Wow. This is one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.
This prompts a question: If you tell a joke and no one is around to laugh at it, is it still funny? 
Some of them are – and some of them wouldn’t be even if the audience were there.
Agree, this is seriously surreal. Perfect thing to be watching after nonstop storm coverage all day.
Letterman used to do a lot of strange shows back in the early NBC days. I remember three in particular: the time they did the show flying cross-country on a passenger jet (with Paul doing the music on a cheap Casio keyboard), the time they broadcast a rerun with all the voices dubbed in over-dramatic Spanish, and the time the screen rotated 360 degrees over the course of the show. Too bad it takes an act of God to make Dave’s show interesting now.
The strangest late night talk show that I’ve ever seen was when Conan replaced everyone with skeleton puppets.
I think it was Jimmy Fallon a couple of years ago who had a power outage and recorded the whole show using a laptop webcam.
Craig Ferguson did the entire show with puppets once.
Sounds like an average day on the Craig Ferguson show.
ETA: OK GuanoLad, choose your second.
I don’t know. Without an audience, I have no idea when/if I’m supposed to laugh.
Didn’t Conan do a whole episode in stop-motion animation?
When the Ed was being renovated, Dave did the show for several nights out in the lobby with a small audience.
I thought it was surreal. Watching from Houston Texas and once we got used to no laugh track or audience–it’s a readjustment. There were some good jokes.
And I couldn’t believe was actually there with the empty audience. I kept waiting for the audience to be there.
I did love the hand written posterboard TOP TEN LIST sign. That made it worth watching, by itself.
He also did his NBC show as a fake morning show, since so many of his viewers were watching the show on VHS tape the next morning.
And it was surprisingly good, too.
Dave also did one on NBC once where they adjusted the audio so that everyone sounded like they were huffing helium. Jane Pauley was a spoil-sport and wouldn’t say a word while she was on.
Last night, Jimmy Fallon recorded his intro while walking out on the street, and did his regular show sans audience as well.
Dave will be alone again tonight. Jim Cantore tweeted he’d be on.
Too bad Craig is on record (in a nerdist podcast)saying the puppets have gone the way of the sound machine. It makes me feel sorry for Josh Thompson, as Craig is likely to tire of Geoff Peterson eventually, too, and Josh thinks he’s the hottest thing ever right now.
Long time Letterman fan here:
The airliner one was his NBC 4th anniversary show. He had his desk facing backwards at the very front of upper deck first class, and they painted a huge WWII ‘nose-art’ of Conny Chung on the outside of the airliner and named it “The Anniversary Special”. I don’t remember an entire show dubbed in Spanish, they did a running bit at the end of several shows with Dave speaking Spanish in this fake cheesy Telenova soap opera “Dr. Suarez!” (really funny!) They once played a rerun at like 8% sped up speed so they could include a few bonus minutes of new footage at the end (which consisted of Dave & Paul without an audience looking at Paul’s vacation photos).
They didn’t do the whole show with helium voices, that was the ‘Viewers Choice’ show where before each segment the audience got to choose different things. One was to replace Dave & the guests chairs with dental exam chairs, another was to make him & the guest (Jane Pauley) sound like they were breathing helium. Pauley refused to speak until the very end when she said, “Its been fun” and she sounded *really *silly (like a chipmunk on helium!)
Other theme shows were Parent’s Night (all the crew’s parents were there including Dave’s mom), the Japan Show (they filled the studio audience with Asians and pretended they were in Japan), the Show From Dave’s Office (he got Teri Garr to take a shower in his office’s bathroom!).
I think Geoff is less of a gimmick ever since Josh started voicing him live. He’s a genuine sidekick/co-host now, and is key to making a lot of the humour work, and sometimes he’s very very funny in his own right; I think he’s a permanent fixture. Secretariat will go one day, maybe soon, but not the robot skeleton.
I miss the puppets on Ferguson. Especially the opening sequences.
“What a do ev’rybody…what a do.”