Jimmy Kimmel Live! celebrated the 20th anniversary of its first episode last night, and first musical guest Coldplay returned to the show to perform “Clocks,” perhaps with the aim of really rubbing Kimmel’s own mortality in his face.
The performance had all the hallmarks we’ve come to expect from a nightly forty-minute comedy show put on by a team of smart, funny, overworked, and sleep-deprived people. It began with a totally underbaked bit where Coldplay frontman Chris Martin pretended he wasn’t going to perform anything at all, finding traction after the curtain rose to reveal a full orchestra playing the pop-rock examination of passing time, and it ended on the roof, with dazzling fireworks and Kimmel himself accompanying the band on the saxophone.
Elsewhere in the episode, Kimmel sat down with Snoop Dogg, co-host of his first episode. “I remember you telling me on that first show that you’d quit smoking marijuana,” Kimmel said. “How is that going?”
“Well, I guess I relapsed,” Snoop replied. Kimmel followed that interview by welcoming George Clooney to the stage, at which time Kimmel, Clooney, Snoop, and Guillermo Rodriguez all downed a shot.
Clooney said he had recently revisited Kimmel’s first episode — “It’s like a public access show,” he said — and when Kimmel asked if he thought it went well, the actor replied, “I was so drunk, who knew? I couldn’t remember.” Check out clips from the 20th anniversary episode with Coldplay, Snoop Dogg, and George Clooney below.
