Grid Effect

Since nowadays this site is only accessible to your humble correspondent roughly 30% of the day, we were unable to pound out that Survivor recap we promised for last night. And we do not have time for it now, so a few words about Jimmy Fallon’s debut as a late night host. As it was just about as uncomfortable of a debut as one could imagine.

Well, in the interest of fairness, I’ve never seen a late night debut before. I might have watched Kimmel’s as I believe it followed the Super Bowl but I can’t remember anything about it and can’t be bothered to do any research. I also skipped the Craig Ferguson debut because I was a Craig Kilborn fan and I had no idea who Craig Ferguson was, so naturally it was lacking appeal.

Taxi: at least it made Gisele a full-time model.

Bringing Jimmy Fallon in, even if it doesn’t work out, definitely sparks some curiosity. For one, he’s a recognizable name from SNL and the few movies he’s been in but at the same time he has grown easily detestable from how sub-par those movies were (though some people seemed to enjoy Fever Pitch) and his well-documented laughing fits on the sketch comedy show. Jimmy Fallon, while recognizable, was definitely a bewildering choice by most who follow this stuff, and for good reason.

First, he didn’t really seem to be heading in the direction of hosting a talk show, especially starting off in a spot that’s fairly reputable. Just about every current host (sans Carson Daly) has either hosted a series in the past or was strictly a writer or a comedian. None of them had gone into acting only to “retire” from it prematurely and host a late night show. It seemed as if he was hired over other more deserving names because his star was the biggest and would generate some buzz.

To be fair, Nick Burns makes up for just about everything.

And I guess it worked. I’m sitting here writing about the guy despite kind of hating his guts. In his entire career he has one noteworthy accomplishment that we enjoyed, and that was when he played Nick Burns, the condescending IT Guy on SNL, and even then he couldn’t hide his own amusement (which we tend to give him a pass on, for those three or four years he was on SNL it seemed like everyone was breaking out in laughter during their own skits. The era will probably best be remembered for that. Fallon just did it in abundance). Beyond that however, I’d venture to say he’s had a relatively disappointing career.

So that’s his back story (as interpreted by us, anyways), and last night he stepped onto the stage, and attempted to win over the naysayers with…deficit jokes. Instead of remarking on the absurdity of him in this role (which to his credit, he seems to be acutely aware of), he comes out with hackneyed one-liners about politics that you probably could have heard Jack Paar make fifty years ago.

The night started off well, with an intentionally awkward passing of the torch between Conan and Jimmy before the credits, but it was basically all down hill from there. From uncomfortable interviews to bizarre and humorless segments, it seemed that all the effort put into the promotional campaign had interfered with the actual show production. As funny as some might find it to have people licking random inanimate objects for a ten spot, you have to provide some humorous commentary for it to actually be a, you know, comedy sketch; and not just some cheap time killing gimmick that doubles as product placement.

The most cringe-inducing part of the show, however, was the incredibly shaky interviews. Robert DeNiro was clearly doing this as a favor to someone, and that someone wasn’t Jimmy Fallon. Outside of Joaquin Phoenix, who may or may not have been in character, i can’t recall a late night guest ever looking so put upon and disinterested. Of course, he kind of always looks like that now. And while he’s a recognizable name, the producers probably should have sought out someone that fit the mold of talk show guest a little better (kind of like NBC should have done with Fallon).

If nothing else, Justin Timberlake, whom I’m not personally a fan of but was basically born to be in front of a camera, basically drowned out his host while oozing charisma. It didn’t start out that way though, as Fallon opened the interview with Timberlake much like he did DeNiro: with a rambling soliloquy that Timberlake had to mercifully cut him off from and offer a signed picture of some guy. From then on out the roles reversed and Fallon almost seemed relieved to let Timberlake take the reigns, even encouraging him to do impersonations at one point.

Basically, the entire thing had about four or five high points and only two of them were one-liners by Fallon. The Roots as the house band and the cold open with Conan O’Brien were two others and the fifth was the unintentional upstaging from Timberlake. Van Morrison is probably my third favorite music act of all time (behind Zeppelin and the Pogues), but to say he is past his prime is a bit of an understatement, and he isn’t really appealing to the generation that they’re attempting to reel in.

Some may recall that Conan’s own show was slow to evolve, and that may be the case here. We’re going to watch for the rest of the week hoping Fallon can relax and come into his own, but for the time being it’s looking like another misfire by NBC. For every Office and 30 Rock, that network is clocking about 40 Bionic Woman’s. This seems to fall into the latter category.

Hopefully we can get to some recaps later.