The critique nobody wanted of the first Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

I just watched the premiere episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, because, well, what the fuck else am I supposed to while not getting drunk, and I have a few thoughts. I'll bet you can go to Hulu by the time you read this and catch yourself up if you didn't watch, yet still feel like it's VERY important to know what I thought about the show (you don't).

The monologue was very Leno-esque. I don't mean that in a "not funny" way, as some of it was somewhat amusing. I mean that, though all the hosts short of Ferguson can't merely allow laughter to follow their punchlines but instead have to add a few words of "banter," Fallon copies Leno in that the comment following the (somewhat stilted) joke tended to dumb down the joke by explaining it in a laughing manner. If Fallon (or Leno) asks why firemen wear suspenders, and finishes with, "To keep their pants up," you can be guaranteed that during the applause, Fallon (assuming we've removed the previous parenthetical) will look over at his band leader (?uestlove, of course), and say, "Well, something's gotta hold them up!" And people will stop laughing.

The slow-jamming the news could become good. The awkwardness of that was more on the Roots than Fallon.

The game played with the audience, "Lick It For Ten," could almost be a Letterman game. The game had three audience members come on stage and lick a lawn mower, a printer/copier, and a goldfish bowl, respectively. However, what Fallon and Co. don't seem to realize is that Letterman's games either 1) don't involve the audience and thus can be relied upon to be good because they're ridiculing Rupert Gee or playing the utterly absurd "Will It Float," or 2) are actually comedy routines or rejected monologue jokes that don't actually need audience participation. Unless you're The Price is Right!, don't rely on your audience to provide humor. They can only be fodder.

Dangerous choice having Robert De Niro as the first guest ever. I was worried at first that Fallon was going to slide into what I would do if I had a talk show and got to meet De Niro, and fall right into fanboy mode and just say, "Oh my God...you're Robert De Niro," over and over again. But Fallon calmed down pretty quickly.

As Fallon stated outright, De Niro is notorious for not giving particularly great interviews (side note: "notorious" actually has no negative connotation, according to the OED), and he didn't disappoint here. Fallon handled the anti-interview pretty well, almost Conan in style, in that he announced he would be asking De Niro questions that could be answered with only one word, and was calm enough later in the interview to bring the joke back when De Niro answered a very leading question with only one word.

When Justin Timberlake came out, Late Night turned very quickly into the Late Late Show when Craig Ferguson has a friend on as a guest, where they share inside jokes and leave the audience out. Fallon had Timberlake do a few impressions that I'm sure were hilarious in the green room of SNL, and were pretty funny here, but it seemed a lot like they were at a party, and Fallon was saying to Timberlake, "Oh, oh, do the one where you're John Mayer! Guys, guys, you'll love it!" And everyone else at the party just doesn't care. As well, they did their ne'er-requested Gibb brothers talk show song from SNL.

So, to recap: in his first show, Fallon had moments of Leno, Letterman, O'Brien, and Ferguson. Also, he shares the same first name and structure of last name as Jimmy Kimmel (consonant-vowel-double consonant-vowel-consonant, in case you didn't want to do the math yourself). That being said, I liked Jimmy Fallon better tonight than I ever did on SNL, and think he could ultimately be on to something. And at least he didn't also copy Chelsea Lately. That being said, I don't have DVR, and if I'm ever up this late again, I'm reading a book.

You know what the best part about this whole post is? If you're reading this, you literally couldn't care less what I think about the Jimmy Fallon show. But, hey. We're just trying to keep limber here with the writing. They can't all be gems.