Late Night Last Week: Taylor Tomlinson Celebrates J.Lo’s Instagram to Kick Off New Season

​​​​Late Night Last Week is a column highlighting some of the more notable segments from the previous week of late night television. Today’s installment features a round-up of news heading out of the summer break, Taylor Tomlinson kicking off the second season of After Midnight, John Oliver on school lunch, and Seth Meyers on the 2024 election. 

Summer may be over, but late night television came roaring back last week (well, except for the crew over at The Daily Show, who took a well-deserved break after carrying the late night hours for much of the last three months). Jimmy Kimmel returned to his program for the first time since June. And over on CBS, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert kicked off its tenth season in the Ed Sullivan Theater. 

The biggest piece of late night news last week came from NBC. The network decided to reduce The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon from five episodes to four. The most venerated show name in late night has met the same fate as its peers. Going forward, the program will air a rerun on Friday evenings, giving viewers a chance to (re)encounter tired monologues and painfully cheesy bits from earlier in the week. That is sure to solve all the show’s problems.

But let us pivot towards late night television that at least aspires to freshness with each broadcast. After Midnight, helmed by Taylor Tomlinson, returned for a second season last week. The host came out rocking a new suit and tie, or, as she put it, the look “of a private school kid whose parents paid a lot of money to make ‘the incident’ go away.” 

Tomlinson began her first monologue of the season with the summer’s most captivating celebrity drama: the breakup of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. Tomlinson praised J.Lo’s Instragam posts in the wake of the breakup, including one that simply read, “Oh, it was a summer.” “Oh, I know a single girl caption when I see one,” Tomlinson said. “I have friends who found out their parents were getting divorced cuz their mom posted a picture of herself in a wet t-shirt with the caption, ‘What Will Be, Will Be.’”

Not Even Schools Can Afford Costco Hot Dogs

Last Week Tonight is back. Or, as it is known around my apartment, the most American thing you can watch on a Sunday. Oliver returned from vacation giddy this week, beginning the program with the results of a recent Michigan contest inviting citizens to send in new designs for “I Voted” stickers. Our bespectacled host could not contain his joy for one finalist, which featured a wolf patriotically ripping their shirt off while howling against the backdrop of an American flag. “I know this is not the point,” Oliver said, “but I would commit voter fraud to get multiples of that sticker.” 

The subject of the episode was the “daily miracle” (we say this sincerely) known as public school lunch. It is a massive undertaking by staff, who often are working on the tightest of budgets. And for many children, school lunch is often the most reliable (and the most nutritious) meal they will have in the day. Oliver tackles the challenges schools face in providing food on ever-shrinking budgets, and the subsequent risk our lack of investment in quality meals poses to children’s well-being. 

Quoting experts, Oliver notes that only about $1.25 on average is spent per student on school lunch. How is one to supply food on such a small budget? Even at Costco, Oliver was quick to point out, the hot-dog-and-soda combo is $1.50. “And that is only because the co-founder once said, and this is true, ‘If you raise the price of the fucking hot dog, I will kill you,’” Oliver said. “That is a real quote, from a true leader.” 

Episodes of Last Week Tonight are typically uploaded to YouTube later in the week. In the meantime, you can watch the latest episode on Max or maybe, just maybe, find it online elsewhere.

Seth Meyers For The People

As the presidential race heats up, we can expect a lot of coverage from late night. Or, let me rephrase that, probably too much coverage. Or, okay, let me try that again. The correct amount of coverage because it’s really important, but also just a lot of the same old slap and tickle interviews with politicians and corny monologues that don’t really teach us much about policy or the race. Okay, I guess I’m just talking about The Tonight Show again. 

Anyway, if you’re looking for an almost-daily late night program to serve as your guide to the final weeks of this election, just do yourself a favor and watch Seth Meyers. The dude is, simply, the best at distilling the daily grind of the news cycle to its essentials. He recaps what his audience may have missed, while also setting us up for what might come in the days and weeks ahead. 

Look no further than his opening monologue and “A Closer Look” segment from last Thursday, September 5, in which he discusses some of the narratives playing out across the media in the lead-up to the first debate (tomorrow, September 10) between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. See, for example, Trump’s failed efforts to counter the narrative that he and his running mate, J.D. Vance, are both “weird.” Recently, Trump, unprompted, insisted at a Fox News Town Hall that they were, in fact, not weird. “Just blurring out ‘we’re not weird guys’ isn’t doing the work you think it is,” Meyers said.

Trump and his campaign in recent days have also been laying the groundwork to say that ABC, the host of Tuesday’s debate, is biased in Harris’ favor. In the same town hall, Trump said that ABC host George Stephanopoulos (who is not moderating the debate) went easy on Joe Biden in their recent interview. Meyers was quick to point out that Trump was saying this during an interview with one of his most loyal sycophants, Sean Hannity. “I ask tougher questions when John Oliver is here,” Meyers said. 

But it wasn’t all presidential politics. Meyers also shared a story about a cat who two years ago went missing in Texas, but was recently found alive and well in Massachusetts. “Apparently,” Meyers quipped, “it was trying to get reproductive healthcare.” 

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic and researcher, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.