I mostly got bored with the late-night television format around the time David Letterman moved timeslots to launch the Late Show in the early 1990s.
In fact, one of the first things I recall thinking when watching the “new” version of Letterman, geared ever so slightly more for the broad national audience tuning in at 11:35 p.m., was that it reminded me of the plot of the first Wayne’s World movie.
If you’re not a deep level expert on the plot doings of the 1992 comedy classic starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, the inciting incident (as they say in the biz) is when Wayne and his buddy Garth’s zero budget local public-access show is “discovered” and hoisted into some kind of mass market TV extravaganza.
The story mostly then revolves around how corporate influence and the “suits” (see: Rob Lowe in a glorious role as the slickster Big Bad) can both sand down the creative edges and exploit the product they aim to push on a mass market audience.
To be sure, Letterman’s Late Show was still plenty good, especially as late-night TV talk shows good. But it also wasn’t anywhere close to Dave’s 1980s NBC-era Late Night with David Letterman, a somewhat edgier, weirder, and delightfully lower budget show.
These days, I’ll watch cherry picked YouTube clips from the late-night shows occasionally, but mostly I’ve found that I enjoy the comedic talents and intellect from the current crop of TV talk show hosts outside of the somewhat stifling confines of the format they’ve inherited.
* Important note: I don’t consider The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart continues to be vital viewing, or John Oliver’s outstanding Last Week Tonight to be “late-night TV talk shows” in the traditional sense.
For example, Jimmy Kimmel is simply great in his occasional appearances on his buddy and former employee Bill Simmons’ podcast, and Conan O’Brien has found a stellar home in the podcasting world with Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.
Which brings us to the curious case of Jimmy Fallon.
I’ll start here: I never watch Fallon’s The Tonight Show, but that should make perfect sense now that I’ve established my take on the format e.g. opening monologue, a comedy bit or two, an often stilted celebrity interview or two, maybe a musical guest.
I do think that Fallon is quite talented, funny, and has a naturally engaging personality. He dazzles me most when he brings his unique abilities for musical parody and impersonating celebrities to the fore.
In fact, I wrote an entire piece years ago about how obsessed I became with Fallon’s Doors-inspired “cover” of Reading Rainbow’s theme song.
So, we’ve established that I like Fallon just fine, that he’s a talent, and that I don’t really watch The Tonight Show. I’ll also add that while the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have risked their jobs for simply doing comedy on television – the latter literally having lost his – due to creepy Trump-era pressure, Fallon stands alone as the most apolitical of the bunch.
While I don’t judge Fallon along these lines, I don’t necessarily give him points for it either. And that has led to my budgeting how much of Fallon I want in my life accordingly.
All of this background comes into play when taking on a piece in Current Affairs called “The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon.”
When I first read the article title, I thought that it would perhaps focus on the events that lead to a 2023 Rolling Stone story covering Fallon’s alleged drinking, erratic behavior, and abusive behavior toward some staff members.
That was not the focus, however. The sub-title of the piece reads: “Under the sterile blue lights of his studio, Fallon laughs endlessly at the same pseudo-jokes, rubs elbows with Trump and Sam Altman, and ushers in the death of culture.”
“The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon” comprises around 2,200 words, and the first 1,200 or so are dedicated to analyzing how not funny the author, Jon Greenaway (a “leftist media” podcast host and author of Capitalism: A Horror Story), believes Fallon to be.
“Fallon acts as the high priest of a terrified optimism, his rictus grin serving as a shield,” Greenaway writes. “Fallon presides over his rituals of play like a vampire, feeding not on blood but on enthusiasm.” It goes on and on like this.
At some point, my thought bubble was, “Okay, he doesn’t think Fallon’s funny, we get it.”
Finally, we get into a section that’s more of a political critique, and I expected something interesting to come out of this. Greenaway spends a short paragraph taking Fallon to task for having Trump on The Tonight Show in 2016 for a softball interview in which he musses with Trump’s hair, but then quickly segues into Paris Hilton’s appearance in 2022 (a few decades past Hilton’s pop cultural zeitgeist apex, but sure) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s more recent one.
The knockout punch of the point Greenaway attempts to make seems to come in the form of bringing up Dick Cavett’s serious minded TV talk show circa 1969. An episode in which Cavett and James Baldwin discuss “the possibility of Black liberation in America” is provided as an example of the kind of TV talk show landscape that Greenaway would presumably like to see more of in 2026.
I mean, Cavett is a unique cultural figure and intellect to be sure, but speaking of cherry picking, Greenaway is ignoring a late night era that largely ignored the war raging in Vietnam and was far more Dean Martin sipping cocktails and smoking while kibbitzing with Johnny Carson versus a nightly dissertation on serious matters of the day.
The remainder of the piece attempts to excoriate Jimmy Fallon for being a “content curator” who projects a “machinery of niceness” out to the masses. By this, Greenaway seems to have a problem with the fact that people mostly don’t watch linear television anymore and, particularly with late night TV show fodder, enjoy consuming clips the next day or week online.
I know I’ve been “guilty” of this for many years, especially with Saturday Night Live. Sue me, I guess?
“To watch Fallon is to stare at the face of a culture that has chosen the comfort of a rictus grin over the heavy, necessary terror of the truth,” Greenaway concludes.
To this I can only react as follows: if you don’t like Fallon, watch something else. The modern entertainment and digital environment is replete with dangers and pitfalls, but one of the great upsides is choice.
We’ve never had so much choice. Watch Kimmel or Meyers or Hacks or Nobody Wants This (if you want some outstanding lady-driven comedy in your life).
And then there’s Stephen Colbert. Who has a brand-new YouTube channel now.
One can also check out a blizzard of serious-minded political and cultural fare on the Internet and on podcasts, on Substack and in magazines and on and on.
I support The Bulwark and Pod Save America and The Atlantic for example, all of which are doing great and vital work.
But sometimes I just want to turn my brain off and be tickled and delighted with laughter. If Jimmy Fallon does that for you, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, says I.
I’ll end on Fallon doing a scary good Bob Dylan impression while also crushing a hilarious interpretation of the Charles in Charge theme song.
Pure magic and delight. Nothing rictus-y in sight.