Presumably, when it was announced over the summer that Stephen Colbert was planning a special, live election-night broadcast on Showtime, the expectation was that he would riff on a once-in-a-lifetime political event, as momentous as anything he regularly satirizes as host of “The Late Show” on CBS.

There can be no disputing that the special, called partly “Stephen Colbert’s Live Election Night Democracy’s Series Finale,” was unique, but surely not in the way the politically liberal Mr. Colbert, his guests or his audience had expected. With pre-election polls suggesting a Hillary Clinton victory, Mr. Colbert and his guests were buffeted throughout the broadcast by the growing realization that Donald J. Trump had won the presidency. No entertainer could have managed this task easily; the night had a nervous energy that made it compelling, surreal and sometimes difficult to watch as it unfolded.

An Ominous Opening

Mr. Colbert’s special began with a dark animated sequence in which a seething cartoon version of Mr. Trump reflected angrily on his humiliation by President Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, and the cold, competitive attitude of his father, Fred Trump. Against the backdrop of a stormy night at Trump Tower, he contrives to run for the White House.

Mr. Colbert then took the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater to deliver a monologue that tried to wink at the possibility of a Trump victory. “You don’t need to stand for me,” he said. “You don’t need to chant my name. America doesn’t have dictators — yet.” (The audience members, whose phones he said had been taken away for the live broadcast, tittered uneasily.) He said a swear word to show he could do it on cable television and announced Marco Rubio’s re-election to the United States Senate, with the help of a nearly nude male model who had the news written on an index card taped to his crotch.