OK! I'm watching the first Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. So far, about 45 min. into it, it's awful. In case you don't know, Fallon is replacing Conan OBrien on Late Night, while Obrien goes out to LA to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show (you remember Johnny Carson, who did it for 30 some odd years).
I should say I've never been a fan of Conan Obrien, but he did try to bring a new sensibility to late night talk shows. I never thought he was very funny, but he kept pushing the late-night envelope and that's always worth doing. Fallon's first night guests are Robert DiNiro and Justin Timberlake. The only reason I could figure out why they were on the show was to promote their latest endeavors. DiNiro was promoting the Tribecca Film Festival and Timberlake was promoting a new MTV show that sounds terrible, it sounds like a new version of Punked (Never one of my favorite shows). The last guest, Van Morrison, almost saved the show, but not because of Fallon, only because Morrison is extraordinary. I mean think about it. Robert Diniro, Justin Timberlake and Van Morrison: who is he trying to appeal to?
I should say that when Obrien (who began the show in Fallon's dressing room) was awful when he began and became a late-night success. That's why NBC gave him the Leno time slot and then had to give the 10pm slot to Leno (five nights a week). In other words, NBC is going from ER to Jay Leno, talk about the deterioration of prime-time TV. If NBC didn't give Leno the 10pm slot, he would probably would have done a show in competition with Obrien's new show. That's all about the machinations of network TV and they wonder why they're losing audiences.
So anyway, Fallon no! But I'll check back next week. Maybe he'll be better. But I'm not optimistic.
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