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Fallon's '7th Floor West' is a silly, soapy treat
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Fallon's '7th Floor West' is a silly, soapy treat
By FRAZIER MOORE,AP Television Writer AP - Saturday, July 18
NEW YORK - Since arriving in March, "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" has proved itself a worthy player in the world of TV comedy-talk.
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It has also given birth to an unexpected world within a world _ a dandy little miniseries planted within "Late Night" that spoofs reality soap TV like "The Hills" in a bizarro backstage version of "Late Night."
"7th Floor West" was introduced during Fallon's first week hosting "Late Night" (which airs weeknights at 12:35 a.m. EDT on NBC). But recent installments have premiered dependably on "Late Night" each Monday, making "7th Floor West" its own five minutes of micro-must-see TV.
The title hints at a Central Park West brand of loftiness, while literally addressing the office space in Rockefeller Center's G.E. Building that houses the "Late Night" staff. It is here that the high-drama, brashly vacuous action (not that there's really much going on) takes place.
Jimmy Fallon plays Jimmy, the good-guy host of a late-night talk show who is constantly undermined by his sneaky head writer, Miles (real-life "Late Night" head writer A.D. Miles) in cahoots with Jimmy's turncoat former assistant Lauren (actually, his current assistant Lauren Cave), with the rest of the show's writers caught, rather unconcernedly, in between.
Bottom line: "7th Floor West" is very much like the real "Late Night," without being anything like it. What it mostly resembles is "The Hills" blended with the shallowest elements of high school. It's letter-perfect, down to the mewling theme song and Jimmy's voiced-over recap of previous episodes (like when he threw an office pizza party that Miles sabotaged, and, before that, agonized over which color tie, red or blue, he should wear on opening night).
A few days ago, with taping wrapped on that evening's "Late Night" hour, a scene from this upcoming Monday's "7th Floor West" (its ninth installment) was being shot in the real-life writers' room. (You can catch up with past episodes on the miniseries' own Web site.)
For the scene, Miles gathers Amy Ozols (who writes the "7th Floor West" scripts), Wayne Federman, Bashir Salahuddin, Morgan Murphy and Tim McAuliffe at the conference table, strewn with newspapers and Chinese food cartons.
Jimmy enters with a cheery, "Great show, tonight!" Then he stops short, noticing the fliers Miles has handed out to everyone else.
The photocopied fliers describe how to cough into your shirt sleeve so as not to spread germs. But Jimmy is rightly suspicious of Miles' power play. He knows Miles is up to something.
In take after take, Fallon reacts with varying combinations of ire, sadness, bewilderment, dismay and bottled-up rage.
"I need to talk to you," he seethes/whispers/erupts at Miles.
"Let me guess," Miles fires back mockingly _ "out in the hallway."
"NO! NOT out in the hallway," says Jimmy in desperate defiance, then helplessly backs down. "Actually. yeah, there's much more privacy in the hallway." They exit.
"I cranked the weird up too much," Fallon chortles after one take, where he did some exasperated flapping noises with his lips. "But I like the last few before that."
"Yeah," says Michael Blieden, yet another "Late Night" writer, who serves as "7th Floor West" director _ "the ones where it's awkward and you're struggling internally with what to do."
With a few minutes to kill before the next setup, Fallon marvels how "7th Floor West" has caught on with his audience.
"We didn't think it was going to be recurring," he says. "We first thought it would be a one-off."
Now, as it builds toward its "season conclusion" in a few weeks, many questions remain _ like, what will happen at the much-awaited In-Office Beach Party?
But is there any danger that the audience will be confused about what's real and what isn't in the corridors of 7th Floor West?
Fallon chuckles, "People ask me, 'Who's that girl who plays your assistant?' I say, 'That's my assistant!'"
Fine, but the individual who gets on-screen credit for creating "7th Floor West" (Paulson Grickrod) doesn't exist.
Give the credit instead to Ozols, the "Late Night" writer whose unapologetic love of reality soap has helped her transform "Late Night" beyond the pale _ with a rich, silly puzzle no one has an answer for.
"Why does Jimmy let all of these people work for him, when they're so mean to him?" she wonders with a laugh. "It's HIS show!"
___
On the Net:
http://www.seventhfloorwest.com
___
EDITOR'S NOTE _ Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org
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