Fallon Files: Jimmy Finds His Intellectual Match in Antoni Porowski
It would be beautiful if it weren't so stupid
Welcome to the Fallon Files, a weekly-ish series chronicling only the lowest lows of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
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Jimmy Fallon and Antoni Porowski, they’re not so different. They both rose to fame on popular television shows for being “the cute one,” they both used their modicum of talent as a springboard to baffling longevity, and neither of them can have a stimulating on-camera conversation to save their lives. Bringing these two together is, quite literally, a no-brainer.
Antoni was on the show to promote his new Netflix series Easy-Bake Battle. With a title like that, you might imagine a competition in which grown adults try to bake a cake using a toy. Apparently, that is not the case, and this is moreso a show about cooking “hacks.” This is information that I gleaned not from Antoni’s promotion of his new gig on Jimmy’s home turf, but from my coworker Claire Carusillo, who watched an episode and explained the concept as follows:
Easy-Bake Battle makes use of the Easy-Bake IP, but it isn’t a show about cooking gourmet food inside of an Easy Bake Oven. It’s about home chefs employing “easy” hacks, like microwaving potatoes wrapped in paper towel, breading frozen chicken in Ritz crackers, and wrapping liquid queso up in pre-made wonton wrappers to get food on the table for your kids.
That sounds disgusting. I also already knew that you could microwave a potato in a wet paper towel because it’s a crucial part of Chrissy Teigen’s sweet potato gnocchi recipe. Antoni must not be a Cravings-head, because he was completely shocked when he saw someone do it.
“You can microwave a POTATO and make amazing mashed potatoes, which I had no idea about,” he told Jimmy. And we’re supposed to believe that this guy is a culinary expert?
A man of many talents, Antoni also shared that if you burn your fingers you should touch your earlobe, because according to his physician father, it is the coldest part of your body. It seems that the brilliance is hereditary. (You should just run a burn under cold water immediately.)
These two stars coming together is a monumental moment for both Jimmy and this column. Rarely in the history of the Tonight Show have I seen Jimmy meet someone whose lack of charisma and curiosity matches his own. We’ve seen people smarter than Jimmy (randomly, Blake Shelton), as well as dumber (Noah Centineo), but in Antoni he has finally found his true intellectual equal. It would really be quite beautiful if it weren’t mind-numbingly boring.
