Colbert Goes on Strike-ish

As readers of these pages may recall, I was a huge fan of Strike Force Five and linked to several of the podcasts.  For those who don't recall -- or weren't wandering around these hall as the time -- this was a series of podcasts made by the talk show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver.  It was done during the most-recent Writers Guild Strike, as a support of the strikers (when their talk shows were off the air, and raised some money for the staffs.)  It was wonderful, often wildly, and its classic episode remains the week the rotating host was Jimmy Fallon who decided to do a sort of Newlywed Game (first contacting all the hosts' wives to get their answers) and pretty much screwed up everything. Repeatedly.  The other four were merciless to him -- not only during that episode, but bringing it up again in the weeks ahead.

I'm not exaggerating.  The way they described the episode on the Strike Force Five website was:  “Episode five is about our wives. Jimmy Fallon hosts the WORST GAME SHOW EVER in our favorite episode so far."

(Here's the article and link to it here.  They even did a sequel several weeks later, when Fallon was again the host and said that he hadn't used all the questions in the first episode.  It wasn't as lunatic as the original, but still very funny.  This is the link to it.)

The other day, as Colbert's show nears its final broadcast on Thursday, he invited the full Strike Force Five hosts to be guests.  I didn't see it when the episode aired last week when I was out of town, but that's just as well since the full, wonderful conversation didn't make it on the air -- and lasted 36 minutes!  This is the whole thing, and it's a joy.  And it's also absolutely fascinating if you take a step back and realize that this is all five competing talk show hosts together on a network broadcast, just having a great time with one other, who they clearly, greatly like and admire.

Also, the five hosts later got together again and did a final Strike Force Five video podcast, which I'll post later.  But for now --