overnights

Jimmy Fallon Gesticulates Wildly in Web Debut

Martin Klimas’s Amaryllis IV (2007)

Despite having most of the wind taken from their sails by the buzz usurping force that is Jay Leno, the team behind Late Night With Jimmy Fallon introduced the new host to a Web-only audience just after 12:30 a.m. last night. And while no one was quite sure exactly what to expect from Fallon’s new vlog (God, we hate that word), one thing became patently clear after watching the introductory bit: The producers deliberately set the bar low, audience-expectations-wise, for these Webisodes. That’s not to say that a lot of thought didn’t go into the piece; the bit was carefully edited to reintroduce Fallon as someone who will be a genial host who’s also willing to mold himself to make the audience like him (he actively solicited feedback from the audience, something you’d never see David Letterman doing). So, in the spirit of giving constructive feedback, Vulture suggests that Fallon tone down his hand and arm gesticulation just a smidge: It’s okay to be animated, but the excessive movement gave us flashbacks of Flick Webb from John Updike’s famed poem “Ex Basketball Player†(“his hands were like wild birdsâ€). Oh, and last, he confirmed the rumor that the Roots will indeed be his house band when the show premieres on television on March 2. The full video appears, as you might expect, after the jump.

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon [NBC]

Jimmy Fallon Gesticulates Wildly in Web Debut