Fallon's Late Night Is ... Good!

Few expected much from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, but since his uneven debut, he’s actually made the show an entertaining diversion for those who find themselves awake after midnight, writes Linda Holmes for NPR's "Monkey See" blog. "The best asset it's turned out Fallon has—other than his band The Roots, on whom he wisely continues to lean heavily—is that he's relentlessly game."

The segment in which Fallon asks people in Times Square for impressions is a good example: Rather than seeking to make sport of the participants, Fallon turns a late-night trope into “a surprisingly warm, inclusive, everybody-wins kind of comedy,” Holmes writes. And in interviews, Fallon’s distractibility—something that could kill an SNL skit—serves to make the conversation more genuine than the usual retelling of the rehearsed anecdotes.
(More Jimmy Fallon stories.)