Tue, February 25, 2003

If every show on television could be as charmingly spellbinding and simplistically entertaining as the first week of Jimmy Kimmel Live, we'd have something. Unfortunately Snoop Dogg has other things to do.

The show has everything going for it, which is to say it has nothing going for it. They bring new levels of meaning to the term "underdog," with their love-hate (okay hate-hate) relationship with network parent ABC/Disney and their absolute inability to book anything resembling a talk-show guest. (Rumors have circulated that NBC and CBS celebrities have been pressured by their networks not to appear on the show.) Add to that a host who comes straight from basic cable and whose name recognition, among viewers who didn't listen to "morning zoo" radio in Los Angeles in the nineties, ranks well below Art Fry – and a production staff made up largely of his own family. But that was the charm of it! It was such an uphill struggle, and they still decided to do it live!

Not only live, but live with Snoop Dogg and an open bar for the audience. Inspired. The lack of preparation or all-around TV wherewithal not only filled the anti-Leno niche, but also fit well into a TV dial increasingly populated with other off-the-cuff not-ready-for-primetime vehicles: reality shows. The program, very wisely, trades on its also-ran status – in its promotion as well as its execution. The joy of the show is watching Jimmy affably maneuver through the pratfalls and freshman mistakes that invariably pepper each episode. Shrugging and smirking, he's impossible not to empathize with and the enjoyment comes from feeling like everyone – audience included – is just spending the hour hanging out with friends.

By the end of its first week (extended by a day due to the post-Super Bowl premiere), Kimmel had begun to refer to the week's guest co-host Snoop Dogg as "America's Sweetheart." And indeed he was. Whether pelting Jimmy with polyethelene snowballs on Blizzard Monday or overseeing a Hip-Hop Spelling Bee ("K-I-L-L-A-Z, Killaz.") between gangsta rappers and two real Spelling Bee champions (aged 12 and 15), Snoop captured the viewer's affection with his easygoing style and his giggly on-air persona. He took cameras with him to the Del Amo Swap Meet to buy Jimmy some gangsta duds in a video package that was as comically delightful as it was sociologically poignant. He even oozed charisma as he announced each night's guests at the top of the show, something that was lamentably discontinued by the start of week two.

In fact, "lamentably discontinued by the start of week two" can pretty much describe everything good about Jimmy Kimmel Live. Without Snoop, without the liquor license, the show was already at a disadvantage on that second Monday. But rather than meeting that challenge by foregrounding the show's benefits, the producers attempted to make the show more latenight-like by packing more tired segments into each hour. What worked so well in week one was that Jimmy was frequently called upon to stretch through a few minutes while everyone figured out what was going on. He's likable and funny when he's just chatting, but when he's sidelined to the role of narrator as the show marches out one silly bit after another, he's no longer anti-Leno – he's approaching Leno-wannabe. And the show feels choppy and mechanical. Unplanned without any of the fun unplanned-ness of its first few days.

It appears that Kimmel's producers are trying to fast-track their program's way to latenight status. They had a spectacular and fresh idea with the guest co-hosts – it was a way to keep the patter across the desk from becoming stale while still giving Jimmy someone to play against – but as the show has aged, they've done away with the best parts of the co-host and inflated the worst parts. And in an attempt to find their answer to Conan's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog or Dave's Rupert Jee, they've paraded multiple characters before the camera in the hopes that one will catch on. They've even put production staffers in charge of the opening announcements so that Jimmy can chat with them as the show begins. The segments are boring for anyone not related to the staffer du jour, and only end up squeezing valuable time out of later segments, because once he's done with the announcer, Jimmy still has to banter with cousin Cleto the bandleader before bringing out the co-host. What the show fails to realize is that Dave and Conan built such memorable characters not by desperately thrusting them at the audience, but through years of routines out of which these few characters survived to gain public acceptance and establish an identity for the show. You can't force it, it just happens.

And it's this desperation which ultimately makes Jimmy Kimmel Live much less watchable today than it was a few short weeks ago. Instead of Dean Martin, casually whipping barbs at the audience and rolling with the punches, it's Jerry Lewis, frantically cavorting for attention in any form possible.

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