I mistakenly thought that Tina Fey was hosting SNL this past weekend (so much so that I nearly flipped out on my DVR for failing to record the show). But I must have jumped the gun, as the show doesn’t return with host Fey and musical guest Justin Bieber until April 10 (and now that I can use the tag “Justin Bieber” my page views are sure to skyrocket. Thanks, SNL!), or maybe they re-ran the Fey-Carrie Underwood episode from February 2008. Either way, there was no new show this week.
But don’t fear, we’ll fill that vacuum. Instead of another edition of “What Up With That?”,we have Jumped the Snark hero Jason Sudeikis on Jimmy Fallon (an interview from earlier this month that, we admit, slipped through our cracks). Sudeikis’ alcohol drenched description of his hectic work schedule explains his relative absence from the recent Jude Law-helmedSNL, a deficiency that we noted here. Somehow everything this man says in hilarious. New sketch idea: Jason Sudeikis reads the classifieds. Could totally work.
*Note: With Thursday nights requiring two DVRs and thus creating a logjam of Friday blog content, we’re going to, at least temporarily, move Nostalgia Corner to Tuesdays (as, save for Chuck, Monday is pretty much tumbleweeds).
Last night I watched some of Late Night “live,” which is something I don’t normally do, usually catching any buzzworthy bits online. However, my eyelids soon grew heavy (Mondays, right?!) and flipped off the TV without witnessing Jimmy Fallon and the crew doing anything especially noteworthy, assuming there wouldn’t be any new Late Night gems on this occasion (okay, full disclosure, I watched a little Real Housewives of New York City, then turned in for the night). Lo and behold, I wake up, log on and find out that I missed this:
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A brilliant piece of pop culture kitsch to parody, matched with the guts to repeat the same vocal beats over and over again, never saying a single actual word, stretching the gag until it wasn’t funny anymore and then keeping it going until it became funny again. Good work, gumshoes (and I realize that’s not really an appropriate use for that distinction)!
And, to bring home the nostalgia part of this post: Do it, Rockapella! Live in concert!
And that proof is that last Thursday he welcomed our good friend Eliot Glazer and, more importantly, Eliot’s dog Atticus (whom I like to consider as my dog nephew, or dog Godson).
Atticus first achieved fame by setting the blogosphere with his Bold appearance on Cute Overload.
After this pic hit the internetwaves I told Eliot that a star was born, that Atticus had reached the pinnacle in the sport of cute. However, I should have known that the mutt (allegedly a Shih Tzu-Schnauzer mix, but we think he might have some Havanese in him, or maybe a tiny bit of Terrier), was destined for even bigger things.
And his next step? Conquering late night television:
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And with that, Atticus now holds a world record (oh, and Eliot, too). Thanks, Jimmy!
Talking up the good work that Jimmy Fallon and the Late Night crew have been doing is nothing new on this blog. In fact, we’ve been complimenting their efforts as far back as last Fall. But with the show celebrating its one year anniversary last week, and with the program demonstrating as much creativity and spontaneity as any show in late night today (effectively filling the absurdity vacuum left by Conan), we thought it fitting to highlight some recent clips to show how Jimmy continues to impress (and then one more to illustrate how in other respects he continues to disappoint).
Late Night has particularly excelled in slickly produced, exceptionally accurate television parodies, first with the Hills spoof 7th Floor West and then with The Real Housewives of Late Night. The show has continued this hot streak by taking on the height of the pop culture phenomena, Lost, with their new recurring series, Late. Below is the 2nd episode, as the castaways (brought together by an elevator crash and now stranded on a creepy abandoned office floor) struggle to make sense of their new and mysterious surroundings.
I wasn’t able to post to Nostalgia Corner last Friday because my day was just NUTS (okay, so my mom was visiting and I spent my scant free time writing about The Office clip show)! So here’s a belated but still relevant edition.
As we all know (and have probably watched) by now Conan O’Brien closed out his tenure as host of the Tonight Show last Friday with guests Will Ferrell, Neil Young and Tom Hanks. Vulture already noted that Hanks, a frequent late night visitor and guest on Conan’s second Tonight Show, also holds the distinction of appearing on David Letterman’s last show as host of Late Night. But I would like to focus less on Hanks’ propensity for appearing on sign-offs, but rather on his relationship with Conan O’Brien. Conan often still seems like the young guy, the gawky, redheaded kid, but the truth his he’s being holding court in late night for 17 years, and he’s actually known Hanks for over 20 years, as O’Brien was a writer on SNL in the late 80s when Hanks was the go-to host (hosting five times in five years, on pace at the time to shatter all hosting records). They even discussed this on the show last Friday, with Hanks revealing that he called Conan and his fellow writers Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel the “boiler-room boys.” And the two sketches that Hanks is probably most associated with – “Mr. Short-Term Memory” & the “Girl Watchers” – were written by O’Brien, and Conan even appears in Hanks’ most memorable monologue “The Five Timer’s Club” (although Conan identifies himself as “Sean”). But, for today, we’re going to highlight Hanks’ monologue from his third hosting stint in October of 1988, a bit that includes Conan’s first appearance on SNL (in denim vest!). The ties that bind:
It’s true, Tom Hanks is the nicest guy in Hollywood. Maybe in any wood. And possibly the funniest. Chris Rock once said that if Hanks had “grown up with less education, he’d be the greatest comedian who ever lived,” and I believe it. I think it’s high that time Hanks attached himself to a straight-up comedy and showed these kids how it’s done (Bosom Buddies: The Movie???).
Do I want Jay Leno to have a show? No. I think his time has come and gone. When Gallagher talks about late night comedians as the manifestation of mediocrity, Leno is the poster boy (which makes me think, wonder what Gallagher has to say about all of this). But if Leno is known for anything, it’s being the nice guy, the non-threatening (save for the chin) host. Yes, perhaps he shouldn’t have taken the Jay Leno Show gig, just moved on to washing his cars and dropping by his Comedy and Magic Club, and let Conan take over The Tonight Show without his predecessor breathing up his neck. But, in the end, it was NBC who decided five years ago to lock in The Tonight Show transition. In the last year they look guilty of committing knee jerk reactions, but in this particular case it seems their mistake was planning too far ahead, being too cautious in trying to plan the next phase of The Tonight Show. Perhaps they were trying to avoid The Late Shift 2, and, instead, directly caused it. But they didn’t have to try to keep Jay in the fold. Ever the good NBC soldier, even with a few “good” years left in him, Leno wouldn’t have defected to another network. But NBC got greedy, tried to have its Conan and eat it too. Leno thought he was doing the right thing, and in his eyes, as someone who no doubt also idolized Johnny Carson, this was his chance to truly own his program, and move out form Carson’s shadow. If he knew then what a disaster it would turn out to be, and the repercussions it would have, I don’t think he would have taken the gig. He didn’t get where he is by ruffling feathers.
Which is why I almost feel bad for the guy as I watch him get bashed by Jimmy Kimmel and especially David Letterman. Dave is clearly, and with good reason, still bitter over losing to The Tonight Show to Leno, and makes his animosity towards his former and (possibly) future rival abundantly clear, repeatedly referring to him as Jay “Big Jaw” Leno.
So while Letterman’s personal vendetta against Leno is certainly understandable, it doesn’t seem entirely fair to excoriate him the way Letterman does. Certainly, Letterman, of all people, should understand the mistakes made by, in his words, “the geniuses in programming” (He also takes some unnecessary shots at Carson Daly, but, really, getting referenced by Letterman is the closest Daly is going to come to the 11:35 slot (piling on!)).
I wasn’t going to write anything about the statement heard ’round the world because a) I posted a late night-related article yeserday and b) I figured I’d leave decoding Conan O’Brien’s missive and surmising his potential options to the real experts. But after spending most of the afternoon on Twitter reading snap judgments and their linked to in-depth analysis, I decided to put finger to keyboard.
As we all know by now, Conan fired off a carefully worded, thoughtful, fuck you to NBC. But while it was certainly surprising to read things like “It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule” (this actually seemed a little bit of a low blow. While NBC might have bungled all of this, it’s not fair to criticize the shows and talent who are working hard to do their best from 8-10pm (mostly just the Thursday night comedies and recently Chuck)), but what struck me the most was how Conan spoke about Johnny Carson, and his longtime ambition to host The Tonight Show. And this is where it shows how Conan might have been mistaken for quite sometime, and that perhaps this was bound to go off the rails at some point.
Conan (can I call you Conan?) writes that “Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me.” And much like David Letterman, Conan respected and revered both Carson and the show, which really were one and the same. The Tonight Show might have had a handful of hosts during its run, but really it’s still synonymous with Johnny Carson, and it turns out while The Jay Leno Show just premiered last fall, it’s really been on for the last 18 years. The Tonight Show is the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was and is the Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien is, well, Conan. Had Letterman taken over The Tonight Show like Carson wanted, as Letterman was groomed to do, then perhaps the same Carson spirit might have transferred to Dave and then to Conan. But, really, the show that Conan wanted to lead into the next decade has already been gone for two. If he takes a step back and thinks about it now, to follow in Carson’s footsteps might have been to not so literally follow in his footsteps. Maybe it would be more Carson-like to create his own legacy, not try to extend or recreate an existing one.
I was planning to write this post a couple weeks ago, before the tornado of Leno-Conan-Local Affiliates-gate threw the entire late night landscape into a tumult (and what of George Lopez?), but this takes on even greater significance now. At this very moment, with the future of NBC’s late night schedule hanging in the balance, possibly the future of television as we know it, possibly the future of the world, someone has to step up and say it:
Jimmy Fallon has been doing a pretty okay job.
And it would be a shame if NBC’s disregard for their local affiliates followed by their overwhelming compassion for their local affiliates affected Fallon’s momentum.
Now Fallon has gone on record as saying he doesn’t mind if he’s shifted back a half hour, since most of his viewers watch the show on DVR or online, and I believe him. He seems to so genuinely enjoy hosting the show that he probably would do it at 1am or 3am or 3pm (of course, it’ll still be taped in the late afternoon so it’s not like it’ll make any real difference for his schedule). But if Jimmy won’t say it, I will. We’ve asserted many times here that Jimmy got off to a rough start. That’s well documented and it’s no secret. And while he’s still a work in progress behind the interview desk, he’s excelling in just about every other area. And, well, that should be acknowledged.
If Jimmy Fallon didn’t already have the planet’s best house band, I’d say he should hire the Muppets, because, as seen in this outtake from their pre-Christmas visit to Late Night, the Muppets don’t only do Christmas Carols:
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Although, when I first saw the link I was hoping it was going to be this version of “One.” Now, that would have been cool.
Do I want Jay Leno to have a show? No. I think his time has come and gone. When 
Jumped The Snark 