Paul W. Downs

It's a very dramatic way to end, yes.

Yes, there are some finger gestures being made at me on screen right now.

It's exactly that.

You can't see it.

But it's a huge moment for her.

And I remember when that happened.

I think it came out a couple months before Colbert was canceled, right?

That was the timing.

That's right.

And you were seen as prescient, right?

Psychic.

That you sort of saw this coming, this episode of, you know, what was ostensibly about cost-cutting,

but appeared to many to be more about censorship and sort of getting a merger through the Trump administration.

Before you were seen as prescient, like before you knew that that was going to happen, what were you trying to say in that moment at the end of season four?

Was it purely sort of a plot decision and a creative decision, or was there a bigger message that you intended to be conveying there?

It was really crazy.

And we're still in crazy world.

I mean, we're now looking at beyond Colbert.

You have the FCC president.

investigating, you know, ABC affiliates over diversity, but really it's because, and my fact checkers are going to be upset at me here, but really it's because Jimmy Kimmel made a joke that the president didn't like about his wife potentially becoming a widow.