First of all, moving from that moronic kid they found online [Andy Milonakis] to Dicky Barrett was a wise move. I have to give them major points there. It's too bad they've relegated Dicky to a more background role than he had, because he does have a good voice and he has a much more reasonable personality than did Milonakis. I must say, though, that I miss the guest announcer bit they were doing initially, but people don't like change on a nightly basis, I guess.

Nice segue to the second major change, the dropping of the weekly guest co-host. I liked it. Some of the co-hosts (or sidekicks, or whatever) were reasonably interesting and entertaining, and only a few were stinkers. A week with Iron Mike? How can you go wrong there? Snoop Dogg, Kathy Griffin, Dane Cook, Anthony Anderson, David Alan Grier, and others were pretty good in my opinion. Even Kathy Lee Gifford was entertaining. Moreso than was Jack Osbourne, to be sure. It's too bad Anthony Anderson has basically dropped off the face of the earth, by the way, but I guess those allegations will do that.

The audience drinking and the blatent ABC censorship went pretty quickly, and while the screen full of ABC Logo was pretty lame, I suppose these two facets of the early show are better off gone. There has been a slight loss of irreverence, though, which tells me that the PC bar was raised just a bit when the audience had to stay sober behind a lengthy delay.

Finally, the show opening and the opening monologue went from interesting and creative (if not sometimes-lame) to mainstream and formulaic. I rather enjoyed the at-desk presentation of the opening jokes and topical news commentary, and especially the use of topical photos and video clips, which showed a much more impressive level of effort and creativity at times than the standard monologue homor offerings. Here again, I guess the viewing public (or maybe ABC management?) didn't want to deal with the constantly-changing opening block of the show, so they've toned it down there as well.

I managed to catch some of the behind-the-scenes documentary they showed during the holiday vacation, and I have to say that Kimmel has been a much more impressive host than I would have guessed from The Man Show days. I'm not saying The Man Show was horrible, but the target audience for Kimmel Live is just a tad larger, and he rose to the challenge brilliantly.

What would I like to see more of? Touch the head, stand-up comics performing, Cousin Sal hidden camera bits, and maybe a little bit of Uncle Frank interviewing people on the street. I'd like to see less Leno-ism... let that guy and his canned, cheap, lame humor fade into the background as he leaves his show and let's return late night talk shows to their former glory!