Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC)

I've watched Jimmy Kimmel Live since Superbowl Sunday, but I've only seen it live once. It comes on at 11:35pm in my market (I live in the Central time zone, where everything is an hour early. And live, like the East coast.), and I'm too old to stay up past midnight to watch a show that frankly, needs some work. So I PVR it and watch it the next night. Incidentally, I've read elsewhere that Kimmel's show overlaps others. Here in Dallas, it runs head-to-head with Conan and Kilborn.

I read Greg Beato's take on the show with some interest, and realized that he is absolutely right. There is something wrong with Kimmel's audience. Perhaps, as Kimmel claims, it's a result of the lack of alcohol. Kimmel himself certainly wasn't lacking in alcohol last night. That's two nights ago for those of you watching live. I haven't seen anybody do a show while that drunk since 1986 when the Challenger blew up and NBC pulled Tom Brokaw out of whatever bar he'd been having breakfast in.

Herself suggests that Kimmel is essentially alone in not spending some time warming up the crowd at the beginning of the show, which might hurt him. Then again, I paused and rewound on a sweeping crowd shot a couple of nights ago (subtract one if you watch live) and saw a lot of gray hair and male pattern baldness, so I'm not sure libations would help. How does Jimmy Kimmel end up with geezers in his audience? Nothing against geezers, of course, but I don't remember seeing many in The Man Show audience the few times I watched. Except the beer-swilling piano-playing Ernest Borgnine lookalike, of course.

I seem to remember that David Letterman came out before the show and did a little shtick (usually involving canned ham) with the audience with no cameras, and then of course did the same once the show started. Other shows (I think) have hired other people or had special guests spend time warming up the crowd before the show. Is it possible that ABC should have spent a little less on writers and a little more to bring in some struggling stand-up comedians to act as crowd-warmers.

Anyway, last night's show (er, the 29th) finally had me falling off the couch laughing. After starting this piece, I note that neither Greg Beato nor Jim Treacher were similarly impressed. Oh well.

The segment with the deep fryer was side-splittingly funny for me. I'm not sure if it was the idea that Jimmy was well and truly sloshed, or that Adam, similarly wasted, tried to do an "intervention," but I laughed and laughed until it hurt. Herself had warned me not to play another episode lest I face her withering scorn in play-by-play commentary, but she asked me this morning if I had already deleted the episode, because she really wanted to watch the deep-fryer segment again.

Article Author: Phillip Winn

Phillip Winn was the Chief Geek for Blogcritics, and a blogger since 1995. He may currently be found and followed as @pwinn on Twitter.

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