Tonight I Saw Jimmy Kimmel: Leno and Letterman and the Question of Who Watches this Shit, Anyway?

Tonight I saw Jimmy Kimmel for the first time.  Ok well, maybe not, maybe I have seen his face before.  But I could not have put a name to it, that I know.  I have definitely seen his name on the cable guide thing on TV.  I just always thought, why would I watch something that sounded like me trying to get my dog to come eat?  Anyhoo, saw a few mins. of Jimmy.  I couldn’t get much out of it.  I felt that I could not see his face.  I mean, he has one, but what does it look like?  He also has a nasal voice, and I’ve got tiny tiny tolerance for that feature.  I see he has a band and a backdrop with city lights on it, so I gather he’s the same as them all.  But seeing him, anyway, I think for the first time, prompted me to write this post.

(I think I also never watched Mr. Kimmel because I think I read somewhere that he went out with my nex girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, for a while.  I could be wrong.  I could look it up on the web.  I’ve never actually seen a Sarah Silverman tv product, either, or even listened to her potty monologues, but I’ve seen her, and I’ve a good sense of who she is, and I am very distraught to think that some faceless guy knows her better than I do.)

I essentially never watch these—what do they call them—senior adult late night shows?  As a genre, what are they called, anyway?  The other night (in a--dismal? researching? comatose-but-still-with-few-clicks? too-big-a-steak? moment), I thought, ok, I’ll watch a minute or two of Letterman.  I do remember people who did watch him.  His monologue was so tired it was like Perry Como at 16 rpm.  Talk about a time warp.  He told a fat joke about Kirstie Alley.  Talk about mailing it in.  That guy’s a dead man walking, and one wonders why he doesn’t put himself and his geriatric writers out of their miseries.  I aged 20 years in the 2 mins. I attended to him.

Speaking of creepy cadavers, I also had a look at Leno.  I remember when he was a snappy dark-haired guy who spotted for Carson.  He was a quipster, and that’s ok, but who knew then that he represented the apex of post-prime-time American tv achievement 30 years later?  But I'm too cynical.  That Jay found jokes older than his cars is, undeniably, an achievement.

Or Conan O’Brien—watched a monologue of his, too.  Dreadfully unfunny.  I keep trying to tell myself, look, this guy’s frenetic, he’s wired, he must be funny.  Perhaps he is, but he seems determined to unfunnily undermine himself.  He has this tic, one that he shares, I do suppose, with pretty well anyone like him generically, of having to (re-)act out and reiterate the not funny jokes he just told that got a sign- or sigh-induced laugh.   It’s awful.  Painful.  The camera tight in on him, staring blankly/eagerly, restating the same lame joke about a celebrity you’d have to stand in a checkout line forever to know of.  That or some hapless audience member, being panned to over and over and over and over more often than a wife at a World Series until the laughs just seem to come from—not beyond the grave—but someplace like Malaysia, where just looking at Americans seems funny. 

But Conan O’Brien—do like the man’s suits.  He’s a tall skinny guy and I think he does nail his suits.  His colour selection, anytime I’ve seen it, seems counter-intuitive, but it works.  I think he’s almost always side-vented (they don’t show him from behind), but at any rate he’s got a Savile-savvy look that certainly bests all the others.

Craig Ferguson.  I’d like to like that guy.  I’m told he improvises more than others, but in any brief moment I’ve seen, he seems to have the same tics of repetition and faux-pleading and so forth that all his brethren (why never a sister?  How many reasons?  Go on, go on, and suggest. . .) do.  I read he was once a drunk, and now he plays on acting like one, allowing him to get drunk on something else.  I’d like to say—and I would mean—that I could listen to that Scottish accent and like it as it read phone books; still, after a bit of his monologue, I find myself strangely at odds with the truly meant statement just before stated.  Nice voice, shame about the content.

Bill Maher; haven’t seen that guy in a hundred years, not on my tv service, anyway.  Arsenio Hall.  I remember that guy.  I don’t think he was funny, but he sure did smile a lot.  His band was to his left, which I think is fairly unusual and must mean he was left-handed.

Anyway, the question is, who watches this shit anymore, anyway?  Once upon a time, I think Letterman pulled in people from their 20s to their 40s, say, but surely to goodness those times ended eons ago.  I hear tell of a time when suburban couples of a certain advanced age would go to bed with that new embarrassment-avoidance mechanism, the bedroom tv set (a “set,” no less), and watch Carson.  But honestly, who in the hell watches these guys—all the above-named—anymore?  How?  Where?

I’ll date myself now.  I do watch Stewart and Colbert, though far from religiously and often on the computer as opposed to the tv.  These shows are inevitably very disappointing, though, because, despite the fact that they announce a guest at the start of the show, those guests get a silly 2-min. walk-on in which the host has to joke it all up such that you really didn’t hear anything.  Every single episode of Stewart or Colbert, no matter how provocatively ironic it is, is always done in entirely by its own superficial knock off of the ol’ hokey-jokey siddown next to Ed vapid interview.  In this way, even Stewart and Colbert cannot get beyond the formula they’d hoped to surpass and/or, more grandiosely, supplant.  They’re still locked in on the “do a skit, then bore it on out” shtick.  Colbert even brings music acts on his show, showing him dragging himself back to the formula.  The TV and radio world is and has been full of examples that can bring the comic and serious together.  Is/are the TV/radio worlds always determined by their delivery and who owns the networks and who pays for the advertising?  Absolutely.  But could not some new innovations be made with the formula?  I imagine they will be, someday, to my or my not liking.  Any thoughts welcome.

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