Plus Lily Gladstone, Kevin Hart, Jimmy Kimmel, and more.
Happy 2024, everyone! It’s a new year with a soon-to-be new show on CBS. After Midnight will premiere the day after the Emmys/M.L.K. Day this year, and host Taylor Tomlinson went on The Late Show to demonstrate a proof of concept. The stand-up led Stephen Colbert through a game of “Ick or No Ick,” which, tbh, gave me the ick. The point of @midnight was deliciously simple: Tell the best, shortest joke, and win points. “Ick or No Ick” did not seem to have the same simplicity of design.
I still have extremely high hopes for After Midnight, since @midnight was a huge part of my high school and college experience. It was a thinning of the worlds, à la All Hallows’ Eve, when Twitter randoms could cross over into the terrestrial plane of celebrity. If this show can give young adults the same inflated self-confidence, it will do gangbusters. Also, Tomlinson hosted at Colbert quite well. She controlled the desk, and Colbert was a game participant.
But so much more happened than just a demo reel of After Midnight. The Golden Globes aired on Sunday, and many winners went on the talk shows after to pad out their acceptance speeches and make the case for further awards-show hardware. Here’s who won the even less important award of funniest late-night clips of the week.
5. Lily Gladstone Takes a Victory Lap
Lily Gladstone thanked her mother in a very emotional Golden Globes speech on Sunday night, and on Thursday’s episode of The Tonight Show, she finally got around to thanking her dad. Gladstone took a well-earned victory lap on late night this week, seeing as her main time to shine, Killers of the Flower Moon promo-wise, was during the WGA/SAG strike. Gladstone thanked her dad, talked about bonding with Harrison Ford, and generally was the charming Oscars competitor we’re all expecting this awards season.
4. Jimmy Kimmel Claps Back
Jimmy Kimmel gave America a very useful media literacy lesson on his show Monday night. His monologue clearly elucidated the difference between “libel” and “a fucking joke,” not the least of which being: Jimmy Kimmel Live! has to research its jokes to make sure they’re not accidentally libelous. Technically, comedians could say anything they want at any time. They just don’t, because it’s wrong/annoying/bad for the network. Kimmel was able to get a good grade-school slam in on Aaron Rodgers (that the only A’s in his report card were the two in his name) while also explaining how all of this fucking works to the audience. That’s service comedy right there.
3. Jimmy Fallon Promotes a New Party Game
Often, the only criteria of whether one of Jimmy Fallon’s little celebrity games is successful or not, to me, is whether I’d want to re-create it at a party, and “Friendzee” is more imitable than when Bart Simpson told his teacher to eat his shorts. The game works like this: There’s a stack of names of people everyone playing knows. Another stack of cards is questions that are completely useless in determining which friend we’re talking about. What kind of dog is Fred Armisen (dachshund)? What piece of furniture is Rachel Dratch (ottoman)? I want to play this game yesterday, it seems that fun.
2. Kevin Hart Embodies Heather Gay
The nation is swept up in RHOSLC fever. The only cure? More Heather Gay. In this installment of “Clubhouse Playhouse,” Kevin Hart gave a stirring recitation of Gay’s now legendary “receipts, proofs, timelines, screenshots” speech. Hart’s always been an Actor, frankly iconic in the scant three-to-four episodes of Modern Family on which he guested before vaulting to superstardom. He can sell a line like a G-d bad Mormon bitch.
1. Seth Meyers Commits to the Bit
Dua Lipa peaced out of her “Day Drinking With Seth” segment last year, having fallen asleep before getting to most of the stuff that was planned for that day. A lesser host would take the L and just let Dua Lipa go on with her life. Not Seth Meyers. The host of Late Night allowed Dula Peep to return to the show, take a shotski out of a Barbie dream house, and get matching tattoos. Imagine having no tattoos, committing to getting one with Dua Lipa, being saved from that fate because she fell asleep in the loo, then going “No, this is happening!” and doing it weeks later in front of a studio audience. Sure, the tattoo is teeny. But it’s there, and that’s what fucking matters.
