May 22, 2026

The “Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon" brings a KO punch

Show Notes
Transcript

Johnny Mac discusses a Current Affairs piece by John Greenaway titled “The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon,” quoting its critique of Fallon’s performative laughter, repetitive “viral games,” avoidance of politics, and “assembly line” approach to guest interactions; Mac notes he’s worked with Fallon briefly and found him easy to work with, but understands why he waited until “Colbert’s week” passed to cover it. He then shares other comedy items: a Guardian mention of Robbie Hoffman quoting John Mulaney; a Newsweek profile of SNL’s Sarah Sherman (“Sarah Squirm”) on personas, props, and her need for audience validation; an SFGate interview with Ashley Padilla about early jobs and comedy training; and a Vanity Fair/SFGate write-up of Joel Kim Booster’s left-leaning LA fundraiser show, which leads Mac into checking Porsche Cayenne prices and speculating whether performer Zainab Johnson’s was new or used.

00:14 Fallon Horror Article
01:34 Rictus And Rituals
03:09 Viral Games Critique
04:09 Host Perspective
05:00 Fallon And Politics
05:40 Comedian Profiles
06:09 Sarah Sherman Deep Dive
07:32 Ashley Padilla Origins
08:04 LA Comedy Fundraiser
09:00 Porsche Price Rabbit Hole

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This is the animal sanctuary mentioned in the February 10 episode.

WEBVTT

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Callaroga Shark Media. Wow, I've been sitting on this first one. Hello,

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I'm Juddy Mack with your daily comed news. So you know,

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it was kind of cold Bear's week, so I didn't

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think it was a good time to share with you

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This one that's been making the rounds on social media.

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From Current Affairs dot Com. The headline the banal Horror

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of Jimmy Fallon, John Greenaway writes, there's a distinctive, deeply

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uncanny horror to the way Jimmy Fallon laughs. I'll jump

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in right there. My wife recently stumbled across a Fallin bit.

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And by the way, just to show you how much

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the normies don't pay attention to things, she starts telling

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me a story and she says she was watching a

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clip with Jimmy Kimmel and she said he seems really fake,

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and I went Kimmel or Fallon, and then she realized

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she meant Fallon. So she's even mixing up the Jimmies.

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I digress. John Greenaway writes, there's a distinctive, deeply uncanny

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horror to the way Jimmy Fallon laughs. Look it up.

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There were literally hundreds of videos showing him breaking out

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into laughter at the slightest provocation. It is not a reaction.

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He sometimes won't even wait for his guest to get

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to their carefully scripted punchline. Rather, it is a performance.

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A sudden corporeal convulsion. Fallin leans in his chair as

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if pressed back by some unseen force. It's accompanied by

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the ritualistic slapping of the desk. You can picture this

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right as this guy nailed it. A sound that echoes

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like a gavel in a courtroom watching the Tonight Show

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in the deep hours of the night, beaming out from

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a phone screen or laptop. Wait, who's watching the Tonight

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Show on a phone or even a laptop? You people

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are doing this. There's an unshakable impression that this is

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not really entertainment but a desperate kind of ritual. Fallin

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acts as the high priest of a terrified optimism. His

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rictus grin What is rickdus? I've never seen that word

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in my life. The Cambridge Dictionary says rictus is an

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expression in which someone shows their teeth and a smile,

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but looks strange or in pain, rather than looking appy

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and relaxed. Okay, good use of words, sir, His Rick

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Grin serving as a shield against the encroaching silence of

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the reel. Now, does this guy just know the word rictus?

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Or like, was he like? How do he describe? I'd

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love to know how he even came across the word rictus. Again,

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I've never heard this word in my life. I think

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it's the perfect word for that sentence. I just want

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to know which came first, the chicken or the egg,

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His rictus grin serving as a shield against the encroaching

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silence of the reel. Here in the sanitized, overlit art

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of the American culture industry, there is an inescapable horror.

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But it isn't a monster lurking in the shadows. It's

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in the manic, unblinking insistence that actually there are no

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shadows at all. If the Gothic tradition of fear teaches

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us that the ruins of the past haunt the present,

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the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon offers the inverse a

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present so forcibly flattened, so aggressively quote unquote fun that

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it has exercised history entirely, leaving us trapped at a sterile,

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eternal loop of viral games and celebrity limp singing while

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the world slides into climate collapse and fascist politics. We

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are just getting started. And when I do these articles,

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I try not to read every word. But this is

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just amazing. Again, this is in current affairs, and you're

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going to look for the banal horror of Jimmy Fallon.

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A typical episode of Falence Tonight Show has the usual

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staples of the late night format, the ones introduced by

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Steve Allen and perfected by Johnny Carson. An opening monologue,

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couple celebrity interviews, and musical performance closed out the evening.

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But what's made Fallon so popular has been his use

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of endless, repetitive, shareable games. Night after night. He invites

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you to watch people you know from other shows on TV,

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or who just coincidentally have a movie or an album

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to promote. Play pictionary, watch them lip sync battle? All right?

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I mean yes, but what do you want them to have?

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Who's supposed to have on? People that aren't promoting anything.

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People aren't going to do that. I have celebrity friends.

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I only ask them to come on when they're promoting something.

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Skipping ahead. Watching the Tonight Show as an exercise in

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cultural deja vu. It's the endless repetition of the already familiar.

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It is setting that's designed to gain our attention, but

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makes no other demand upon us as a viewer. The

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familiar cry I've let people enjoy things might come in response,

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but this, this is what we're supposed to enjoy. Fallon

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presides over his rituals of play like a vampire feeding

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not on blood but on enthusiasm. Boy, this is brutal.

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I have said the fast I work with Jimmy a

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couple times, the share of story. Recently, someone used to

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send me some bits from the twelve thirty show. I

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don't say I know Jimmy Fallon, but I've been in

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the room with Jimmy Fallon two three times. No, I'll

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call it three hours. Over the years he was his

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public persona very easy to work with. John Greenaway writes

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he doesn't really converse with any of his guests. They

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all know what they're there for. Rather, he extracts, he

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demands relatability from them, draining the authenticity from the interaction

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until only the husk of a viral moment remains. The

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horror lies in the repetition, the feint, shock, the hysterical

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laughter at unfunny mishaps the relentless golden retriever energy. It

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is a performance of joy so excessive, so desperate, that

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it reveals the void it attempts to cover. Again, let

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me remind you there's only two eleven thirty shows. Now,

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it's this or Kimmel, and Kimmel's taking this summer off.

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It is the logic of the assembly line applied to

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human connection. What Fallon offers is a standardized production of

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quote unquote fun that feels increasingly like a desperate plead

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to ignore the crumbling world outside the studio walls. Now

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do you see why I waited till Colbert was over

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to do this article? It skipping ahead. Fallon doesn't do politics,

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or if he does, he wants to keep his head down,

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because we hit both sides equally. Telling Lee, Donald Trump

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has called for the firing of almost all the other

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late night hosts. Colbert came all even Seth Myers, but

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excluded Fallon from his hit list because Trump recognizes that

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there's nothing about Fallon's empty banality that could be anything

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close to a threat. Fallon is so desperate to keep

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the real world out in his interviews he barely seems

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to be listening to his guests, waiting for them to

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finish speaking so his rituals can begin. Anew boy, not

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totally unfair, but boy. The Guardian caught up with Robbie Hoffman.

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They quoted John mulaney, who said, once in a while

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you get to see a legend at the absolute top

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of their game. By the way, that was the first

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time I was able to go into a half assed

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Millennie impression without having to do to my French nighter

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set up. It's as big as a whale. Robbie talked

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about a tour and said all of us are going

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to live the life of happiness, pain and suffering and

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joy and all of it. I just don't think it's

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my job to spare anyone of anything. Necessarily. My job

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is just to be me. I'm trying to allow myself

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to be as me as possible. Sarah Sherman got a

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big time profile in Newsweek. Sarah said, Sarah squirm is

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obviously the thing I'm most comfortable with, and I think

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that sometimes comes out on SNL. But it's also a

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less vulnerable persona. I don't know if I would out

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of a career out ofside of doing bar shows as

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Sarah Squirm. Whenever I'm in a blonde wig on SNL,

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my friends call it Sarah normal activity because for people

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watching the show at home, that's more what a human

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being looks like. Even though it's alien to all my friends.

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SNL is a really hard job. I always feel like

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it's the first day of the job every day. So

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if anyone's pitching me anything, I'm so open minded, which

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pushes me in an area as I necessarily would have

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thought of myself. I'll send Lewis, the head of special

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effects makeup of Crazy Drawings, and say, can you make

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my eyeballs look like this? And then in like five

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seconds he already as a clay sculpture of my head

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with eyeballs bugging out. I feel like my range is

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so limited that anything that can help me expand my

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range is welcome. Even getting fangs for no sparatu. It

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made me change my and my physicality. That's why I

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love hair, makeup, costume props so much, because they give

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you new things to play with it you wouldn't have

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come out of the gates with. As for being a

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shocking stand up, she said, I'm in an interesting position

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because I deal with a lot of repulsive subject matter,

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So I'm purposely repelling people away from me, whether it's

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talking about my butthole or looking like a freak. My

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form of artistic expression is repulsion. But also miam a comedian.

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I want to be a comedian my whole life. So

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it's a black, bottomless void inside of me that needs

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constant validation because when I'm on stage, I do need

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to hear an audience laugh or I'm gonna slice my

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own head off. Wow. The sf Gate caught up with

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Ashley Paedia. She talked about working at a movie theater

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while a teenager and said, I was a very bad employee.

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I didn't know that schedule was like your schedule, that

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was more of a decision on your own behalf. I

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was lost as hell. My mom was like, you're pretty funny.

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You could try, you know, taking some comedy classes. That

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led her to the UCB and the ground links. We

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all want to laugh, and my form of comedy is

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like laugh at me. I'm an idiot, so I love

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performing kind of a dumbass. I think that makes people

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all overlaugh. That got it's not really niche to California,

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or New York. It's just like you, a person who

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has experienced embarrassment, then you'll love this from Vanity Fair.

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The headline read all over in the Trenches with LA's

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comedy Comrades. They talk about Joel kim Booster doing a

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fundraiser for an LA City Council candidate who's been endorsed

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by the LA chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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Joel kim Booster said, hopefully you'll laugh, but ultimately we

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need to make our bit of money. Other folks on

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that show Zanab Johnson, Nordy Reid, and Chris Estrada. The

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sf Gates says, the tone of the show was unmistakably left.

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Joel kim Booster asked a guy in the front row

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if the straight community ever says the word orgy. He

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asked the guy ever been to one. The straight dude

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said no. Joel said, then let someone cool answer you, nerd.

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That's pretty funny. And at another point, Joel kim Booster

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said straight male flight attendants aren't allowed to be rude,

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only the gay ones we were told. Both jokes killed,

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and the SF Gates says after the show ended, Johnson

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drove off on a black Porsche Cayenne as a plump

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rat scurried by the venues entrance. I'm curious how much

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such a Porsche runs. Oh, this is fun. You're gonna

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love this answer. I don't know what number was in

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my head two seconds ago, but it was not this number.

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So again, let's just recap this story here. This was

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a fundraiser for the LA City Council candidate who's been

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endorsed by the LA chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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The sf Gate tells us Zanam Johnson was one of

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the performers and that Johnson jumped into Porsche Cayenne. I

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am now on finder dot Porsche dot com, slash us

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slash a bunch of things. A twenty twenty six Porsche

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Cayenne chromite black metallic goes for are you ready? One

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hundred thousand, five hundred ninety five dollars excluding taxes and

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fees estimated dealer fees nine hundred ninety five dollars. That

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is the price at Paul Miller Porsche in Parsipity, New Jersey.

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So perhaps your dealer has a better deal, and that

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seems to be the low end. The hybrid goes for

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one thirty five. The Cayenne s coop goes for one

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forty three, but maybe it was a used to Porsche Cayenne.

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Who knows. So I'm here on Edmunds dot com. I

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get a twenty seventeen Porsche Cayenne for sixteen nine and

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eighty five, so maybe she was driving a nine year

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old car. The sf gate was unclear, and I want

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to be fair here, a twenty twenty three used one

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A is going for ninety nine five ninety nine, but

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you can get a twenty fourteen for just eleven one

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ninety nine, So who knows what she was driving? I

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drove a ninety two Civic for thirty years, and I'm

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not kidding anyway. I don't know what today's show was,

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but it was different that your company news for today, Holliday. Wait,

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get everybody see tomorrow