Jimmy Fallon Blossoms Into A Late Night Staple

Whereas The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is THE destination to tune in nightly to get a comic critique (or beating) of the hypocrisy of the news media world, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon has become a nightly destination for its consistently funny spoofs of the world of pop culture. In the last week alone, Fallon performed a savage and hilariously mocking routine of Kate Gosselin’s Dancing with the Stars performance to the tune of Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi, and Late Night debuted another episode of one of their rotating TV spoof homages, 6-bee, a dead on spoof of Glee where Jimmy Fallon’s Studio 6b glee club competes to win sectionals against their rival team from Parks and Recreation, led by Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones. Any attempt by me to describe this will not do it justice, so just go watch it and you can finish reading the rest of this later.

Past Late Night homages worth checking out online are Late Night’s tribute to LOST (titled LATE), and their hilarious spoof of MTV’s inane show The Hills, entitled 7th Floor West. And if you haven’t seen Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young sing “Pants on the Ground”, you are missing one of the pop culture moments of 2010. Other consistently funny elements of Late Night include segments such as Slow Jamming the News w/ Jimmy and The Roots (and other surprise guests) jamming the weekly headlines, Rush Limbaugh Karaoke where members of the audience have to sing karaoke style to end of the world style diatribes taken from Limbaugh’s radio show, Jimmy’s weekly thank you notes (e.g., “Thank you, pony tails, for turning the backs of girls’ heads into horse’s butts.”), and Robert is Bothered, where Jimmy does a dead-on Robert Pattinson impersonation, in character as Edward from Twilight, and complains about the things that are bothering him at that point in time – such as, of course, Snickers ads in magazines. And inexplicably Jimmy as Robert delivers his complaints while sitting among the branches of a tree. Again, my description really can’t do this justice. Just watch and laugh.

Did I mention Late Night is actually also your standard talk show with a monologue and all the rest? Yes, each night there is also the typical array of talk show guests making appearances to shill/promote/perform. But as you can tell from this column, these elements are not at all integral to the evening’s entertainment. It’s a huge bonus when someone like Tina Fey is a guest (as she was this past week) and can bring the funny, but the interview segments are not what make Late Night with Jimmy Fallon must see TV at this point. Perhaps that will change in the future as the show is still very much in its infancy, and Jimmy remains much too chummy with the guests and not that likely to ask anything mind-blowing. But at this point, the traditional talk-show elements should only get better, so all the more reason to tune in.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that much of the credit to what makes Late Night with Jimmy Fallon so consistently entertaining has to be given to the incredibly talented Late Night writing team, lead by head writer, A.D. Miles. (Yes, Fallon himself deserves credit for his goofy likeability and schoolboy enthusiasm, but he would also be the first to admit he has been blessed by some awesome writing). A.D. Miles probably deserves a column all to himself and is best known to comedy geeks for his consistently hilarious appearances in anything written/directed by another under-rated comic talent, David Wain. The most widely seen of Miles’ roles was in Wain’s most recent directorial effort Role Models, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott, but other Wain gems you should check out asap for appearances by Miles are Wet Hot American Summer, the short-lived Comedy Central series Stella, and Wain’s current direct to web comedy classic Wainy Days. But I’ll admit to being something of a comedy geek myself, and I will never forget the time I saw A.D. Miles do a dead on hilarious portrayal of Molly Ringwald in a live performance staging of John Hughes’ classic Pretty in Pink at the UCB Theater some years ago in NY. If anyone has video footage of that show, I hope it goes up on YouTube asap.

Before I end this and send you off searching the Internet for Late Night highlights, let me give a shout out to Jimmy’s house band, The Roots. The Roots are without a doubt the coolest, most talented band ever to stand in as a late night TV house band. Though, let’s be honest, the coolest part is a no-brainer when your competition is Paul Shaffer, Max Weinberg, and Kevin Eubanks. But still…on the basis of music alone, The Roots make Late Night with Jimmy Fallon compelling viewing.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and the rest of the late night talk show scene with me on Twitter @smarthollywood, and feel free to email me any questions or comments at smarthollywood@gmail.com.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.