Monday night’s episode of CBS’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was the first to be broadcast from New York City’s Ed Sullivan Theater in 15 months. “So how ya been?” the host asked the fully COVID-vaccinated studio audience at the start of his monologue. “This is a slightly different energy than the converted storage room eight floors above us,” he noted, citing the ad hoc studio from which he’s been doing “A Late Show”—the subtly renamed pandemic edition of the show. “I have not been on this stage in front of a live audience for 460 days. I don’t know if I even remember how to pander to the most beautiful crowd in the world!”
Watch the full monologue (below) for a segment-within-a-segment called “The Vax-Scene” (complete with dancing vaccination needles) and a special cameo appearance by Stephen Colbert’s wife Evie. See also (later in the show): “President Biden Previews His Summit With Vladimir Putin” (with Dana Carvey playing Joe Biden) and “Jon Stewart on Vaccine Science and the Wuhan Lab Theory”—both segments are also embedded below.