Late Night Last Week: Promotion Goes Too Far With Deadpool & Wolverine
Screenshots from YouTube
Late Night Last Week is a column highlighting some of the more notable segments from the previous week of late night television. Today’s installment features Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman hosting Kimmel, John Oliver on the war in Gaza, Taylor Tomlinson on Gen Z intern edits, and Erica Rhodes’ stand-up TV debut.
So there I was, on the brink of sleep. I rolled over from my right side to my left, picking up my phone for one final scroll. In a moment divined I can now only assume by the devil himself, I clicked on YouTube, looking, perhaps, for clips that would soon be included in this column. And then it happened. I saw it. I felt the ghost of Steve Allen rise from the ground, distraught over what he had wrought. When I woke up the next morning, I wondered whether it was all just a dream. But reader, it was all too real.
On Wednesday, July 24, 2024, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman hosted ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, or, as the show’s YouTube page billed them, Deadpool and Wolverine. For those keeping score at home, Disney owns both Marvel and ABC, so this is a form of that Rockefellian principle known as vertical integration. Ya know, where the company owns both the product and the means to promote that product, and, in this case, that product also serves as content for the other product. Reynolds made a joke about the situation, noting that Disney now also owned the world’s entire supply of insulin. How funny it would be if it weren’t so believable.
Long gone are the days where hosts did the whole, “So I hear you have a new movie” thing when talking with movie stars. Now, the stars just get an hour to themselves. At least when Frank Sinatra hosted The Tonight Show he had to sing, interview guests, and endure the wrath of Don Rickles. Instead, the bulk of the show featured a joint monologue, then Jackman interviewing Reynolds, followed by Jackman interviewing Reynolds. The show ended with some obligatory clips from the film, and an interview with their co-star, Emma Corrin.
If I was the kind of person capable of just enjoying nice things, I would point out that both hosts were very charming in the role. Both Reynolds and Jackman had some jokes that briefly put me under a spell and brought a smile to my face, resulting in a bit of chuckle. But, luckily, I am not. So let me just end by saying the obvious: the below clip is the moment when promotion on late night television went too far.
John Oliver on the Genocide in Gaza
The host of Last Week Tonight may be one of the only comedians in the world who could get away with a Shrek masturbation joke in the middle of a monologue about the West Bank. And that is, of course, his genius.
On Sunday, John Oliver continued his ongoing coverage of the war in Gaza with an honesty that many pundits should aspire to. “A phrase that gets brought up a lot with regard to Israel is ‘Never Again,’ an anti-genocide slogan often evoked in memory of the Holocaust,” Oliver said, adding that that it has always been open to two interpretations: that it should never again happen to the Jewish people, and that it should never again happen to any people. “And in the West Bank, as in Gaza right now, it’s pretty clear which one the Israeli government has favored.”