No late-night talk show host ever displayed more antagonism toward show business. He didn’t just mock the obsession with celebrities; he teased them to their face, displaying studious indifference to the projects they were promoting and a smirking skepticism to their hints of pretentiousness, self-importance or eccentricity. When he said he had “an insatiable appetite about celebrities,” he clearly meant the opposite.

David Letterman once terrified stars (not to mention their publicists and managers) so much that the fear of being a guest was the subject of a short story by David Foster Wallace. Kanye West is exactly the kind of grandiose character whom Letterman would once have approached with rigorous Everyman sarcasm, and in their conversation, the rapper provided plenty of opportunity for eye rolls, like when he said he would know his work was done when there was world peace.

Letterman never went for the deflating joke. Much of this season’s conversations go by without laughs. Instead, with West, he asked for fashion advice and got a set of new clothes from West’s house that he showed off to Kim Kardashian. When Letterman, the Indiana-born broadcaster who was last fashion-forward wearing sneakers with a suit , told West, “I heard you refer to Hermès as the pinnacle,” I nearly did a spit take.

There was some brief conflict when they moved onto the subjects of President Trump (West said he didn’t vote, and Letterman balked) and #MeToo, the latter discussion seeming highly edited. West said men in powerful positions were afraid to talk about this issue, and Letterman, who faced a sex scandal that nearly derailed his career, responded that the fear men felt couldn’t compare to that of women. Then the conversation quickly shifted.

Letterman’s famously self-critical streak seems mostly absent. In fact, he is in a surprisingly good mood, delighted by Tiffany Haddish, effusively praising her talent and even giving her a foot rub. In an episode with the British racecar driver Lewis Hamilton, who as Letterman himself acknowledges probably does need some introduction for many people, he rides go-karts with a couple of kids. (Hamilton got his start racing karts, though this interlude still seems an odd detour.)