watching other hosts try and fail to achieve the same result, is no small feat.

Now, The Late Late Show is certainly quirky. There have been a number of times where Ferguson has dressed up as an insane Michael Caine for a running gag. There was an episode where he cleared the house so that he could interview Stephen Fry without an audience. And yes, there's also a fake horse that used to be summoned by a doorbell but now has its own stall offstage so that people can attempt to throw rings over its head. But Ferguson's knack for talking to people might actually make him the most traditional late-night host of all. Carson had that same skill, where it seemed like old friends were meeting up for coffee instead of carrying out some awkward Hollywood transaction. Fallon has started to come around to that in a different regard, by somehow convincing many of his guests to play silly games that involve smashing eggs on their heads. But Ferguson did it the old-fashioned way—and his games, though much smaller in scope, preceded Fallon's by years. The post-interview choice of an "awkward pause," playing a harmonica, or winning a "big cash prize" through trivia or imagination added an additional layer of playfulness. Ferguson's Late Late Show has always elicited the feeling that we're all friends here. Sure, the guest in his hot seat makes millions of dollars a picture, but we're all susceptible to mouth organ innuendo.

So where does Ferguson go from here? Does he stick with his new Hollywood Game Night clone until he can turn it into some kind of incoherent yet loveable sideshow of inside jokes and Laugh-In-style dance parties? Will he just become a rotating player on Whose Line Is It Anyway? so he can hang out with fellow Drew Carey alums? Will he host the syndicated primetime show that he was reportedly in negotiations for not so long ago? Will he pen erotic novels based on his Doctor Who fan-fiction? I can't really tell. And, based on his answer to Rash asking him the very same question, he's not really sure either, or at least isn't ready to outwardly commit to a specific long-term future. Which is a sentiment I can respect.

I think it's the concept of respect that most often comes to mind for me when I think about Craig Ferguson. I respect him for being a statesman of late-night TV among the silly Millennial games the rest of the crowd engages in as a means of creating succinct videos for their YouTube channels. And I believe that Ferguson respects not only his guests and the people who work on his show, but his audience as well. You'll never find him over-explaining or talking down to anyone. Whereas all the other hosts put on their host faces and play MC to keep things running on schedule, Ferguson has always been more of the life of this televised party. Everyone's got a loose idea of what's supposed to happen, and the show will always have to pause to accommodate network requirements like commercials and timeslots, but outside of those pesky little interruptions, Ferguson's Late Late Show is just an informal gathering. It's comfortable and fun. That's an element of late-night television that I'll be sad to see disappear. In a sea of polished, veneered, and tightly scheduled shows fronted by well-dressed clowns, Ferguson was human and without artifice. And that's respectable, even if he would never claim to resemble an embodiment of the term.

The Archbishop Desmond Tutu appeared on The Late Late Show a few years ago, and he told Ferguson that he thought Ferguson was just "a little bit crazy," but the kind of crazy the world needs. During his talk with Rash, Ferguson claimed that his discussion with Tutu was a turning point for the show, like God telling him it was okay for him to pursue these fancies of insanity. Once the lights come down at the end of this week, I'll be sad to see that divinely supported craziness disappear from the landscape.

I mean, Ferguson isn't dying or anything. He's going to be around. I guess. I think? I don't know. He hasn't been clear. I'm sure it'll be fine. This is getting out of hand. Ah, tutsi-fruitsi.