Chewing on a slice of pizza, Tucker Carlson appeared to have no idea he was careening towards the abrupt end of his Fox News career.
The powerful prime-time host spent his last segment interviewing a pizza delivery guy who helped police catch a fleeing suspect by tripping him over.
"That was a great segment and I'm grateful you came on, and I'm especially grateful for the pie," Carlson said, holding aloft a slice of sausage and pineapple pizza.
He then turned back to the camera to speak to his audience.
"We'll be back on Monday; in the meantime, have the best weekend with the ones that you love," he said.
But he was not back on Monday.
By the time the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight signed off for the weekend, Fox chairman Lachlan Murdoch had reportedly decided he would not return.
"Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that, as a contributor," the network said.
It was a rather terse statement for a man who regularly drew more than 3 million viewers per night, was often described as the most powerful conservative in America, and had the ear of former president Donald Trump.
Carlson once seemed untouchable.
But like many Fox stars before him, including Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin, Carlson learned that no darling of the American right is bigger than the network itself.
The details of Carlson's departure remain a mystery.
A recent defamation suit against Fox News unveiled some of Carlson's gossipy texts about his colleagues.
He is also caught up in two explosive lawsuits filed by a former producer who claims Carlson created a toxic, misogynistic atmosphere at Fox.
Whether the father of four plans to sue his former employer, go to a competitor, or even run for higher office, remains unclear.
The young conservative in a bow tie
Long before he became what has been described as "the voice of white grievance", Carlson was the privileged son of a San Francisco journalist and artist.
His parents divorced when he was six and his mother moved to France, cutting ties with both of her sons in what Carlson later described as a "totally bizarre situation".
When he was 10, his father married Patricia Swanson, an heiress to a multi-million-dollar fortune generated by the sale of her family's frozen dinner business.
After graduating from a prestigious boarding school and a private liberal arts college, Carlson attempted to join the Central Intelligence Agency, but his application was denied.
Instead, he decided to follow in his father's footsteps after Dick Carlson advised his son: "You should consider journalism. They'll take anybody."
After several years working in magazines and newspapers, he made the jump to broadcast in the early 2000s, co-hosting CNN's Crossfire which pitted a right-wing pundit against a left-wing pundit in a nightly televised debate.
With his preppy blazer, flop of brown hair and ubiquitous bow tie, Carlson pitched himself to the audience as representing the next generation of American conservatives.
Crossfire did not rate particularly well, but comedian and Daily Show host Jon Stewart is credited with signing its execution warrant when he came on the show as a guest in 2004.
In a blistering 15-minute screed, Stewart told Carlson and his opponent Paul Begala that they were "partisan hacks" sowing division every day.
"It's not so much that [the show's] bad as it's hurting America," he said.
"Here is what I wanted to tell you guys: Stop … you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you've failed miserably."
Carlson occasionally giggled during the exchange, before becoming combative and telling Stewart: "You're more fun on your show, just my opinion."
"You know what's interesting though? You're as big a d**k on your show as you are on any show," Stewart shot back.
Four months after the interview was broadcast and promptly went viral online, CNN cancelled the show and announced it would not renew Carlson's contract.
Carlson insists he wasn't fired, but was already on his way out when his show was cancelled.
"I resigned from Crossfire … many months before Jon Stewart came on our show, because I didn't like the partisanship, and I thought in some ways it was kind of a pointless conversation," he said.
"[CNN] was a frustrating place to work."
For the next few years, Carlson moved from network to network, guest-starring on a season of Dancing With The Stars and starting a conservative news website called The Daily Caller.
In 2009, he became a Fox News contributor, which saw him filling in for hosts when they were on holidays and working the cable news graveyard shift: The weekend morning show.
He was eventually given his own show in 2016, Tucker Carlson Tonight, which began to develop a strong following in the 7pm time slot.
But the king of the network was O'Reilly, and Carlson was firmly relegated to the position of Fox's boyish prince.
Everything changed in 2017 when a slew of sexual harassment allegations emerged against O'Reilly.
With advertisers pulling their money and Fox News HQ surrounded by protesters, the Murdochs kicked O'Reilly off his throne.
The twin rise of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump
At the time of O'Reilly's departure, Carlson had taken on the 9pm slot, which became vacant when Megyn Kelly departed Fox.
Carlson had long ditched the bow-tie and after languishing for years in relative obscurity, at the age of 47, he established himself as the new king of prime-time cable news.
His elevation to what had been O'Reilly's coveted 8pm prime-time slot completed that ascension.
Carlson's rise coincided with the Trump presidency.
Erik Wemple, media critic for the Washington Post, called him the "anti anti-Trump".
"For the entire Trump administration, he shouted down the people who were shouting down Trump," he said.
"That was his role. That was very convenient for him and very helpful for him in the ratings."
While Carlson was at times unpredictable, and on occasion liked to criticise conservatives, his belligerent commentary on immigrants and race remained a constant.
He repeatedly and passionately pushed racist conspiracies, becoming a leading voice of the great replacement theory, which claims that non-whites are being brought into the US and other countries to replace white voters.
After a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, where the shooter left behind a manifesto about a "Hispanic invasion of Texas", Carlson said white supremacy was "not a real problem".
While many of Carlson's comments sparked anger and often sent advertisers running, his position at Fox seemed secure.
Ahead of the 2020 election his show averaged 5.36 million viewers — the highest monthly average for any cable news show in history.
Before his sudden departure he was averaging around 3 million viewers.
So if none of the previous inflammatory commentary got him fired, what changed?
The swirling theories about what went wrong
Carlson's exit was announced a week after the network settled a defamation case with Dominion Voting Systems for $US787.5 million ($1.17 billion).
Dominion sued Fox for airing baseless conspiracy theories that its machines had been rigged to favour President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Carlson's segments relating to vote-rigging conspiracies made up only a small part of Dominion's case.
In its defence, Fox pointed out that the host had called out former Trump-affiliated lawyer Sidney Powell for having no evidence to back up her claims.
"She never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one," he said in November 2020.
Other hosts, including Maria Bartiromo, who gave much more credence and airtime to the conspiracies spouted by Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani remain at Fox.
But it was the material discovered during the case that has proved more damaging to Carlson.
As part of the pre-trial process, a trove of internal Fox communications was made public, which included Carlson declaring he "hated" Donald Trump, and railing about Fox leadership.
"Those f***s are destroying our credibility", he wrote in one communication, referring to management, later describing them as a "a combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down".
He also reportedly made vulgar comments about female colleagues and contributors in material that was redacted, but seen by Fox management, according to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
Fox is also now being sued by one of Carlson's former producers, Abby Grossberg, who accuses the network of being openly sexist and said Carlson's staff in particular denigrated women and made frequent anti-Semitic jokes.
"Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client," lawyers for Ms Grossberg claimed.
The revelations may have been the final straw for Lachlan and his father Rupert Murdoch, but there are various other theories as to what was behind the momentous decision to abruptly sever ties with the top-rating host.
Vanity Fair suggests it could even have been Carlson's talk of God at a think-tank speech that sealed his fate.
In the address to the Heritage Foundation, Carlson, a Christian, said people should stop taking part in "fraudulent" debates about diversity and inclusion and transgender rights.
Instead, he proposed, they should pray for the future.
"That stuff freaks Rupert out. He doesn't like all the spiritual talk," an unnamed source told Vanity Fair.
Then there was his pro-Russian rhetoric over the war in Ukraine.
The 92-year-old patriarch Rupert Murdoch was reported to have been increasingly enraged by Carlson's stance on the war, which included relentless criticism of US support for Ukraine, and a graphic referring to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "Ukrainian pimp".
Carlson's coverage of the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is also a potential factor in his Fox demise.
Ray Epps, a Trump supporter who took part in the riot, has become the target of conspiracy theories pushed by Carlson and others.
Carlson has claimed that Mr Epps was a government agent planted to help incite an insurrection.
"He's obsessed with me … he's … [trying] to destroy my life," Mr Epps, who said he now lives in hiding, told 60 Minutes this week.
A lawyer for Mr Epps has written to Fox demanding the network and Carlson issue an on-air apology and retract the claim that he was an FBI agent.
"There's a possibility that Epps would sue them, and that is another flank of exposure for Fox News," Mr Wemple said.
"At some point, there's just too much liability, too much risk in continuing to employ somebody like that."
What's next for Tucker Carlson?
Carlson had reportedly spent the last week bunkered down, plotting his next move with Justin Wells, the senior executive producer for his Fox show, who has also parted ways with the network.
But on Wednesday local time, Carlson suddenly reappeared.
In a short video, Carlson greeted his Twitter followers with a chirpy "good evening".
The monologue begins with the 53-year-old musing that once he "stepped outside the noise" to take "a little time off", he realised that most people are kind and hilarious.
He then gave possible hints at where he might be going next, describing most of the debates on television as "unbelievably stupid".
"They're completely irrelevant, they mean nothing."
Carlson argued the big topics that would define America's future were barely being discussed at all.
"War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources," he said.
Could Carlson be paving the way for his own show, perhaps on a platform he creates?
He might also be recruited by an existing network — and there's no shortage of suitors among conservative outlets, including OANN and Newsmax.
There have even been suggestions Carlson could join the Trump 2024 campaign, though he might run his own race if he ever decided to enter politics.
As for Fox, the network is still smarting from its payout to Dominion, as it prepares for another similar defamation suit from the Smartmatic voting company.
Replacing its prime-time host in the midst of it all is no mean feat.
Ratings in the 8pm slot have plummeted in the short time since Carlson left, while those at the comparatively small Newsmax have soared.
It used to be thought that Fox was bigger than any of its stars.
Kelly, Beck and O'Reilly and Gretchen Carlson all struggled to find a bigger audience outside the network.
Mr Wemple, who has been studying the cable news business for decades, dubbed it the "plug-in network".
"It's ... a cultural phenomenon in the United States that people just flock to the network and no matter who they plug into at a particular hour, the ratings will still be strong," he said.
Things could be a little different this time around.
"It's insane to bet against Fox News because it is such a brand, but I think that there's more of a question about this particular transition than other transitions that we've seen take place at the network.
"Fox may have a little bit more difficulty in this timeslot without Tucker."
