Would you welcome perpetually depressed cartoon tot Charlie Brown getting a CW-friendly makeover? Jimmy Fallon can make that curious vision a reality. In fact, he already has. (It’d be a bit silly to bring it up if he hadn’t.)
Charles Schulz’s iconic comic strip Peanuts undergoes a complete Riverdale style makeover in this Tonight Show spoof that plunks Fallon in the role of the famous blockhead. It’s more of a genre-blend with nods to the series than a note-for-note parody, so things stay on the silly side and the most sinister thing lurking is Charlie’s Archie Andrews-esque singing dreams. Well, aside from a splash of murder.
“Our town presents itself like so many other small towns, safe, decent, innocent,” narrates Fallon shifting from Brown to Jughead Jones mode. “Get closer though, you start to see the shadows underneath.’
The shadows underneath may be consuming Charlie, Lucy, and company, but we do get some lovely Peanuts TV special style dancing out of the deal. Wade into the shadows even further and there’s a pretty charming payoff to the parody too. Speaking of which, it’s hard to top Riverdale‘s wardrobe department. You can’t dock Fallon points on that.
