We (late-night television) are so back (because even though SAG-AFTRA hasn’t resolved its strike against the AMPTP, late-night hosts are obligated to work under SAG’s Netcode agreement), baby! Hollywood is indeed half back. The WGA struck a deal with the AMPTP, pushing the Strike Force Five to quit their podcast and bring back their TV shows. Every host acknowledged the strike in their Monday (or Sunday, for John Oliver) night monologue, but only a proud few guests made note of the strike this week. Wanda Sykes said only half of her was back to work on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Seth Meyers congratulated Nick Offerman for his turn on The Last of Us in the most oblique, strike-honoring manner possible.
And all the card-carrying SAG members found non-SAG-covered things to promote. Taraji P. Henson told Jimmy Fallon about her new play and her skin-care line (also her Renaissance Tour outfit). Matthew McConaughey plugged his children’s book. And Bob Odenkirk plugged the Union Solidarity Auction. But we’re not here to discuss who most seamlessly wove pro-labor discourse into their comedy (or are we?) — we’re here to talk about who had the funniest first week back, post WGA strike.
John Oliver needs to get more practice with a t-shirt cannon. That is how Maude Flanders died — show some respect! Oliver fully wrecked some poor woman in the front row on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, aiming a T-shirt cannon with no arc straight toward her face. For shame! Oliver did get a “Woo!” when he said his first topic back was prison health care, and that’s not nothing. Why did that guy woo? Did he do time and suffer under that inequitable health-care system? Is he a researcher on Last Week Tonight? We may never know.
Jimmy Kimmel gave many of his first guest spots to women with comedy to plug: Luenell, Kathy Griffin, and Wanda Sykes all got interview time in his first week. And he set each of them up for success, laying setups before them in order to let them land punchlines with great aplomb. Sykes closed best of the three, and that’s why she’s in the No. 4 spot. Her dedication to stereotyping her wife’s entire side of the family as cig-ripping Frenchies is truly outstanding.
I have been thinking a lot about Angie K’s windshield sunglasses on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Not as much as I do the Roman Empire, but more than the Holy Roman Empire, okay? Angie K knew exactly how to exploit that to the fullest on WWHL, bestowing hideous Tron sunglasses to Bowen Yang (promoting Dicks: The Musical because they got a SAG waiver) and Andy Cohen. This is how you seize opportunity when it presents itself.
Jimmy Fallon would probably like to think he’s come a long way from doing comedy songs like “Idiot Boyfriend” on MTV, but Paramore’s Hayley Williams is here to argue is that, perhaps, the thing you’re first known for is pretty cool? Williams is somewhat still stuck in the Twilight soundtrack hole, and Fallon is still a musical-comedy man. Are these actually reps to avoid? Society says, “Nah.” Drop a full album of comedy songs, Fallon! We’d listen. Do it, coward!
This is a pretty standard-issue “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” segment until the joke Amber Ruffin tells about Bill Cosby bombs. I tell a lie: It was already an outlier because Jenny Hagel does prop comedy à la Angie K. But it’s when everyone takes a moment to acknowledge that Cosby’s relentless Temple sweatshirt-wearing is maybe not the most well-known thing about him (the most well-known thing about him is probably all the alleged crimes) that this segment really takes off. A true comedian takes perverse delight in any joke that bombs, and all three relish the lack of response Ruffin’s dig at Cosby elicits. We are so back.
