Jimmy Fallon's Running Weather Joke Has Crossed Over Into Avant-Garde Territory
Jimmy Fallon's Running Weather Joke Has Crossed Over Into Avant-Garde Territory
Keegan KellyTue, January 27, 2026 at 11:00 PM UTC
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The East Coast is still reeling from the winter storms that shut down entire cities over the weekend, but frigid temperatures, devastating winds and historic snowfall are nothing compared to the storm of surrealist post-comedy brewing over at The Tonight Show.
Back in December, Jed Rosenzweig of LateNighter noticed something strange – Jimmy Fallon, long-time Tonight Show host and lover of advertising, told the exact same, lame monologue joke about New York City weather three times in five episodes. “It’s so cold in New York City. Walking to work, I saw a Wall Street stockbroker spooning with Zohran Mamdani,” Fallon repeatedly cracked, commenting on the Big Apple’s new socialist mayor with all the incisive wit of Greg Gutfeld.
When Rosenzweig’s revelation went viral, long-time haters of Fallon and The Tonight Show roasted the late-night host for what they perceived to be a new low in laziness.
Now, however, over a month after Rosenzweig blew the lid off of The Tonight Show’s joke-recycling scheme, it’s clear that this bit is so much more than a simple copy-paste job from a writers' room that has given up on upholding what's left of the storied series' dignity. This is something more, something conceptual – something that we never expected out of the most predictable host in late-night.
Yes, in honor of the approaching storm, late last week, Fallon revived his most mocked running gag with a straight face, practically begging the Tonight Show fandom to finally stop expecting anything original from him. But that's not the amazing part that pushes this bit into conversations about comedy becoming high art – no, that came last night when Fallon pulled off what might be the greatest button in the history of late-night running gags with a little help from a friend:
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Mayor Mamdani's appearance on The Tonight Show raises so many questions about Fallon and his potential genius. To wit, was this cameo planned five weeks in advance, and, if so, does that mean that The Tonight Show purposefully baited Fallon's haters into dogpiling on the reused joke in order to build the necessary tension for such an incredible payoff?
Or, alternatively, were Fallon and his writers actually just copy/pasting punchlines with no purpose, and, when they were caught, they doubled down so hard that their corner-cutting circled back to become transcendent comedy?
Most importantly, what does this mean for the future of Fallon's monologue jokes about the weather in Manhattan? With another possible weekend storm on the forecast, what will Fallon say about the frigid conditions and his surprise guest's physical relationship with the financial elite?
The rules of humor would typically dictate that, after Fallon stuck the landing and turned the running joke that no one liked into the most masterful misdirection of his career, he should retire the stockbroker bit for good.
However, along with his mayor, Fallon is rewriting the laws of comedy and taking us somewhere we've never been before. This unprecedented running gag is more bizarre and astounding than seeing a Wall Street stockbroker spooning with Zohran Mamdani.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
