The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon recap – 4-13

Wednesday’s episode of The Tonight Show tried a new, risky bit to fill time between the monologue and the guests. Fortunately, it worked extremely well. Guests Ice Cube and Ellie Kemper ended the show nicely, too. Here’s the full recap.

The Monologue 

Everyone is talking about the New York primaries. According to Fallon, Hillary has a 99% chance of winning New York. Jimmy pointed out that Bernie has become the thing he hates: the 1%. Jimmy got some more mileage out of the footage of Hillary failing to swipe her subway card. Moving onto sports, the San Jose Sharks have signed a new goalie who is also a male model. As Fallon puts it, he’s going to be the first hockey player ever to get in a fight and say, “not in the face!” People are still talking about the watermelon video show by Buzzfeed where two people spent 45 minutes putting rubber bands around a watermelon. It was viewed by 800 thousand people. Some are saying this could be the future of television. So Fallon and the gang shot some pre-recorded video that was a spot-on spoof of a detective show interrogating a watermelon by putting rubber bands around it. It was pretty solid.

To The Desk

Tonight Show Zoomed In

This is an interesting segment in which Jimmy is able to zoom into any photo and see something funny about it. For instance, he zoomed in on the image of the bird resting on Bernie Sander’s podium. The bird had a Trump hat on. Another example: the image of people stranded on the desert island. When zoomed in, it showed they also wrote “Help us fix our wifi.” This just wasn’t a very funny bit. It was kind of odd ball, and kind of random. The punchlines left something to be desired.

Battle of the Instant Songwriters

Before the show, Jimmy picked out two people in the audience who claimed to be musicians. In the hour before the show, the two audience members had to come up with music and lyrics for a song, but Jimmy and his staff gave the two participants the name of the song. They had to craft a song around the central premise. One title was “My Cat Did My Taxes” and the other was “I Pull My Pork.”

I’m very curious about this entire premise. Were the two participants really picked form the audience? Did they really just write the song on their own? If they did, Jimmy and the gang got lucky because the two were very good. The both played the guitar and sang. Jimmy rewarded both of them with $1000 after their performances. It’s a risky bit, since they’ll never know if they have people in the audience who are up for the task. Check out the entire segment below.

The Guests

Ice Cube

Cube came out looking fresh with nice shades on. Jimmy congratulated Ice Cube on NWA being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Sugar Hill Gang was just on the show on Tuesday’s show. Ice Cube said “Rapper’s Delight” was the first rap song he ever heard and was his first inspiration. Cube then shared the story of when he first met Run DMC. He met them in Phoenix before he made it. They asked for a ride and his friend had a car. He and his friend offered to take them to the store, so they all went and picked up 40 ounces. Fallon complimented Ice Cube about his shades. Cube said Fallon could pull them off, too, and gave him a pair to wear for the rest of the interview.

Ellie Kemper

Ellie Kemper stopped by to promote the new season of Netflix’s The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. If you don’t watch it, you should start. It’s excellent. She made an exciting announcement. She’s pregnant! Jimmy gave her the gift of Ben ‘N Jerry’s Tonight Dough ice cream. Ellie said it was her favorite flavor. When asked if the pregnancy affected shooting, there was supposed to be a scene where she rides a rollercoaster, but pregnancy women aren’t supposed to ride rollercoasters. She had to fake like she had a back injury so she wouldn’t have to ride it. I guess it worked out in the end, but Ellie said she wasn’t able to consistently act like she had a back injury.