It’s not just that the remaining hosts are taking much of the summer off. But, post-Stephen Colbert on CBS, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and NBC’s Jimmy Fallon both feel closer to the end of their respective tenures than the beginning. The whole genre feels ripe for a shake-up — lest it go away entirely.
The comedian and Donald Trump antagonist just spent a week filling in for Jimmy Kimmel, and the results were TV magic. Over four nights, O’Donnell, the 1990s talk show host whose two stints on “The View” both fizzled out, proved that she may yet have another act, and it may be on one of television’s grandest — diminished, but still grandest — stages. Yes, O’Donnell skewered President Trump, and it, of course, drew attention: O’Donnell is, these days, perhaps best known as an object of Trump’s obsession. (Indeed, the White House issued a statement that O’Donnell “is a nasty woman and a total slob whose brain has been completely destroyed by Trump Derangement Syndrome.”) But her approach to her monologues tended toward reconnecting with the audience over rat-a-tat resistance patter.
Combining this impulse for empathetic opening-up with a savage instinct for finding the laugh, O’Donnell proved that, while late night may be growing a bit soft, she arrived at “Kimmel” ready for the spotlight. It’s been almost 40 years since Joan Rivers tried to break into the late-night boys’ club — and got fired by Fox after a single season. O’Donnell’s hiring as a woman at a flagship late-night show would break further ground — but would also bring in someone who totally reveres television and knows how to make it well.
A form of TV that seems close to dying could use a jolt of energy, and O’Donnell, with her built-in fanbase and her ability to connect with, and provoke, audiences, might just be late night’s future. That’s because we just saw it play out in fiction. In the universe of “Hacks,” women have been given only paltry chances to claim their piece of late night.
Eventually, Jean Smart’s character Deborah Vance, whose comedy alternately undermines and exalts her own image and is rooted in her rock-solid showbiz chops, gets her chance. (Let’s, for now, not worry about the fact that it all blows up in relatively short order.) On “Hacks,” as in our world, late-night looks like a glass cliff for women — the field is shrinking, with CBS now out of the game entirely, just in time for a woman to potentially get called up. And yet, O’Donnell didn’t seem to mind, and hit the ground running on “Kimmel.” The female late-night hosts of recent vintage, CBS’ Taylor Tomlinson and NBC’s Lilly Singh, have seemed limited by both buried-in-the-evening time slot and by relatively low name recognition. O’Donnell’s hiring would be a moment that would electrify late night, drawing in an underserved audience of women and gay men and generating reams of press.
Shifting from wish-casting O’Donnell into a late-night berth and actually considering what might be possible, there are obvious counterarguments. After early success, O’Donnell has suffered disappointment after disappointment. She left “The View” in 2007 over an incident in which she and co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck were presented arguing in split-screen, and then returned for another short run, from 2014 to 2015, that was simply unremarkable before she once again quit.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
