In honor of the holiday season, “Late Night” host Seth Meyers held a surprise inspection for the writing staff that puts together his monologue.
“They write hundreds, hundreds of jokes every day just to get to the 10 or 12 we use in the monologue. And honestly a lot of those jokes that they write just aren’t good,” Meyers said. “Sometimes I think they just throw in a few stinkers everyday just to fill the page and meet the assignment. But just because the holidays are here doesn’t mean we can tolerate laziness.”
“I’m gonna read some actual jokes that were really submitted by my writers. They, like, turned them in, with their names on it,” he continued. “They are unusable for the show. Some are dumb, some are offensive, some are confusing. Most importantly, the writers don’t know we’re doing this and because a lot of them don’t watch the show, they’ll never know.”
The first joke, which came from writer Mike Scollins, was: “A deer recently entered a New York nursing home. Oh? So Nana wasn’t alone on her birthday.”
“His take was that the funny thing would be that would be good news for anyone who forgot to visit their nana on their birthday,” Meyers said. “And what he thought would happen is people like you would laugh.”
He then went into another joke accompanied by a photo of the Menendez brothers in court: “Yesterday was National Pay Back Your Parents Day. ‘Way ahead of you,’ said Erik and Lyle.”
“Kinda makes you miss the nana one, right?,” Meyers quipped.
Another joke was aimed at President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden: “President Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden left the White House today to spend Thanksgiving in Nantucket. Their holiday weekend is so long, you can suck it.”
“It’s a good Thanksgiving joke,” Meyers said to a completely silent audience.
He concluded the surprise inspection with the joke that elicited a groan from the audience: “Yesterday was National Child’s Day. ‘Well maybe just one,’ said R. Kelly.”
“Happy Thanksgiving!,” Meyers said, wrapping up the light ribbing and roasting on the eve of the holiday. “This has been a surprise inspection.”
Watch the full segment in the video above.
