By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — Stephen Colbert is going out with a smile — and with many jokes at CBS and its parent company Paramount’s expense.
Colbert is signing off “The Late Show” this week as CBS ends the iconic late-night TV franchise.
Many “Late Show” fans are disappointed, even angry, about the cancellation, doubting CBS’s rationale for the decision and believing that appeasement politics toward Trump are at play.
“I have every right to be pissed off,” Colbert’s predecessor, David Letterman, said during a farewell visit to the show last week.
But while others are outraged on his behalf, and the audience continues to litigate the show’s end, Colbert remains positive and radiates gratitude.
“I’ve really liked working with CBS,” he recently told The New York Times. “They’ve been great partners. And I’d like to end it that way… I feel so much better to be ‘grateful for’ than to be ‘mad about.’”
Colbert’s primary concern, as he has indicated in other interviews, is about the “Late Show” staff, who will be out of work after Thursday night’s finale.
The promotional listings for the final week contain some clues about the show’s plans.
Monday’s episode will be “the worst of ‘The Late Show’ with Stephen Colbert,” according to the CBS press release, which notes that it is “not a clip show,” meaning Colbert has some new material in store.
Tuesday’s episode will feature two A-list stars, Jon Stewart and Steven Spielberg, plus a “special performance by David Byrne and Stephen Colbert.” Spielberg is starting a press tour for his new movie “Disclosure Day,” and Stewart is a longtime friend and producing partner of Colbert’s.
Wednesday’s episode will include a performance by Bruce Springsteen and a special edition of “The Colbert Questionert,” a recurring Q&A segment on the show.
And Thursday’s finale will be a surprise: no guests or segments are being promoted in advance.
Colbert’s chief rivals, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” will both run reruns on Thursday night.
In a podcast taping with Kimmel, Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver last week, Colbert alternated between sentimental and sarcastic about the end of his show.
He also shared that “my son graduates college on the 18th; my show ends on the 21st; my brother gets married on the 23rd. So, I’m kind of sandwiched between things that are, like, a little more important — like, you know, a little perspective.”
Colbert, 62, has said little about his public-facing plans after “The Late Show,” though he is attached to be a writer on a new “Lord of the Rings” movie, a dream gig for one of TV’s biggest Tolkien fans.
‘Two things can be true’
As for the whodunit aspect of his show’s cancellation, Colbert told The Times, “It’s possible that two things can be true.”
When CBS announced last July that this season of “The Late Show” would be the last, the network said it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
But the timing raised plenty of eyebrows. At the time, Paramount was trying to win Trump administration approval for its merger with Skydance Media, and the company had just settled President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News, even though legal experts deemed the suit frivolous. On the air, Colbert likened the settlement to a “big fat bribe.”
Then came news of the cancellation, though it had apparently been in the works internally for weeks. Numerous Democratic officeholders raised questions about whether Colbert was axed for political reasons. After all, it’s nearly impossible to separate Colbert the comedian from Colbert the Trump critic.
Trump, of course, celebrated Colbert’