With each video of his people humiliating clueless hipsters at huge events, Jimmy Kimmel grows significantly stronger. The host of Jimmy Kimmel Live has not only sold his first sitcom pilot idea – to ABC, naturally – but he will also serve as the series producer, while writing the script for the first episode. This is all new territory for the comedian, but the material of the unnamed series is coming straight out of his own noggin, as it will be based loosely on the career of his close friend and NBC personality Carson Daly.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series, which is also being produced by Dan Fogelman, who is basically turning into ABC’s Chuck Lorre, will take a humorous look at a guy like Daly, once on top of the world and now trying to climb back up from rock bottom.
The untitled half-hour entry is about a once massively popular VJ who loses it all and is forced to move back in with his parents and take a job as host of a local radio “morning zoo.” If that scenario sounds familiar, it should — the concept is loosely based on Daly’s career before his recent resurgence as host of NBC breakout reality competition The Voice and a regular role on the same network’s Today show.
Kimmel and Daly have a lengthy shared history, dating back to the mid-1990s, when the former convinced the latter to drop out of college and become his intern at popular L.A. radio station KROQ. The two men, who both went on to become late night hosts (Kimmel at ABC; Daly at NBC), have remained close in the two decades since. (Via THR)
Compared to a lot of the same old dreck that is rolled out for Entertainment Weekly’s annual pilot previews, this isn’t a bad idea. In fact, with this generation’s undying love of asking, “HEY DO YOU F*CKING REMEMBER THE 90S???” I can’t believe that a show about an MTV-type personality hasn’t already happened. But we should demand way more than just Kimmel’s tribute to Carson “Boring Like Vanilla Ice Cream” Daly. Where the hell is Aaron Sorkin’s overly-dramatic behind-the-scenes look at MTV’s heyday in the 80s and 90s, with unknown actors playing everyone from Dan Cortese and John “The Sense Man” Sencio to Tabitha Soren and Kennedy?
The show could run for at least five seasons, with the finale being dedicated to how stupid it was to turn Jesse Camp into a celebrity. In the end, a befuddled Kurt Loder could wake up at a news desk covered with cocaine and wonder, like Casper in Kids, “What happened?” I’m available to begin writing this series tomorrow.
