JimmyPhoto: John Shearer/WireImage (Getty Images)
Ah, the magic of April Fool’s Day: that whimsical day when two very wealthy white men named Jimmy can swap national TV shows and produce slightly different episodes than they otherwise would have produced!
That’s right: Late Night Talk’s two most well-known Jimmys had a little switcheroo last night when NBC’s Jimmy Fallon flew to California to host Jimmy Kimmel Live! to step in while Jimmy Kimmel traveled to New York to secretly take over The Tonight Show, sort of like a transcontinental Jay Leno.
And while we have no evidence that this whole thing – apparently in the works for two years of meticulous conspiracy by the brightest minds to “book a plane ticket and not tell Questlove” – was a Machiavellian conspiracy by Kimmel to screw the world over remember what he’s about a hundred times the joke teller who is jimmy fallon, that was certainly the end result. God knows how the Tonight Show’s audience must have reacted to a few pointed political jokes blown across their stage, even as Fallon gently ruffled the ABC audience’s hair with some extremely tepid taunts about the station’s programming before he back to an actual, tongue-in-cheek Damn Daniel joke.
The two men then called each other for an energetic and comedic banter. “This is magical,” Fallon assured his dead-eyed audience. “That’s a lot of fun,” Kimmel replied flatly.
Honestly, the most amusing thing about this whole scenario is imagining what would have happened if someone had tried to set it up 20 years ago. Can you imagine the veins that would have stood out on Leno and Dave Letterman’s foreheads if you’d suggested that one of them let the other take the stage?
Anyway, the night ended with Red Hot Chili Peppers performing simultaneously on both shows?! (They pre-recorded Kimmel’s and performed it live in New York.) Will these giggling wonders ever end?