Have you watched it yet? If you have time, don’t just get to the Eminem bits. If you have time, put in the entire 40 minutes. I saw it last night before falling asleep, all jacked up from the fireworks that we set off in our backyard for Canada Day, intending to just focus on the Eminem part, so maybe I was just in an extra good mood but the entire episode of Stephen Colbert’s Only In Monroe is delight, so wonderfully absurd and random and better, to me anyway, than only just the good parts of the Ted movies spliced together. And it’s because Colbert is awesomely Colbert that Eminem plays along.
Only In Monroe is an actual public access show in Michigan. Nobody knows how this all came together and what the connection is here, apart from the fact that Eminem lives in Michigan. Colbert is staying sharp, obvious. You’ll note though that at the very end of the video they’ve stamped it with The Late Show Inc. Colbert previously confirmed that he won’t be “playing” someone else when he officially begins his run on The Late Show in September. But this … performance?... might give us some insight into the kind of tone they’re playing with when he takes over. Like, obviously, as a whole, this entire thing is a gas, but there are moments in between, the hilarious interstitial bits for example, that tell us, undeniably, the kind of research and preparation Colbert and his team are putting into his new job. It was a mock cable access show, and still, you can tell that they didn’t half-ass it.
As for the interview with Eminem, the moment Colbert says “street like Will Smith”, I lost it. Colbert’s Between Two Ferns was longer and better and smarter than Galifianakis. And Galifianakis doesn’t suck!
The Emimen part starts at 21:50 but I’m telling you, watch the entire thing. It’s worth it.
