Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

So the first of the online segments of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon went up and…well…that’s pretty much the end of the story. Nothing happened. He said that he’s the new host (which we knew) and that The Roots are the new house band (which is awesome, but we knew) and that’s it. What the hell? Maybe I was mistaken but I thought there were going to be jokes. That wasn’t supposed to sound sarcastic. I really thought there was going to be some type of a thing-one-could-watch. The whole thing ran like a minute and a half, which means there was a half a page of dialogue and another 45 seconds of Jimmy breaking character and laughing to himself.

OK. That might have been a little harsh. I’m actually not anywhere near as down on Fallon as some other people, some of whom are holding these damn-near-Shakespearean style vendettas, where I can only assume that at some point in the past Jimmy Fallon drove to their house and killed their dog. Yes, he did make that terrible movie where Queen Latifah drove a taxi that transformed into some sort of ghetto spaceship in order to hunt down a pack of evil supermodels intent on world domination. But other than owing me $10.75 and two hours of my life for that disaster, he seems like a good guy and I’m going to withhold judgment for a little while and see how this plays itself out.

More to the point, the idea that anybody is going to be absolutely hilarious for close to an hour and a half, four days a week, non-stop is pretty ridiculous. People just don’t operate like that. It’s the fundamental flaw in late night television. I have been trying to find a clip of Conan’s first show that hasn’t already been taken off youtube or veoh by NBC’s parent company, but thus far to no avail. The point was that even Conan, who I think is slicker than shit on ice, had a pretty dicey start. There was even a show in his initial run that went completely DOA.

That’s one of the reasons I thought we were going to see at least a five minute monologue or a sketch and not just a back stage tour and some Q and A–so that, when the show went up in the spring, Fallon and the writers were already on a sufficient hot streak from doing four mini-shows a week that the transition wasn’t an issue. But hell, what do I know.

Anyway, here’s a clip of Fallon’s new house band doing what they do best (which I also can’t embed thanks to Universal)…

The Roots - The Seed 2.0

…and the final thought that even if he stood up on day one in June and immediately vomited all over himself, he couldn’t possibly be worse than Carson Daly.