The notoriously accident-prone Jimmy Fallon is beloved by A-listers for his well-rated softball interviews, and by American TV audiences because, well, he’s on. The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is the talk show equivalent of hanging out in your rich cousin’s game room; he’s nice, boring, and you don’t talk about anything serious or memorable—but there’s air hockey, a pool table, and an N64.
But though your time there is mostly harmless fun, there’s always something a little off about the experience. For your cousin, it’s when he screams at the dog. For Fallon, it’s when he assumes the identity of a teenage girl named Sara and starts screaming, “Ew!”
Ew!, a popular and long-running segment on his show, is a nasty little piece of comedy—one that doesn’t attempt to draw laughs from clever writing or situations, but from the simple fact that a grown man would deign to act like a young girl. He thinks it’s funny for a straight man to wear a dress and a wig, to speak like a drunk baby, and to jump up and down with a limp wrist after seeing a friend. There are no insights or clever jokes here—only bad caricatures based on teen girls who I’m not sure actually exist—and its punchline is a one-word exclamation (“Ew!”) because the thing about girls is that they think everything is gross.
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