This is late night check-in, a feature where I watch a full week of one talk show and discuss how it was. Last week I watched “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”, from 4/27 to 5/1.

The Tonight Show has taken a lot of flack over the past few years. Since the Conan-Leno debacle and the backlash against the latter, The Tonight Show is no longer the cultural touchstone it once was (when every conceivable adult in America gathered around a television to watch Johnny Carson.) Today, there are plenty of late night options to choose from with no real king – though it’s easy to argue that Jimmy Fallon could claim such a title. His incarnation of the show is currently the highest rated late night talk show. His YouTube channel has 7 million subscribers with nearly 3 billion total views and produces at least one viral video per week.

A lot of comedy nerds will tell you The Tonight Show is crap. There’s no comedy, it’s just a bunch of meandering games, etc. Andrés du Bouchet, a long-time writer for Conan, recently caught some heat for tweeting about his dissatisfaction regarding the aforementioned. “Comedy in 2015 needs a severe motherfucking shakeup,” he said in a now deleted tweet. “No celebrities, no parodies, no pranks, no mash-ups or hashtag wars. I’m fat.”

So how much of that is accurate? The current incarnation of The Tonight Show features a regular dose of celebrity-based comedy, parodies and mash-ups. There’s few pranks and certainly no hashtag wars but the show does feature Tonight Show Hashtags (we’ll get to that later.) How much of this is pandering to the audience and how much is actual comedy? What’s to be expected when you watch a full week of The TonightShow?

First things first. Jimmy Fallon has come a long way since his nervous, jittery Late Night debut six years ago. He’s now a seasoned performer with all the chops necessary for being a talk show host. Like all good talk show hosts, he’s crafted a niche for himself. Fallon is an entertainer, ideally one for the whole family. He’s immensely positive and likable. It’s hard to hate a guy who wants the audience both at home and in studio to have fun. Both the show and its host are completely devoid of cynicism.

His monologue at the top of the show is quick, efficient and confident. Like Conan, Fallon tends to act out things at the end of jokes. His chameleon-like impressions can elevate a joke further or even save a particularly bad one. He’ll riff and improvise with his sidekick, Steve Higgins, and it’s usually pretty good. And anytime The Roots chime in, it’s just icing on the cake.

After the monologue is a desk piece. Some are good, such as the long-standing feature “Thank You Notes”, which features Jimmy writing fake thank you notes such as “Thank you, people who ask me to take my shoes off the moment I get into their house. Forgive me sensei, I didn’t realize I was entering the sacred dojo. Shall I toss my coat onto the bed or fold it into a decorative origami crane?” Some are lazy, like Audience Suggestion Box and Tonight Show Hashtags, the latter of which features Jimmy reading tweets submitted by viewers that come off as a twelve-year old trying to write a monologue joke. The crowd eats it up. 

The first half of the show is traditional formula – monologue and desk piece – and you rarely see this part of the show posted online. It’s serviceable comedy that would make you hard pressed to shake your fist at the television. It’s hit-or-miss depending on the night, but that’s par for the course with most talk shows. It’ll give you some laughs. There’s no bark or bite in any of the jokes, because taking a bite would spoil the positivity. This is not the show you tune into for a cutting edge joke on the Baltimore riots.

The second half of the show becomes a true variety show. This is where all the viral celebrity shenanigans begin, and your milage may vary. Tuesday featured Jeremy Renner playing (miming) piano and singing about Hawkeye, the lesser known Avenger, to the tune of “Nobody Love” by Tori Kelly. It namedrops a lot of present-day cultural references about how Hawkeye is on Tinder and he gets free guac at Chipotle. At four minutes, it feels longer. It’s a big budget YouTube production. It currently has 4.3 million views.

Stronger pieces include Kristen Wiig doing her entire interview as Khaleesi from Game of Thrones (4 million views.) It’s absurd and improvised and Wiig does a pretty funny job with it. Celebrity-based games are mostly contingent on whether or not the celebrity involved is actually funny. To drive that point home, two days later, Jimmy played beer pong with Helen Hunt. On one hand, it’s excruciatingly dull. On the other hand, what else are you gonna do with Helen Hunt?

The interview is the weakest part of the show. Fallon lets his guests do the talking and they stick to the pre-planned routine very closely. It’s practically scripted. Even when Fallon strays from the interview cards, it’s rarely to ask a question and more to do with how much he loves something the guest has done. David Steinberg’s interview (he was promoting his show “Inside Comedy”) was the first one I saw where the audience was quiet. There was no guffawing or big splashy moments, just him and Jimmy talking about the art of comedy. But it’s far too short and Jimmy fails to ask anything worthwhile. In pretty much every interview, nothing interesting is discussed – which is not all Jimmy’s fault, of course. Some nights have good guests with good anecdotes and some feature the opposite (and sometimes there’s good guests with bad anecdotes.) I’m not expecting Charlie Rose but I do have a desire to not see baby pictures of guests for two shows in a row.

Which leads to the question brought up at the beginning. How much of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” is comedy and how much is a celebrity jerk-off? The answer is a little bit of both. I won’t lie when I say I got invested in a game of Box of Lies with Scarlet Johansson because it managed to blend funny moments with celebrity shenanigans. The Tonight Show is the highest profile talk show in the land, and most A-list stars aren’t gonna light up the interview portion with tired anecdotes (whereas celebrities like, I don’t know, Norm MacDonald or Bill Murray would shine.) So why not kill time by playing a game? Why not make Helen Hunt play beer pong? Why not make Jeremy Renner sing a song? Why not make Kristen Wiig dress up as Khaleesi from Game of Thrones? 

Fallon’s bits and games may not be crown jewels of comedy, but their immense popularity keep the very notion of a late-night talk show (when’s the last time you actually stayed up to watch a late-night show) alive and within the cultural consciousness. Fallon’s a crowd pleaser, not a groundbreaking innovator. And that’s fine. It could be a hell of a lot worse – like Jaywalking worse. Comedy in 2015 does not need a shakeup, despite what Andrés du Bouchet suggested. There’s an abundance of comedy on the air, on the internet. Everywhere. There’s an embarrassment of riches to choose from these days. The Tonight Show is merely one part of the larger picture, and its success doesn’t render other comedy obsolete.

So The Tonight Show is nowhere near as bad as you think it is. It’s fine. That’s literally the grade I would give it: “It’s fine.” It may not be your cup of tea, but a lot of people sure do like it. It’s family friendly and inoffensive. It produces humongous viral hits that kids and adults bond over. It creates a fun playhouse vibe that everyone can hang out in. There are worse comedy crimes being committed. Looking at you, Big Bang Theory.

Full Disclosure:

-The Roots are incredible. Their comedic timing, their musicianship. They’re like a house band on steroids.

-The only musical guest I watched was Blur.

-I ate a bacon egg and cheese sandwich during the Jeremy Renner interview. It was delicious, thanks for asking.

-The Xbox green room is an atrociously bad piece of marketing and because of it I’ve decided to purchase a PlayStation 4.

-Next Week: I’ll tune in for the last full week of “The Late Show with David Letterman”