Welcome to the weirdest/best time of year for late night: holidays! It’s Jimmy Fallon’s Christmas sweaters, Elizabeth Banks inserting Hanukkah content into Late Night, and Seth Meyers bringing his fam in for Thanksgiving time. Never is late-night TV more relevant; my Uber driver was playing Fallon’s song with Meghan Trainor, fer chrissakes! The shiny presentation of late night fits perfectly with the shiny presentation of the holidays. And the feeling of benign persecution one gets from extended family members at Christmas dinner? That’s the late-night guest experience, baby — only they get to steer discussion through their pre-interviews. But truly, late night is perfect holiday fare. Ariana Grande sang “Imagine” on The Tonight Show in December 2018, and now that’s a Christmas song to me!
Beyond the holiday season, I want to shout out Seth Meyers for doing some fun shit. Admitting you had diction issues before blowing up Trump’s spot for malapropisms? Fun! Letting Tony Shalhoub intro you instead of vice versa? Fun! And having Vulture’s own Jesse David Fox on for an interview? Fun! But here’s who was funnest this week in late night.
5. “Naimim” —Julia Roberts
WWHL was having a diva moment this week. Read on to see who made the greatest impact, but Julia Roberts was an incredible solo guest on Thursday night. She spilled tea about Cher; she judged a drag-off of her queeniest characters. But most importantly, she added to the canon of perfect
“Clubhouse Playhouse” performances. Roberts was hindered by having a mugging Andy Cohen as her scene partner, but she nailed what is great about Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Sutton Stracke. Something I couldn’t have pinned down before Roberts’s laissez-faire performance!
4. John Oliver Hearts One Tree Hill
More people need to be talking about the scene in One Tree Hill when a dog ate a heart that was about to be transplanted. Frankly, it should be one of two things we’re talking about 24/7. (The other is the episode of The O.C. when Paris Hilton is doing her master’s thesis on Gravity’s Rainbow.) Last Week Tonight found a way to balance showing a dog eat a human heart multiple times with the truly upsetting state of organ/body donation in this country. What’s more, he found a way to discuss both issues without deterring folks from donating their organs/bodies to science. That’s a tricky needle to thread — almost as tricky as keeping a dog in a hospital without letting them eat an organ or two.
3. Jimmy Kimmel Honors Norman Lear
Everyone in comedy who understands history was gutted when Norman Lear died on Tuesday. Jimmy Kimmel, who of all current late-night hosts keeps their head most oriented towards the history of television, felt it really hard. He worked with Lear on some specials, and also just really picked up what Lear was putting down. On the night Lear’s death was announced, Kimmel opened his show with a monologue in honor of the TV legend, reading a profanity-laced thank-you card he wrote and foregrounding his own show with the same warning All in the Family got on its premiere. It put Lear’s contribution to TV in context, and sent him off as he’d have wanted.
2. Two Guys, One Suit
J. Balvin said some incredible shit in this interview. First off, he addressed having a child recently by saying “Wassup to my kid, waddup kid?” Secondly, he said he wanted to wear his F1 fit because he wanted to look like a traffic cone. Watching Jimmy Fallon and Balvin both try to get into the same traffic-cone-orange suit was a delight. It’s almost big enough, but not quite. That’s so much funnier than it being completely unlikely that they’d both fit in the same suit. Also? The suit Balvin wore on the couch was pretty oversized itself. “Hat on a hat” is too much in comedy, but “big suit on a big suit” is too weird to be quantified.
1. Julianne Moore Revels in the Bit
May December is about an actor (Natalie Portman) studying a real woman predator (Julianne Moore) in order to portray her in a film. Neither Portman nor Moore got a chance to study the women of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City before portraying them in “Clubhouse Playhouse,” but that didn’t hold them back from imbuing both Monica Garcia and Lisa Barlow with more humanity than either real woman can muster on Bravo. Moore in particular reveled in the “little shit” energy Monica gave, sending this piece of acting into the stratosphere. Do you understand how tricky it is to give “cackling” without cackling? Julianne Moore did that!
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