So Jimmy Fallon had Greg Gutfeld on The Tonight Show. Interesting, interesting. Last month, Gutfeld suggested conservatives reclaim “Nazi” the way Black people reappropriated the N-word. That was not discussed on Fallon — nor was the fact that Gutfeld! outdoes all the mainstream late-night shows in the ratings. (To be fair, the main Fox News demo is basically keeping broadcast TV alive. On YouTube, The Tonight Show has more subscribers than Fox News. Gutfeld! doesn’t even have its own channel.) Gutfeld instead told a long story about a drunken Fallon wrestling him to the ground. He also plugged his new game show that sounds like a combination of the NPR panel show Says You! and that evil Japanese game show that drove a man mad. Won’t be watching.
On the other side of the political divide, Stephen Colbert made excellent use of the Ed Sullivan Theater’s high ceilings to talk about Trump’s roof time. Use those production values while you have them, Mamacita. Gather ye jib camera shots while ye may. Here’s how everyone else on late night made use of the time we have left.
I love when The Tonight Show becomes a cooking program. The way daytime notions (food) blend into nighttime pursuits (comedy) just feels fun. This time, Fallon brought in the only tomato he was able to grow this summer, and he made Chris Pratt eat it. Pratt was not convincingly enchanted by the beefmaster Fallon grew, but Fallon was funny with all the foofaraw he made about inventing a new appetizer.
The whole point of a late-night interview is to Plug the Thing. Sure, be charming. Expand your personal brand. Perhaps even be funny. But the reason the studio flew you out is so you can Plug the Thing. Bill Hader and Seth Meyers got so caught up in catching up, though, they completely forgot to talk about Hader’s upcoming turn as the Cat in the Hat. But the segment did fulfill a late-night interview’s tertiary objective: Be entertaining and informative. I, for one, did not know stress migraines can make one go blind. Thanks to Hader, I know that now.
If the Liam Neeson–Pam Anderson thing is fake, I don’t even care. Long live AnderNeeson, as far as I’m concerned! On WWHL Sunday night, they continued the charm offensive. They were cute, told Andy Cohen how many times they’ve ever been in love, and didn’t smack Cohen when he suggested they join the Mile High Club after the show wrapped. But the best part was when Neeson got a little lip balm from Anderson. Whether it’s romantic or just chummy, the chemistry was palpable.
Make no mistake about it: Josh Brolin is touched by the muse of poetry. His Dune set diaries are one piece of proof; his recitation-off on The Late Show is another. He and Stephen Colbert rattled off a stanza or so of Julius Caesar — always relevant. Brolin also gifted Colbert one of the more upsetting stuffies since the Raggedy Ann possessed by Annabelle. Will Matt Rife add the Josh Brolin plush to Ed and Lorraine Warren’s haunted doll museum once The Late Show is over? To quote Shakespeare, “Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.”
At the end of the day, very little beats dumb mime work, so Late Night’s recurring “At This Point in the Broadcast” sketch always runs a good chance of making it into the top five any week it plays. But I was genuinely tickled by the idea of rating the concept of being alive three out of five stars. It’s a metaphysical absurdity that feels very Albert Brooks. Also? Accurate rating. It was great seeing so many Late Night writers put on fake beards. Shout-out to fake beards, one of the best signifiers of comedy since the ancient-Greek gag phallus. I have questions about God wearing a beanie, though. Is Heaven cold, or have They not done Their hair in a while?