Jimmy’s Having Fun: How Fallon Trumped O’Brien

It was impossible to see this coming (I certainly didn’t). Sometimes we get so set in our ways that we don’t open ourselves to the potential of the new. When Jimmy Fallon took the stage of Late Night earlier this year, all that was visible was years of ruined SNL skits and a couple of movie bombs (whatever, I liked Fever Pitch). If there were optimists, they hid like communists during the Cold War while the skeptics made themselves known like an army of Bill O’Reillys. But I’m sure neither group could have ever imagined that Jimmy would be able to outdo Conan*.

And I guess that’s how this all happened. We raised the bar for the hilarious and awkward ginger and lowered the bar for the dude who couldn’t stay in character for more than two minutes. It makes sense. Conan O’Brien left for Los Angeles, and we thought that somehow he’d be able to bend the rules of the 11:30 hour. We were willing to let go of the Masturbating Bear but only for a reasonable replacement, perhaps a self-defecating lion or something similar. We expected the same show we saw at 12:30 but bigger and better and funnier and more out there. What we got instead is a Conan that seems almost uncomfortable in his own skin. What causes this is hard to pinpoint but surely must consist of pressure from the network to try to appeal to a larger audience base, for Conan to be more restrained (we wouldn’t want those grannies to have heart attacks).

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon, working as the underdog, has learned to embrace his faults as a late night host (and he has many). He knows his jokes are bad, so he tosses out cue cards (a bit that Conan surprisingly borrowed from the new kid). He knew that any normal house band would look cheesy following the Max Weinberg 7, so he got The Roots (who, instead of acting too cool, end up playing a vital and hilarious role in the show). He embraces the technology that many of his elders (including Conan) have mocked, the same technology that drives the culture of the current generation (kids born in the 80s, raised with hip hop and Saved by the Bell, kids who have a hard time letting go of their youth, kids raised in the e-world).

And it’s not like Conan can’t be better. Give him back the 12:30 hour and Jimmy would look more like Carson Daly. In fact, glimmers of hope appear throughout The Tonight Show in every one of its on-location pieces, as well as sketches like Conando. Yet the show as a whole lacks the tendency of Conan to be a late night anarchist. Unlike Steveo from SLC Punk, who at the end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT!) decides to give in and become a lawyer so he can tear down the establishment from within, Conan seems to be (however unwillingly) blending into the establishment. Remember the chaotic nature of his interviews? They had Conan jumping on desks, receiving unscripted smooches, and partaking in a plethora of awkward moments. Those moments are now almost non-existent, and they’ve been replaced with by-the-numbers interviews meant for actors to shamelessly self-promote whatever garbage they’re getting ready to release. Conan’s interviews were once about his reactions to the guests and the ways he could go off on comedic tangents, now they’re solely guest-centered with Conan often playing a straight, almost journalistic type.

Maybe it’s the new home. Even as a native Angelino, I can admit that Conan doesn’t really fit in here. Just as Joe Torre and Chief Bill Bratton (who today, took a beefy paycheck and ran back to NY to work in the private sector) before him, Conan is New Yorker at heart, and New Yorkers can try all they want to adapt to the traffic, the housing, the lack of pizza, and the Hollywood, but it’ll never happen. So in a lot of ways, Jimmy has home field advantage at 30 Rock.

But at the end of the day, Jimmy’s success so far has everything to do with our ill-conceived low expectations. Who expected the guy to single-handedly reunite the Saved by the Bell cast, with an unforgettable guest appearance by Mark-Paul Gosselaar in character as Zack Morris? Who would’ve thought that his team could come up with such a fantastically clever idea as singing karaoke to Mark Sanford’s scandalous love letters? Slow Jammin’ the News? iChatting with guests? To say it all came out of left field would be predictable. More suitably, it came out of right-center field.

Jimmy isn’t inherently funnier than Conan. How could he be? Conan was the president of the Harvard Lampoon. He’s a born comedian, the kind of guy that is meticulous when it comes to getting laughs. But by overcompensating for his lack of wit, Fallon has created a truly unique show that’s more community-driven than host-centric. He’s become a true representation of the social network generation. He’s a likeable dude, a comedic everyman. He tweets like us. He blogs like us. He Facebooks like us. He shares the same awkward social habits as us. And because he’s so much like us, we can forgive him when he’s not that funny and when his interview questions aren’t all that great. Because he’s so much like us, it’s increasingly hard to hate him. In fact, with each new episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, it’s becoming easier and easier to love him.

*Note: Please understand that when I refer to Conan, I am strictly referring to The Tonight Show version of Conan, not The Late Show version. We all know there’s no competition there.