Stephen Colbert’s “Russia Week” on The Late Show might have another day left in it on Friday, but Thursday’s segment detailing the host’s recent adventures in Moscow was, as Colbert explained, “the whole damn reason” he went in the first place. What with the Trump-Russia investigation into possible collusion, major money laundering, and all manner of other undemocratic scheming by Donald Trump and pals revealing more and more depths (like one of those nesting dolls native to a certain country), one might think that Colbert was talking about a major interview or smoking gun regarding the nation-shaking, frighteningly credible allegations of actual treason by the President of the United States.
Nah, it was the pee-pee tape.
Sure, Colbert was ultimately unable to pick up the scent of the salacious allegations outlined in the increasingly accurate infamous Russian dossier that then-candidate Donald Trump had hired two sex workers to whiz on the bed of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Presidential Suite as a pervy, exploitative insult to recent room guests Barack and Michelle Obama. That, even though Colbert brought along a reluctant but legitimate expert on the Russian government’s ubiquitous surveillance techniques, and one of those blacklights local news reporters employ to shame the motels out by the interstate. (Housekeeping is gonna be pretty solid at a Ritz-Carlton, after all.) But still, Colbert—on CBS’ dime—did rent out swanky Room 1101 and, you know, sniff around. Citing the disappointment people sometimes feel when they’re actually standing, hip-deep, in a place they’ve been visualizing for so long, Colbert confided, with barely restrained glee, “That’s not this feeling at all. This is right on the money.”
In the end, despite realizing that the suite’s window is in ridiculously easy binocular distance of the Kremlin itself, busting open one of the hotel’s fancy bowls looking for bugs, and letting fly a stream of pee-happy puns, all Colbert’s digging failed to strike water. (That the front desk called moments after Colbert broke that bowl did give credence to the rumor that the Moscow Ritz-Carlton is bugged up the wazoo, however.) Still, it made a certain comedic sense that Colbert’s elaborately silly investigation of the site of another of Donald Trump’s (alleged) nation-embarrassing exploits would just… dribble out.