Photo: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon via YouTube
First we need to shout out an amazing new graphics package The Daily Show worked up for coverage of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. It’s gorgeous, it’s fearmongering, and it gets the job done. The folks at TDS realized that hysterical coverage of Mamdani from right-wing news outlets was going to be happening on the regular, so they wanted to be ready. And I’m sure the same team also made the supercut of ICE-agent bloopers on Wednesday night. Watching fascists eat it on Minnesota ice is so pleasurable, and that pleasure is compounded when it’s edited well.
Clip-package editing is such an unsung facet of the late-night televisual arts. My favorites have to be the folks at Jimmy Kimmel Live! They cut so frenetically. People act like a talk show is just talking, but it’s not. It’s also show, you know? It’s the razzle-dazzle you get when union crews do the absolute most as quickly as humanly possible. I salute you.
It was very nice of Noah Wyle to take time out of his busy “winning every award” schedule to do a pretaped sketch for Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wyle parodied the very sound medical advice of our current administration — our new inverted food pyramid, winning the war on meat, things of that nature. He joked about 5G conspiracy theories, astrology’s validity as a science, and what the correct level of -biotic one can attain by taking pro- and antibiotics at the same time. That one is actually medically proven. This clip was so entertaining, it broke containment from regular late night and got clipped/reposted into The Pitt side of TikTok. Good job, Dr. Robby.
I will be so sad when the press tour for The Testament of Ann Lee is over. Amanda Seyfried has been an absolute pleasure to have in class on talk shows. This time, she went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to (1) bully Colbert into having her back on one more time before the show wraps, (2) lament the fact you can’t own a monkey in the state of New York (she’s checked), and (3) info dump about Ann Lee and how she was “fucking incredible.” Oh, and (4) cast Colbert as undead Meryl Streep’s love interest in Mamma Mia Number Three-a. Wait, wait, also, (5) dunk on awards shows. Queen.
Hooray for stand-up on late night! Marcello Hernández advertised his new special, American Boy, on The Tonight Show by doing a tight five from it. His observations about the barbarity of women’s beauty regimens aren’t exactly new, but they are acted out with enthusiasm and verve. His mime work of clipping a bodysuit in place (all up in milady’s gooch) is highly evocative. It’s like I was there. In the gooch, desperately trying to clip. Also, the way he ends by saying, “Please watch it,” is adorable.
These two play a powerful parasocial game. Kristen Wiig on Late Night With Seth Meyers has all the chumminess of Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor having a kiki at the Golden Globes. They’re two old friends catching up, and now you the viewer are an old friend too. Remember playing demented parlor games that Wiig made up? Such good times. There was more to this clip, but I really want to focus in on the first segment about Kristen Wiig as GM of all Meyers family parties. Her games sound amazing, and I want to play Under the Blanket immediately. And again, no, it sounds like a sex thing but it’s not.
Boston: It’s a fertile source of drama but also comedy. This is well-worn territory, sure. One of Jimmy Fallon’s most enduring SNL bits was the Boston Teens. And Seth Meyers’s Boston Accent–trailer sketch on Late Night is an all-timer. Still, having Ben Affleck (raised in Falmouth), Matt Damon (Cambridge-born), and Jimmy Fallon (grew up in New York State, gifted impressionist but stolen valor all the same) say every single town and city in Massachusetts fucking hits. Affleck especially appears to enter some sort of Masshole flow state hitherto unknown by man. He rattles off the towns kind of like he’s Hamilton in Hamilton? It works, is what I’m saying. His barbaric yawp of “Yarmouth!” would make Walt Whitman (died in Camden) proud.