Jackals, assemble. Seth Meyers has found a cult audience for a digital spinoff of his Late Night show on NBC over the last four and a half years.
It’s surprising that Corrections, which began in March 2021, is not only still going – there have been close to 150 episodes but that it’s so popular with some episodes getting more than half a million viewers on YouTube.
“When I make mistakes and you guys call them out and then I take time on the show to correct them, that doesn’t mean you should keep pointing them out,” he said on the first episode.
They kept pointing them out and Meyers keeps indulging them (the Jackals, as he calls them, who comment underneath his main show’s videos).
Corrections is also Emmy-nominated. In fact, the show has been nominated four times in the Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Series category, losing out in the first three years to James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke and a web spinoff of Only Murders In The Building.
This year, he is up against three of his late-night rivals: The Daily Show: Desi Lydic Foxsplains, The Rabbit Hole With Jimmy Kimmel and The Tonight Show: During Commercial Break.
As Meyers told Deadline back in April, before his latest nomination, Corrections “should definitely win”, he said. “If you don’t vote for it, there’s this chance that 20 years from now, it’s like The Wire, where people are like, ‘You know that never won an Emmy?’ Am I saying that Corrections is The Wire of shortform digital content? Yeah, and I think anybody who watches both would say the same,” he joked.
There is a worry amongst his fans (thousands of whom also post on Reddit), that he’ll just one day stop posting Corrections, which he records with a skeleton crew after his last show on the week, and the inside jokes will just end.
To celebrate his latest Emmy nom, Deadline asked Meyers to list his favorite episodes, a move that even he knows will anger, upset and surprise some Jackals.
“Here’s the problem with this exercise: In order to fully appreciate Corrections, you have to watch every Corrections,” he said. “It is a living breathing thing demanding your full attention. But if forced to pick seminal episodes…”
Corrections #1: Where it all began. How to pronounce “Babar.” How Germans say, “Cliffhanger.” How badly I butchered, “Surreptitiously.” Three minutes long with the intention that after I put those to bed, the Jackals (our term for those who point out my errors) would stop hounding me, and I would never have to do it again. How wrong I was.
Corrections #41: The culmination of a weeks’ long bit (See Corrections #39 and 40) about how the ending to Stuart Little sucks, in which I read letters from E.B. White’s personal archive. Also, I share this comment from a Jackal that illustrates how they are less prone to catch their own errors than to catch mine: “WTF did I just watched that was horrible.”
Corrections #66: What if my producer Mike Shoemaker’s Christmas wish was for everything to turn into chocolate and what if that is how this episode ended? And what if, I accidentally bit one of the few things on my desk that wasn’t chocolate and badly hurt my tooth? This also includes a callback to our Australian sound man (see Corrections #65) who, due to living several time zones ahead, always plays sound effects early.
Corrections #122: Eddie Redmayne “stops by” and we finally get to the bottom of the difference between ferrets and weasels with our most expensive SFX budget to date ($55). I also address how I tried a new outfit and was immediately pilloried by Shoemaker, who told everyone I looked like Lex Luthor.
Corrections #137: We have a writer named Alex Baze. The Star Wars film, Rogue One, has a character named Baze Malbus. In this Corrections I prove that the latter was based on the former with a clip that is without doubt my favorite moment in Corrections history.
Corrections #69: My favorite joke in Corrections history in which we reveal that the Roadrunner wasn’t actually saying, “Meep-meep,” rather that was the sound of WB censors “meeping” his many obscenities.
