Gabe is crazy — if he’d watched more than just one YouTube clip from Jimmy Kimmel’s Big Night Of Stars, he would have discovered the pitch-perfect parody of Barbara Walters Specials (and prime time interview specials in general) the world has desperately needed. The parts of the Tracy Morgan interview he called “boring” were actually strange, wonderfully uncomfortable moments the likes of which have probably never aired on a network in prime time. Rather than dismiss the Jimmy Kimmel Emmy Special because it sounds dumb, let’s celebrate it because it was so incredibly esoteric and weird and completely different from the bland mediocrity we’re used to. Take the Salma Hayek interview and musical number, for example. Can you believe this aired at 7:40 PM on ABC as the lead-in to one of the year’s biggest international television events?:

The difference in opinion here might stem from the somewhat embarrassing fact that I haven’t missed a prime time newsmagazine interview in, say, ten years, so not a single detail of Jimmy’s parody was lost on me. But as a viewer with mixed feelings about Kimmel, I have to tip my hat — this show was much better than it had to be. And almost nothing else on TV is even a fraction better than it has to be. ABC should do this every year.