| Natalie Finn 19. September 2015 – 06:00
Sometimes, you really just want to give Jimmy Fallon a squeeze, he’s just so darn fun and adorable.
The man who remade late-night TV into the must-see, must-share viral showcase that all the TV makers in the land can only hope to achieve turns 41 today, and that just made us realize how the ever-boyish funnyman has been entertaining us for years!
From his days on Saturday Night Live to his years hosting Late Night, all long before he even assumed the mantle as host of The Tonight Show, Fallon had a knack for dispensing bits of comedy that you wanted to see again and again. And, perhaps even more importantly, his is the kind of comedy that makes you feel good.
There are a time and a place for misery laughs, but that’s not what we get from this high-energy entertainer. So in honor of his birthday, here are five times Jimmy Fallon was just a delight:
Saturday Night Live alums
1. Jimmy Opens the Emmys in 2010: His only year (so far) hosting the Primetime Emmy Awards also happened to coincide with the wildly successful debut season of Glee, so he capitalized on that—as well as on the fact that music is always his friend—to provide us with one of the most energetic, star-studded Emmys openings in recent memory. Baby, he was born to host!
2. Fever Peak: Fallon’s Late Night gig took off just in time because, aside from his that-was-him? role in Almost Famous, that post-SNL film career wasn’t exactly illustrious. But Fever Pitch, co-starring good pal Drew Barrymore, was actually pretty adorable. Especially so because we feel that it was basically Fallon playing himself. Take this scene, where their first date turns into his junior high math teacher nursing her high-strung executive through a nasty stomach flu. That’s exactly what he would be like in real life, right?
So we will continue to assume.
Late night TV hosts
3. Jimmy Roots for Derek Jeter: The I-didn’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-hands moment that Fallon experienced while witnessing Jeter’s last at bat at Yankee Stadium was everybody’s I-had-no-idea-I-was-being-filmed story.
4. Late Night Ice Cream Wars: Brain freeze, no problem. To settle once and for all who had the dominant late-night-themed ice cream flavor, Fallon and Stephen Colbert engaged in a war of words (that, true to form, Fallon couldn’t help but crack up during midway through—the fact that he always does that being all-time fave moment 4.5) and then shoveled in spoonfuls of their respective Ben & Jerry flavors. Cue the cow hallucinations.
5. Jimmy Hearts J.T.: Every second of this bromance add up to equal our final lovable Fallon moment. In Justin Timberlake he has found his history-of-rap-teaching, “Single Ladies”-dancing, sketch-buddy soul mate, the yin to his yang, the smooth to his groove, the Key to his Peele… These two. One is great, but two are grand.
Happy birthday, Jimmy Fallon—thank you for the past, present and future laughs.
Bromances, because two hotties are better than one