
Jimmy Kimmel rewound the clock to the Reagan era Monday night, as he kicked off a rare theme week on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, complete with a retro opening credits sequence, a vintage curtain recalling The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and a monologue built around news items pulled from the same week in the 1980s.
“Welcome to ’80s Week,” Kimmel said at the top of the show. “I was thinking about 2025 and how much it sucks. So I thought it might be nice to hop into the DeLorean and go back in time—to a better place.”
From there, he delivered a series of rimshot-ready one-liners about The Empire Strikes Back, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s video-game warning, and the 1983 government shutdown under Ronald Reagan. (“It lasted for three days,” Kimmel said of the shutdown, before adding incredulously, “Can you imagine the government being shut down for three days?”)
The retro spirit extended to a fake ’80s-era public-service announcement featuring Kimmel and sidekick/security guard Guillermo Rodriguez warning kids to stay away from adult magazines. “Adult material is for adults. Let’s keep it that way,” Kimmel said with full One to Grow On earnestness. “If we do, one day in the future, by the year 2025, kids will have no way to access [it] at all.”
The show’s sponsor? ThighMaster, of course.
The nostalgia carried through the night’s guests. After walking on set through a veritable forest of Carson-styled plants, George Clooney reflected on his early days, including his Facts of Life stint as a mullet-wearing handyman, and told a story about his first film role in Grizzly II: The Predator in 1984—a low-budget production that left him and a teenage Laura Dern stranded in Budapest behind the Iron Curtain.

Later, Mike Tyson revisited his own ’80s breakout, recalling his first professional fight in 1985, the whirlwind year that followed, and his friendship with fellow pop-culture fixture Anthony Michael Hall. “I’m an ’80s guy,” Tyson said, before rattling off his favorite John Hughes movies: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science.
Christopher Cross handled musical duties, sitting in with Kimmel’s house band Cleto and the Cletones before closing out the show by performing his 1980 classic “Sailing”—a song so quintessentially ’80s it practically came with an ocean breeze.

Kimmel’s “’80s Week” is just getting started. Here’s the week’s entire lineup:
• Tue., Nov. 11 – Eddie Murphy, Morgan Fairchild; musical guest Men at Work
• Wed., Nov. 12 – Danny DeVito; musical guest Howard Jones; Debbie Gibson sits in with Cleto and the Cletones
• Thu., Nov. 13 – Jason Bateman, Mr. T; musical guest Susanna Hoffs
Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. Episodes stream next day on Hulu.
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