Seth Meyers reveals his COVID status from his latest remote Late Night location

Well, it must have been a nice few months of freedom, anyway. As Seth Meyers returned to his Late Night hosting duties on Monday, viewers were treated, once more, to a tour of Meyers family reading material and interior design, as the host found himself in self-imposed COVID exile. After testing positive for the newest rampaging virus variant last week, Meyers was forced to ditch several shows, and, while Meyers assured everybody he never had any symptoms of Omicron, Delta, or Greek letter-to-be-named COVID (thanks to being sensibly vaccinated and boosted), Monday’s Late Night saw Meyers broadcasting remotely yet again. (Complete with a visit from the old Sea Captain painting that may or may not be a figment of Meyers’ locked-down imagination.)

And while Meyers was grudgingly appreciative that he wasn’t forced to do his late-night show from his in-laws house or that attic space with all the wasps, he certainly seemed over it all, as far as interviewing celebrities from a photogenically tidy living space goes. “It’s not good that we’re getting good at doing our show outside the studio because a virus is running rampant,” noted Meyers, who yet took advantage of the lack of an audience (and, perhaps, the leavening influence of his staff) to wheel out his enthusiastically terrible Al Pacino impression. Twice. Cabin fever is very real, people.

Regardless of that whole global pandemic that Republicans keep prolonging by rushing into the arms of every quack and bloviating meathead peddling fake “miracle cures” (this week, it’s literally drinking your own pee), the show must go on. “Now where was I?,” Meyers soldiered on after five minutes of self-deprecating at-home shtick, before sadly remembering he had to talk about Ted Cruz. In his A Closer Look segment, Meyers did, indeed, have to address the fact that the Texas senator and noted political bottom had once more debased himself on national TV. (And here, it should be stressed that nobody is kink-shaming. It’s just that, if you’re into getting pissed on in public, it’s probably not going to endear you to America if it’s Fox News fish stick heir and authoritarian dick Tucker Carlson doing the whizzing.)

Recalling how Cruz has memorably and repeatedly exposed himself as the GOP’s degradation receptacle (like the time he campaigned for Donald Trump after former president and alleged fetish-tinkler Trump publicly and personally mocked both Cruz’s wife and father), Meyers had to give it up to Cruz for momentarily forgetting his place and daring to call the 2020 insurrection by Trump’s minions, a “terrorist attack.” And then Meyers promptly took it back by showing clips of Cruz shame-shuffling onto Fox to have his blushing face rubbed into the carpet by Carlson, whose staff (who clearly like to watch) even whipped up a little chyron-based mockery-topper for the occasion. (“Cruz’ing for a bruising,” read Carlson’s onscreen graphic, perhaps in deference to his guest’s masochistic bent.)

Holding Cruz up as emblematic of today’s still Trump-worshipping GOP, Meyers concluded, “This is the core of modern GOP politics. You have to prove to the base that you have no dignity, that you are willing to humiliate yourself for them, and that there’s nothing too pathetic for you to do in order to win their favor.” And if Ohio lawmaker, fellow fascist bootlicker, and multiply accused coward in the face of rampant sexual abuse Jim Jordan is coming for Cruz’s whiz-scented sackcloth by suddenly refusing to cooperate with the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection (after previously claiming he had nothing to hide), Meyers wasn’t prepared to unfasten Cruz from his favorite whipping post just yet.