On Wednesday night, David Letterman’s record-breaking 33 years in late-night television will come to end. Having made it three years longer than his idol, Johnny Carson, Letterman isn’t quite going out on top, having long ago been surpassed in cultural cachet by the lesser Jimmys who thrive on viral videos and inferior comedians masking as political gurus such as Jon Stewart or John Oliver. But Letterman is going out with a bang, having a tremendous run of shows over the past two weeks that have included some of his favorite guests (Howard Stern, Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Norm Macdonald) and musical acts (Eddie Vedder’s Better Man was spine-tingling.)