After missing out on ABC’s upfront event last year to care for his newborn son, Jimmy Kimmel made his triumphant return on Tuesday with his annual monologue roasting ABC’s new shows, the ad buyers he was addressing, and the TV industry across the board.
Since 2002, it’s been a tradition for the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host to deliver a biting monologue dressing down that Disney-ABC Television Group president Ben Sherwood has described as the “annual act of ritual network exec humiliation.
Here are some of Kimmel’s best zingers from this year:
“This is our first-ever ABC-Freeform presentation. I’ve been a big Freeform fan since 20 minutes ago when I learned what it was.”
“Our new slogan is ‘Forward Together.’ Hillary Clinton had a yard sale, and she let us have that for almost nothing.”
“Somehow we have more people watching this upfront right now than most of our 10 o’clock shows.”
“New Fox, now with JAZ pods … The reason Fox is calling them JAZ Pods is because they wanted to find a way to shorten commercial breaks and appropriate black culture at the same time.”
“Fox needs help. They canceled ‘Lucifer’ and ‘The Exorcist’ — they can’t even make a deal with the devil.”
“All we know [about a possible bidding war with Comcast] is that someone is buying Fox, the Murdochs are getting richer, and everyone is redoing their kitchens with a motherf—ing pasta faucet.”
“Now that [Shonda Rhimes] is leaving for Netflix, I can honestly say, on behalf of everyone here at ABC who worked with her for so long, we hope she rots in hell.”
“We’re all very sad to lose Shonda Rhimes, but as the old saying goes, when one door closes, you’re f—ed. So we’re saying goodbye to Shondaland, and we’re going headfirst into Roseanne-istan with no exit plan.”
“No one at ABC expected ‘Roseanne’ to be a big hit, but to be honest, we don’t expect any of our shows to be a hit.”
“‘Murphy Brown’ is back at CBS. That’s right, CBS knows what Millennials want and they’ll be damed if they give it to them.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I have to admit I’m kind of excited about ‘Murphy Brown.’ Really, it’s refreshing to see anything Brown on CBS.”
“America will not see a fourth season of ‘Quantico.’ Much in the same way they did not see a second or third season of ‘Quantico.’”
“We canceled ‘Deception,’ a show about a magician who uses magic tricks to help police solve crimes. Which is a shame because it’s such a good idea.”
“Nathan Fillion is back with a new cop show called ‘The Rookie,’ which is great news if you were worried your Aunt Joanne wouldn’t been horny enough this fall.”
“We’re also picking up a show called ‘Whiskey Cavalier,’ and it’s exciting. It took a while, but we finally came up with a worse title than ‘Cougar Town’ … Should we cancel it now or wait until you leave the room?”
“Let’s be honest, this is all nonsense. Our ratings are going down and our prices are going up. Too bad, eat it! We’re four years from having our brains digitally fused to our Instagram accounts. So here’s what I think we should do: Just let these stupid shows wash over us, clap politely and then let’s just go get black out drunk together. Our president is a lunatic and we’re all going to die.”
“Alright. Let’s not do this again next year. Thank you all for listening, and I wish you all a Whiskey Cavalier.”