The impact of late night television used to be in its so-called “watercooler moments,” a funny bit or a dynamo performance that left people talking about it the next day at work. But the sands have shifted. This is the dawning of the Age of the Viral Video and late night has become its biggest producer. It’s a stunning shift in conventional thinking and possibly the first and only example on television where a network has actually embraced the changing way people consume TV, rather than to desperately fight against it. The new thinking is this: Sure, people may not watch The Tonight Show or The Late Show when it airs, but they sure as hell will click on a video of what happened the next morning when its all over the internet. Nobody wants to feel like they are being left out.
The two Jimmy’s – Kimmel and Fallon – are young and new to the scene but they are already the tastemakers of this nascent strategy. Kimmel focuses on pranks and “April Fools”-style fake outs that expose the gullibility of an American media system desperate to ride the coattails of the latest viral sensation. Fallon has a different tactic. He goes for funny, sharable videos that perfectly hit the Millennial generation’s cravings for nostalgia and “cool.” In his latest internet crowdpleaser, he hits on both accounts.
Samuel L. Jackson, whom the internet has informally decided is the coolest person on the planet, gives a hilarious reading of a poem about the popular 90s TV show, Boy Meets World. The second it was conceived of in a Tonight Showwriter’s head (and seriously, give that person a raise!), they must have known it was going to be huge. It doesn’t hurt that its flawlessly executed.
This is the second in the series. You probably saw the first one with Tom Hanks, which covered Full House, when it went viral in 2012. Notice again that the actors and the stories they choose are expertly selected to maximize the chances that a 20-something will go “YES!”
Not that we’re complaining. *finger snapping applause*
