Jimmy Kimmel Live! has held a weeklong residency in Brooklyn seven times since 2012, but this was his first as Comrade Jimmy. About a week after Kimmel’s show was reinstated from a suspension by ABC after comments by FCC chair Brendan Carr, the shows were full of politics as well as hometown affection. (He’s from Mill Basin.) On Thursday afternoon, hundreds of free-ticket-lottery winners lined up at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, infusing Ashland Place with midtown tourist energy. They shuffled through the lobby metal detectors, stopping to post at a giant photo-op scrim made to look sort of like street art. Outside, three middle-aged women held up signs: TRUMP MUST GO NOW! One old guy shouted back, “I love your signs!”
Inside, a DJ spun Motown oldies for VIPs eating Nathan’s hot dogs and drinking negronis. Giant screens played clips: Jimmy in a Sia wig. Jimmy and Bill Murray in a canoe in Newtown Creek. Jimmy’s head emerging from a toilet in a parody PSA for the Department of Environmental Protection. Eventually the in-studio warm-up comic, Don Barris, a jovial pro with a Taftian mustache, led a few applause drills. It turns out that the best way to get a Brooklyn Kimmel crowd to cheer is to treat the event like a miniature rally, bringing up “a little thing now with the president.” The only cannon at this revolution, though, was shooting T-shirts.
As Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen awaited their segments, Kimmel got into game mode, going over jokes and making notes. The crew fist-bumped him as he headed to the stage, where a minutelong standing ovation preceded his monologue (“Not unlike the C train, the government is shut down …”). The crowd stood again when Jon Stewart rode an bike down the aisle, doing a bit as a Grubhub delivery guy. After a Mets gag went on for too long, he suggested Stewart get going, to Stewart’s mock offense. “Sorry, Mister ‘Free Speech!’”