Bombo!

As I predicted, the inaugural episode of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon was decidedly unentertaining. As with all traditional late-night talk shows, it began with his monologue. An overexcited audience immediately threw him off his game with an energy he couldn't match. He joked about people being more excited hearing him mention their own home states than the jokes themselves, and he was right. I remember laughing once, but I can't remember what I was laughing at: him, or the jokes.
For his house band, he has The Roots. While that's a coup, they seem oddly out of place next to Fallon, a lot like Jay Leno was with his original band leader. The difference is The Roots are more than willing to participate with Fallon's shennanagins. With Leno, you could never tell if he was about to be stabbed or not by a man trying to break free from Uncle Tom's cabin.
The set looks like it was stitched together from rejected SNL sets. If you look at Saturday Night Live over the years, you'll know that the main stages have never looked good. The set designers are obsessed with making the studio look as gritty like back-alley New York as possible, to the extent that there's street lights, subway signs and giant exhaust fans everywhere. Jimmy Fallon's set goes one further by setting the stage under a bridge. You'd almost expect a rat to crawl out. The Roots have to play on fire escape, like they're in West Side Story. It's not a place someone would want to be for overly long.
For some reason, they had a sketch about one of their demographics, blonde mothers, which seemed funnier than it was. It could actually pay out if they continued with it and explored weirder demographics, like EMO kids, or Japanese school girls.
Afterwards, the show turned into a bad night at the club, with a contest for studio audience members to lick something for $10. It reminded me of one of those douchebag club hosts that always have some weird game to play, and it only serves to distract people for a few seconds from the fact that the music sucks, the drinks are overpriced, and all the girls are lucky the lights are so dark.
Then Jimmy got to the guests. The first was Robert De Niro, who despite being in a sketch with Jimmy appearing later on, (which was terrible), seemed uncomfortable to be there. Or perhaps he was just acting that way. He is Robert De Niro, after all.
The next guest was Justin Timberlake, and Van Morrison, but we all know that everyone after the first guest is just filler. Jimmy got Justin to sing something goofy, and I completely tuned out when the band came on.
The whole thing is pretty standard fare, in a world where late night television had gone completely stagnant about fifteen years ago. Jimmy hasn't brought anything new or exciting to the equation, just the same old formula, with a complete lack of expertise.
You know what blows my mind, though? When you see Letterman bomb a joke, and it's still awkward. If he didn't have Paul Schaffer to turn to and laugh it off, he'd have another heart attack. The guy's been in the industry since forever. He does the same thing every night. He's a pro, and he still stumbles. Jimmy's just a rookie by most standards. When he bombs a joke, it's painful. He hasn't learnt that magic technique to turn to whoever's closest, and make some mocking comment about how bad the joke is. He needs a sidekick, just so he can look over and say, "What'd you think of that one? Nice suit. I didn't realize Wal-Mart had formal attire."