Oh, how droll: The late-night Jimmys swapped shows for April Fools

Ah, the magic of April Fools: That whimsical day when two very rich white guys named Jimmy can swap their nationally broadcast TV shows, producing minimally different episodes than they might otherwise have produced!

That’s right: Late night talk’s two most extant Jimmys pulled a little switcheroo last night, with NBC’s Jimmy Fallon flying to California to fill in as host on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, while Jimmy Kimmel headed to New York to surreptitiously seize the Tonight Show, like some sort of transcontinental Jay Leno.

And while we have no evidence that this whole thing—apparently in the works for two years of meticulous plotting from the greatest minds in “booking a plane ticket and not telling Questlove” science—was a Machiavellian plot by Kimmel to remind the world he’s about a hundred times the joke teller that Jimmy Fallon is, that certainly was the end result. God knows how Tonight Show audiences must have reacted to a couple of actual pointed political jokes flying across their stage, even as Fallon gently tousled the hair of the ABC audience with some extremely tepid jabs about the network’s programming, before defaulting back to an actual, non-ironic “Damn Daniel” joke.

Then the two men called each other for some energetic and comedically charged banter. “This is magical,” Fallon asserted, dead-eyed, to his audience. “This is a lot of fun,” Kimmel blankly replied.

Honestly, the most amusing thing about this whole scenario is imagining what would have happened if someone had tried to pitch it 20 years ago. Can you imagine the veins that would have popped out on Leno and Dave Letterman’s foreheads if you suggested either man cede his stage to the other?

Anyway: The night concluded with simultaneous performances by Red Hot Chili Peppers on both shows?! (They pre-taped the Kimmel one and played live in New York.) Will these giggle-inducing wonders never cease?