A power outage inspired an electrically energetic edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. Faced with inoperative cameras in his Hollywood studio, Kimmel simply put his big round face in front of his own laptop and did the entire show via webcam.
Holding his computer in one hand, his guests holding their own microphones, Kimmel interviewed Seth Rogen, Wipeout‘s John Henson, and had music guest Dierks Bentley perform an acoustic tune. Rogen was up for the challenge:
Henson had some amusing material about his impending wedding, but in this shambling context, his anecdotes came off a little too polished. On this night, the medium was the message.
The studio lights still had juice, but the power outage took out the cameras and the control room. Using the webcam on his laptop, the visuals were fuzzy and occasionally a bit vertiginous. But we’re all so used to seeing visuals like this when we’ve monkeyed around with a webcam ourselves, it was easy to become oriented quickly. Even in the opening moments, you could see that Kimmel and the studio audience were into the low-tech fun.
The impromptu format proved the best plug possible for Dierks Bentley and his new album, Up On The Ridge. Bentley’s attempt to get back to bare-bones, roots country, he and his band sounded great acoustically.
This winging-it-when-things-go-kerflooey is a time-honored talk-show tradition. Remember when Craig Ferguson continued his show when the lights went out mid-taping?
Near the top of the show, Kimmel said, “We have reach a crossroads. Either this will be a great idea and we’ll get accolades for it, or this is bull—-.”
Consider this an accolade. Here’s a link to nearly all the segments of the show so you can judge for yourself.
What do you think?
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Is that Sam Bush playing with Dierks Bentley? To heck with the lead, Sam and his band should have been the ones performing. But any Sam Bush appearance on national television is a good thing.
That was awesome….Jimmy is the best!
Love him…he didn’t let the network replace the show with old movies.
I don’t think his motivation was preventing ABC from showing old movies.
your moms the best
Doesn’t everybody realize this whole thing was staged? I’m disappointed in Jimmy Kimmel. He has too much talent to pull a stunt like this. He justs wants to draw attention to the show.
This might be one of the dumbest comments I’ve seen here. OF COURSE he’s trying to draw attention to his show! If no one watches then he doesn’t have a show genius. And he did something that has never been done in late night so give him props for trying something different. I swear people just love to hate.
Obviously, you didn’t see Part I where he was on the phone with somebody and they stated the power would be out for one hour….was that staged?
I liked it. He was lucky to have guests scheduled that were willing to go with it. Well done!
Isn’t it Seth Rogen (not Rogan)?
Thanks for making the change!
It looks like they could’ve just cancelled seeing the guest line up.
Kimmel’s brilliant!
I was flipping between this and an unhinged Craig Ferguson last night. Laughs all around!
Does anyone remember when the lights went out on Craig’s show and he used a flashlight as his lighting? brilliant! This webcam was brilliant too
sounds awesome, wish I had seen it!
LOVED IT ! He deserves an Emmy .
Love it … awesome.
jimmy kimmel is awesome! knows how to stay current with the jokes without being crude and he took advantage of a crappy situation and made it awesome
virtiginous isn’t a word…I looked it up because I didn’t know what it meant (a little pretentious don’t you think?) but anyways it’s spelled “vErtiginous”
If it’s not a word, how can it be misspelled?
Wow, Dierks Bentley did sound amazing!
it was totally fake- he started with the lights off in his office then someone came in and turned them on and he didn’t even acknowledge it. he was walking around his office showing us stuff on his shelves like ricky gervais pointing out the monkey on his coat rack. it was quite boring.
Um … all of the lights were working. That was not the problem. It was with the control board and the cameras primarily. It might have been staged, but the functionality of the lights holds no sway over whether it was or was not.
The show wasn’t good enough to be fake!! Jimmy Kimmel and his staff are too slick for this to be a stunt. Why would they pull a stunt then do a mediocre show? The show was seat-of-your-pants awkward with a few b bright spots. Real and almost awesome.