For its 25th season, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire enjoyed a triumphantly hilarious premiere. The Jimmy Kimmel-hosted reboot had previously been hobbled by COVID-19 protocols that kept live studio audiences from joining in on the fun, but it came back this season with an engaged (and sometimes helpful) crowd and a new casting twist: This year, the contestants are all celebrity pairings playing for charity. The results were knee-slappingly funny.
Wednesday night’s (July 10) show started with the nonstop banter bash between longtime friends John Mulaney and Nick Kroll (playing for the Innocence Project and Artists and Comedy vs Cancer respectively). Their friendship and quick wit earned some truly laugh-out-loud moments, none of which was funnier than when they used almost every lifeline available just to answer a question about the Easter Island head statues that anyone who ever scrolled past a Facebook clickbait ad would know.
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After the 50:50 lifeline took away both of their preferred (albeit incorrect) choices, they turned to their phone-a-friend, who just so happened to be late-night host Jon Stewart, proving to be exceedingly useless (His response? “Is ‘I don’t have any f***ing idea an answer?’”). Luckily, they ignored their goofily-discussed instinct to guess that the things used to be homes and turned to the audience to learn that the answer was they have bodies.
Unfortunately, host Jimmy Kimmel forgot his Succession Season 4 trivia and cost them the whole thing when it slipped his mind that Cousin Greg’s short-lived girlfriend’s purse was, indeed, called “ludicrously capacious,” so they walked away with $32,000 for their good causes. But they left a lot of side stitches in their wake, that’s for sure.
Round two went to hilarious ’90s duo Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell (playing for the Cristian Rivera Foundation and National College Resources Foundation), who didn’t have as many zingers to share but brought the chuckles with their impromptu physical comedy. Thanks to them, we now know that the chairs do indeed spin a full 360 degrees, but more importantly, we also learned that the Goodburger stars still have a signature handshake and comedic timing to spare (consider the on-the-spot dance they did to the ask-the-audience wait music). The audience ultimately did them dirty by not knowing about Princess Diana’s sheep sweater, but it didn’t matter. These two were all smiles about netting $32,000 for their charities of choice, and were all enriched by them joining forces once again for the greater good of our entertainment.
We’ll have to wait and see whether the other pairings of the season measure up to these back-to-back buddy comedy masters, but certainly, the season is off to a strong start.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC
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