TSF LIVE BLOGS THE FIRST “LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON”
You may know Jimmy Fallon from his 5-year stint on Saturday Night Live or his laughable attempt at a motion picture career from 2004 to 2008. Realizing America hated him as an actual actor, Jimmy Fallon has been given a second, and let’s be honest, last chance at proving to us that he is worthy of our hard-earned money and precious time.
Tonight, Monday, March 2nd, 2009, marks the first night of Jimmy Fallon’s future in the entertainment business as he makes his debut as Conan O’Brien’s replacement on NBC’s Late Night. Because almost every person reading this list has a life and doesn’t run a mindless blog, I am the one who stayed up until 1:30 a.m. to live blog his first show and let you know how it went every step of the way.
Live blogging is a new term used to describe the taking of notes via text or pictures during an event in real time and posting it to a website. This is TSF’s first liveblog, and depending on the reaction, probably not the last.
Why Live blog? Instead of just writing an after-the-fact review, this can give you minute-by-minute insight into the show and how much Jimmy Fallon does or does not suck.
START OF THE SHOW
Skit: Conan is cleaning out his dressing room and says he’ll TiVo Jimmy’s show. Conan asks who is on the show this week and next week, in which Jimmy says some dude from from Season 1 Survivor and Right Side Fred. I don’t know what’s worse: if that was scripted or improv, because it wasn’t funny either way. Both too obscure references for the audience to find funny … could have used funnier references.
Intro kinda sucks. Announcer (Steve Higgins) is boring. The Roots did the intro music. Wonder if they will stay on as his band…? He’s got that going for him, which is nice.
He walks out and looks totally awkward with his hands in his pockets and his head down.
“A smart man would leave now” – let Conan handle the dry humor.
It snowed like a foot in New York today, he says a stupid snow day joke. He woke up and said, “Please let it be a snow day”. I didn’t LOL.
He mentions that Microsoft is opening stores around the country to compete with Apple stores, the only difference is that “in the Microsoft stores, the staff will freeze when you ask them a question”. Nice.
He “slow jams” the news in which The Roots play a down tempo beat as Jimmy tells the news with reverberated effects on his voice. A cop-out. Stick to the jokes.
They want to reach blonde mothers from Connecticuit as “tonight’s target demographic”. Camera pans to the crowd and shows preppy middle-aged blonde women clapping.
Skit: Blonde mothers are an attractive demographic. Jokes and stereotypical blonde mothers and talks about them being the target demographic…unfunny and contrived version of this.
Before cutting to the first commercial break, he says, “Come back … (awkward pause) … please.”
A game called “Lick it for Ten” – They pick a few people from the audience and they lick something for $10. 2 dudes 1 chick. They do it in a Price is Right style (retail price, etc.). First dude has to lick a push mower. By audience applause, he has to lick the motor, then they show it in “super sexy replay”. Actually kind of funny. The chick has to lick a computer printer. 2nd dude has to lick a goldfish bowl. By the third person, this is putting me to sleep. Once is enough. Commercial.
First guest: Robert De Niro. He starts purposely only asking him questions with one word answers. Asks him if he’s happy to be here. He says, “I don’t know yet.” Good answer.
1:00 a.m. He asks Robert if he gets bothered walking around NYC, he answers no. It’s about 4 minutes into the interview at this point and De Niro literally hasn’t looked at Jimmy in the face yet – I shit you not. Oh and there it is, he looks at him in the face at 1:05 a.m.
Fallon then does a Taxi Driver De Niro impression. Not bad. De Niro does a Jimmy Fallon impression and it’s only funny because he’s Robert De Niro. Commercial.
1:12 a.m. Fallon mentions a fake movie he was in with De Niro. Star Wars spoof called “Space Train”. A train that goes to space because they’re afraid of flying. Watch the non-hilarity below (or don’t…):
1:17 a.m. Back from commercial. Justin Timberlake is the next guest.
Justin “pulled some strings” and got him a signed picture of some dude I don’t know that says “To Jimmy, your fan” and they joke it says it looks like “Your tan” – and Jimmy is pale. Laugh laugh. They start singing some song in unison, I feel like it’s an inside joke and I’m not included. Frown.
They show a clip of Justin’s new MTV show called “The Phone”, which looks pretty cool, except it doesn’t. He describes it as a game show where people get a phone call and they put people through “absolute hell”, e.g. in the clip, a car explodes right as the chick agrees to the game on the phone. Sounds like a great idea for a show, if except doing that, they played music videos instead.
BEST PART OF THE SHOW: They start making fun of John Mayer (Top 10 Celebrities Who Need To Get Their Ass Kicked). Timberlake does an impression and it is spot on. Hilarious, watch below:
Then Timerlake does a Michael McDonald impression, not as good, but still funny. Jimmy awkwardly sends it to commercial, looks nervous.
1:30 a.m. Van Morrison musical guest. Not playing “Brown Eyed Girl”, college-aged audience is pissed, ’cause we damn well know that’s the only song by Van Morrison they know.
Overall, not bad and better than I thought it was going to be. It didn’t drag on, but the monologue needs to be heavily improved. Get some better writers, NBC. Call me, we’ll do lunch.
11 Comments so far
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I’m currently watching this show, and in all honesty, this show was far, far worse than Conan’s first ever episode. What I saw in Conan was sheer, incredible potential, whereas with Jimmy, I haven’t had a hard laugh yet-simply because I haven’t seen anything even remotely funny yet. I mean, licking ? Is that supposed to be a sketch? Come on, Jimmy, buddy-boy, don’t crap on Conan’s studio.
Great post and I think your first paragraph aptly sums up the career of Jimmy Fallon. I don’t feel nearly as generous as you toward this first show, though. I had low expectations and it was surprisingly much worse than I anticipated. The De Niro interview was the most awkward talk show moment I’ve seen since Letterman interviewed Madonna (and at least then you could blame the guest). The worst part for me was when Fallon joked they had similar careers. He was lucky to get a decent laugh from the audience, and a mild, polite chuckle from De Niro. But then he paused… and paused, as if it was a joke that would take time to sink in and would get more laughter. Instead the laughter quickly died down to a deafening silence, and De Niro actually grumpily said ‘OK’, as in… ‘move on, we get it’. What a disaster! I thought the show was so terrible, I can’t imagine it getting better enough to be decent. I think Fallon’s chances have officially expired.
I was probably too nice to him in this post. It was really awkward – that would be the word I’d use to describe it.
I can’t stand Jimmy Fallon’s mannerisms and the fact that he’s replacing a legend makes it that much worse.
I think they did a good job of avoiding too much direct dialogue with Jimmy, but the skits and other material wasn’t that great.
While he struggled, was very nervous, he has a long way to go. Give him a break. He has huge shoes to fill. As for you piss poor blog. Justin’s part saved the show. The pic of Barry “effen” Gibb, was great. For a pop culture blog, you should be ashamed of yourself if you never saw the “Barry Gibb Talk Show” on SNL. There were plenty people in the audience who knew exactly what they were doing. The show can be good, but needs some tuning.
^ Jimmy, is that you?
How could you write a pop culture blog/website and never have heard of the Bee Gees, Barry Gibb or have seen the Barry Gibb Talk Show from SNL? Right Said Fred and the First Season of Survivor are obscure? Dude, are you 8 years old? I’m not a fan of any of Fallon, or any of the fore mentioned people, but how could you review anything critically when your pop culture history/reference library only goes back to 2003?
In response to Brian H. above:
Maybe I should have been more clear. First of all, I never said I haven’t heard of the Bee Gees, I said I’ve never heard of Barry Gibb. Sorry my disco lead singer-name knowledge isn’t up to par.
As far as the “obscure” reference, I was saying that the reference Jimmy made to some random Survivor 1 contestant and 80s one-hit-wonder Right Side Fred was too obscure for the audience, not me. I think he could have executed the joke better with funnier references. I have added this to the post.
- TSF
P.S. here’s something for you to look at and shred your doubt of my music knowledge: http://thatssofetch.com/2008/09/top-10-non-guitar-solos-in-rock-history/
If you saw the Barry Gibb Talk Show sketches, then Jimmy and Justin’s little song was great. If you didn’t, well, okay then.
Sure, the show needs work, but the worst part of the show was De Niro. It was like De Niro was just sitting down, minding his own business, and some fan just comes up and starts talking to him, and refuses to go away. Why on earth did he agree to come on?
Conan had a rough time getting started too. Let’s see where he is in six months.
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