Jimmy Fallon was on Conan O’Brien last night and he was — well, even his future time-period competitor Craig Ferguson has asked us all not to judge Fallon prematurely. (Pssst: he wasn’t funny.) But the night before, Conan took one of the staples of late-night TV — the cooking segment — and with the raucous, frequently bleeped-out, obscene help of chef Gordon Ramsay and comic Norm MacDonald (Norm just doesn’t do enough television anymore, don’t you think?), the Crimson Comedian presided over a terrifically anarchic segment:

My favorite line of MacDonald’s: “Why would you become a cook?”

Dave did a terrific interview with Captain Chesley Sullenberger last night–no surprise, given Letterman’s interest in aviation. But the real surprise of the night for me, and perhaps you, was the perfect, droll sense of humor displayed by Sullenberger’s co-pilot, Jeffrey Skiles. Check them out:

If only Babara Walters had been on the panel today–she’d have fainted with embarrassment while everyone else guffawed.

Last night, 24‘s FBI agent Renee Walker jumped her personal shark. (Spoiler [and I can't believe I have to add this for something that aired last night] alert.) All it took was two scenes: When she looked agonized at the notion of threatening the wife and baby of a bad guy, and when she stupidly told her boss Larry that Jack had killed that bad guy. Please understand, I’m not knocking Annie Wersching, the actress who plays Walker–she’s reading the lines and emoting as the scenes dictate.

But why do the 24 writers and producers have to make her such a sap? If Renee Walker is supposed to represent the conscience of this season–the character who’s caught up in Jack Bauer’s ruthless pursuit of his honorable goals–then why does Walker have to be such a wimpy sentimentalist? And why the hell did she have to go and rat out Jack to Henry? Sure, that move was a plot device, one that I’m sure will be analyzed brilliantly by my colleague Dan Snierson in his 24 TV Watch (go read it now!), but it just seemed so… pathetic. Making a woman the season’s weakest link–we’ve been there before. Her name was Kim Bauer…

Nadya Suleman was “fixated” on wanting a “huge family” because she wanted “more affection from [her] mother.” That’s the story that was laid out this morning on The Today Show, as Ann Curry interviewed the mother of now-14 children. It was a coup for The Today Show–this is the kind of non-hard-news, tabloid-level story that morning shows adore: not tragic (the babies are alive and, on camera this morning, adorable in the hospital neo-natal unit we were shown) yet controversial (as Curry asked, “How will you feed all these children?”).

Suleman is now becoming into pop-culture focus: we’re getting used to her calm voice, her avid gaze at her questioner. If we accept the pop-psychology scenario The Today Show imposed on the story, Suleman, after a “failed seven-year marriage” and numerous miscarriages, ended up having a total of 14 children. She volunteered that much of her motivation was about “me projecting my own wants and wishes onto my children.”

“To what degree is this too much about you and not enough about them?” asked Curry, even as The Today Show made it more about Suleman and less about the babies. Suleman came off as articulate, pious (“God will provide in his own way,” she said in answer to the “how will you feed them” question), and troubled, admitting to feeling “guilt, fear, disappointed in myself” for not being able to carry the babies to term. Curry asked Suleman if she was “deluded.” I’d say that The Today Show could have spent more time on real hard news, such as the economy and the President’s struggling stimulus package, but what’s the point? A morning news show like this mixes hard and soft news–if Suleman wasn’t around, they’d have spent more time talking about the Grammy Awards, most likely.

Meanwhile, those babies await attention: from their mother, but also from an America that will probably do its usual variety of things: help them, condemn or praise their mother, exploit them, and gaze upon them blissfully. And of course: More about Nadya tomorrow night, on NBC’s Dateline.

The best thing about last night’s Supernatural was the way it dramatized, in its distinctively paranormal, unsettling way, the rifts that have developed between brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles). The villain-of-the-week was a “siren,” an alluring figure that the Winchester boys were tracking down, responsible for making sane men crazy with what they think is just lust but which turns out to be blood-lust: at the siren’s bidding, the male victims kill a wife, a mother–any woman that the siren wants dead.

I’m sure you and I figured out that the hotsy doctor “Cara Roberts” (Maite Schwartz) was trouble from the moment she started coming on to Sam in her office. The truly unexpected twist was the way, after establishing via research unearthed by Bobby (Jim Beaver), that the siren was a woman, the brothers were ultimately seduced by one posing as a male FBI agent, because the siren sensed that only a man–specifically a surrogate-brother-type, not a woman–that could divide these brothers and prompt them to try to kill each other.

The siren-switch from female(s) to male made the episode a bit awkward; stripper-stripper-stripper-FBI-agent didn’t make for a very logical progession (or maybe you’ll explain for me–I can be dim about otherworldly things). But it did set up the evening’s emotional center: the fighting between Sam and Dean that the siren inspired brought to the surface all the roiling, unspoken emotions the guys have been feeling: about Sam’s ongoing involvement with Ruby; about Dean’s reluctance to reveal much about what went on during his time in hell.

The best stuff, for me, were the clever lines and the acting. Dean’s hearty, “Strippers, finally!” when he discovered the case led them to an exotic-dancer club; and (again, Dean’s line, after he figured out Sam had had sex with Dr. Cara) “[We're in the] middle of Basic Instinct and you banged Sharon Stone?”

What’d you think? Which Supernatural moments did you like? Do you think the brothers’ bashing each other will have future consequences?