The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Recap – 1-26

Tuesday’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is already in the running for the best late night show of the week. Josh Brolin and Kate McKinnon both brought their A-games and teamed up for a sketch. Here’s the full recap.

Monologue

Jimmy kicked off the monologue talking about the election and the Iowa Caucus. Candidates are doing everything they can to appeal to voters. Hillary Clinton said that if elected, she would work with republicans and even give them bear hugs. The punchline: “By ‘bear hugs’ she meant the ones in The Revenant.” In a more visual bit, all the candidates wrote poems about their campaign. Jimmy displayed a couple of them. Hillary’s was about email and Trump’s were about being ahead in the polls. Chris Christie’s was about food. Tariq and Jimmy concluded with a bit about the largest prime number ever recorded that is more than a million digits long. Tariq told Jimmy to say the number. Jimmy said he would, with some edits of course. When he finished, he had a long gray beard and Tariq was a skeleton. That was a solid bit that is different from the norm.

Joke of the monologue: “Presidential nominees are doing everything they can to appeal to voters during the Iowa Caucus. Donald Trump even went to a church service. You can tell he doesn’t go to church very often when he said he loved the part when they pass around the basket of free money.”

To the Desk

Pros and Cons

Every so often, Jimmy has to march out some of his lame, easy bits for time filler. Tuesday’s candidate was Pros and Cons. My beef with Pros and Cons is that you can usually tell where the joke is going, and there’s only so many places for the jokes to go. Tuesday’s topic was “Going to the Super Bowl.” Here are some of the highlights.

Pro: The Super Bowl is turning 50.
Con: Peyton Manning is turning 60.

Pro: Things will get emotional between the Broncos and Panthers.
Con: Especially when the meet and fall in love in a Budweiser ad.

Pro: Peyton Manning needs one more win to catch up to his brother.
Con: Jeb Bush is like, “join the club.”

The Guests

Josh Brolin

I’m not sure if Josh Brolin is growing his hair and mustache for a role, but it looks like he’s evolving into Kurt Russell…the old version of Kurt Russell. He said he finished a movie about a backwoods deer hunter with Danny McBride yesterday. He gained 40 pounds for the movie and hasn’t changed his hairstyle yet. Jimmy brought out the clippers to shave Brolin’s mustache. He started by shaving just half of the mustache right down the middle. Eventually, Brolin took over with a razor and shaving cream. Brolin tried to play the interview straight, which I imagine was difficult to do while shaving. While shaving, he told a story of when he met Donal Trump. He lost his wallet at one of Trump’s country clubs. Trump happened to be there and lent him $20 for a ride home. When he finally finished with his shave, the two finally got to his upcoming movie “Hail, Caesar.” They played a clip from the Coen Brothers’ film.

Brolin stuck around for Kate McKinnon’s interview. It’s always great to see when celebs stick around for the second interview.

Kate McKinnon

McKinnon came out with a faux mustache. She said she was playing Josh Brolin in a biopic. She removed the mustache and talked about her upcoming projects like Ghostbusters and the hosting of the Independent Spirit Awards on IFC. She said that this was her first hosting gig. Jimmy had the two play a round of First Impressions.

First Impressions

The game is simple. Each guest gets an envelope with a phrase on it and a celebrity’s name. The guest has to say the phrase in an impression of the celeb and the other guests have to guess who it is. McKinnon and Jimmy killed it. Brolin could’ve tried a little harder. Check out the segment below.

The show concluded with a performance from Billy Ocean. Jimmy had been hyping up the performance for weeks now, and Ocean delivered. Billy played a medley of his hits. Check back tomorrow for a recap of Fallon’s Thursday show when he welcomes Natalie Portman and John Oliver. Should be a good one!