Fallon is starting to make it through the ‘Night’ - Entertainment, TV, Television - Navy Times

Fallon is starting to make it through the ‘Night’

Two weeks in, Jimmy Fallon is already having a better “Late Night.”

Not a great one, mind you. The writing on his NBC talk show “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” (12:30 a.m. ET Monday through Friday) remains undistinguished and his hosting style unsettled, which means despite a March 9 show that was easily his best so far, the road ahead is likely to be a bumpy one.

Still, if it’s not yet a good Night, it at least seems to be moving in that direction — and quickly enough to make you think it might actually get there.

Granted, it isn’t always easy to watch what is, in effect, Fallon’s on-the-job training. But what he currently lacks in skill and ease, he makes up for in affability and enthusiasm. Fallon’s appeal is built on a boyish, earnest eagerness that separates him from edgier comedians and should wear better in the long run.

You may not care if he succeeds, but you don’t leave the show hoping he’ll fail — and that’s a threshold many hosts never reach.

Being inoffensive, however, is not enough. At the moment, his show has no point of view and precious little personality. Indeed, for a show that touts its connection to the brave new social-network world, “Late Night” looks an awful lot like “The Tonight Show” — and the Johnny Carson one at that.

Would that the monologues reminded us of Carson, as well. Perhaps because he knows they’re terrible, Fallon delivers them like the most desperate of amateur stand-ups, panicking when a line doesn’t work and babbling on when one does.

Too many of the jokes aren’t funny, and too many don’t suit his personality — so much so that he even paused to apologize after a mean, tasteless joke that linked Rihanna to Oprah’s weight problems. You can sell a line you think may fall flat; you shouldn’t even try to sell one you think is unfair.

Nor are the bits and sketches much of an improvement. True, March 9’s debate between faux “history nerds” planted in the audience was fairly amusing, especially compared with such lows as having people lick inanimate objects for $10.

But it played like something out of an SNL opening monologue — and if there’s one thing “Late Night” doesn’t need, it’s another allusion to another show.

A talk show, of course, leans on talk, and he’s beginning to show needed improvement. In his first week, he generally either froze up or got so carried away that he shut us out of the conversation instead of drawing us in.

But he was completely charming March 9 with Amanda Peet, letting her talk rather than talking over her and using a well-done green-screen gimmick to showcase her good-sport appeal.

Yet in some ways, his best moment was his gadget-geek binge with Engadget.com’s Joshua Topolsky, who let Fallon play with a yet-to-be-released cell phone.

He needs to learn a little critical distance, if only to stop such segments from looking like paid product placements. Even so, it worked so well, he might want to consider making Topolsky, or someone like him, his own gadget version of Jack Hanna.

Fallon is obviously struggling to find his way, and for some time to come, his show is likely to reflect that struggle. Yet while he’s no match for Conan O’Brien at the end of his run and may never be, he’s further along than O’Brien was at the beginning, and that’s a decent start.

You shouldn’t purposely stay up late to see “Late Night,” but if you are up, you shouldn’t avoid it. That’s better than anyone watching the first night had any reason to expect.