Prime time has taken a back seat to late night. You may have heard about it. But the battle between Team CoCo and Team Leno isn’t the only story emerging from NBC’s late-night bloodbath — which now has Jay returning to The Tonight Show and Conan looking at gaining tens of millions in severance pay. There’s also the rise of Jimmy Kimmel, notable for diving into the fray fists first, and Craig Ferguson, notable for largely avoiding it.
Kimmel has worked in relative obscurity since leaving Comedy Central’s lunk-headed Man Show for ABC’s post-Nightline slot in 2003. Except for his viral breakout with those “I’m Fucking Matt Damon/Ben Affleck” videos — featuring the Oscar-winning BFFs and Kimmel’s then-girlfriend Sarah Silverman — he’s been overshadowed by rival personalities Letterman, Leno and Conan.
As Leno’s heir apparent on NBC, Jimmy Fallon, has stayed quiet, Kimmel has surged back into the pop-cult consciousness of late with two Leno beat-downs. First he slapped on a grey wig and faux-normous Dudley Do-Right chin to do an entire hour of Jimmy Kimmel Live! in character as Leno. It was a bravura performance that cruelly and gleefully nailed every last Leno flaw, from the need-to-be-loved high-fiving and corn-pone jokes (“The newspapers are rife with misspellings these days!”) to the supplicant interview style and show-stealing egotism. Then Leno inexplicably invited Kimmel onto The Jay Leno Show, perhaps forgetting that, before being given the 10pm timeslot by NBC, he’d threatened to decamp to ABC and thus steal Kimmel’s job.
Kimmel’s appearance on Leno’s “10 @ 10” Q & A segment quickly
turned savage. When asked his best-ever prank, Kimmel replied: “I told
a guy, ‘Five years from now, I’m gonna give you my show.’ Then, when
the five years came I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost
instantly.” When asked what other show he’d want to host, Kimmel
replied, “Oh, this is a trick, right? Where you get me to host The Tonight Show and then take it back from me? Listen, Lucy, I’m not Charlie Brown.”
Kimmel’s fiercest jab came last: “Listen Jay, Conan and I have children — all you have to take care of is cars,” he exclaimed, his cool fading as fast as Leno’s fake smile. “You’ve got $800 million dollars! For God’s sake, leave our shows alone!”
Ferguson, on the other hand, quickly grew tired of the topic: “[Talking
about] late-night TV bores the arse off me.” After repeatedly
dismissing the whole affair as a bunch of millionaires whining about
their jobs — including one typically surreal segment helmed by his
alter ego Wavy Ranchero, an alligator hand puppet with a southern
accent and a foul mouth — Ferguson put things into full perspective
last Friday.
“I’m looking at all this trouble in late-night, and everybody talking about Jay going over there and Conan going over there, and which middle-aged white guy is gonna get X-million dollars at what point, and I am getting embarrassed,” he said.
The Scottish host — who celebrated his 1,000th episode last month with puppets and musical numbers and is quietly in contract talks with CBS to continue his Letterman-produced show — preferred to crack jokes about a rivalry that really matters: the one between his hometown, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. (Ferguson also encouraged people to donate to the Red Cross’ efforts in Haiti and went after a legitimate target: Rush Limbaugh and his hateful comments about the earthquake disaster being “made-to-order for [Obama].”)
Despite the melodrama elsewhere — don’t forget his boss Letterman’s recent sex scandal — Ferguson’s unfairly overlooked talk show has become the best of the bunch. His innovative, improvised monologue fills nearly half the show with off-the-cuff rants, riffs, observations and digressions. Ferguson sometimes makes light of his druggie past, has eulogized his parents, has defended Britney Spears and, in his famous “Why everything sucks” rant, railed against the advertising-fuelled “deification of youth.” Also, he wrote and recorded his own theme song and his drinking mug is a porcelain cobra rattlesnake.
So, enjoy Conan and Jay’s epic feud — just remember that theirs aren’t the only teams in town.
» JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! AIRS WEEKNIGHTS, 12:05AM ON ABC; THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON AIRS WEEKNIGHTS, 12:35AM ON CBS.