Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin kiss puppets, Don Lemon debates tattoos on CNN’s New Year’s Eve (Hour 1)

Let’s make one thing clear: We love CNN’s New Year’s Eve show. We don’t care if they don’t cover anything serious in the world for the four hours before the chimes of midnight, mostly because they brings us so much GOLD consistently year in and year out.

They certainly didn’t waste a lot of time with the humor in the first hour of tonight’s broadcast. Let’s bring you what, to us, were some of the highlights.

Kathy and Anderson get puppets – Someone rightfully thought it would be an inspired bit to have fake puppet-versions of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin, and to have them have alternate personalities to each other. Puppet Anderson was rowdy and boozy, while Puppet Kathy was nice and polite. Also, by the end of the sketch Kathy kissed Puppet Anderson on the lips, and in that moment we wondered if this was going to be like a kissing-a-frog-to-turn-him-into-a-prince sort of situation.

Richard Quest – This man is seriously our New Year’s Eve spirit animal. He’s loud, he’s ridiculous, and we love him. What more do you need? He always seems like a medieval cartoon character in a lost world, and tonight he had way too much joy about being located high up in Times Square dressed like a cartoon character.

Don Lemon may be drunk … already – He and Brooke Baldwin are in New Orleans, and this was all sorts of glorious in between him trying to get on the bar, threatening to either get a tattoo or a piercing live on the air, or him boasting about trending last year … for being drunk. Not something to really brag about.

All in all, a wonderful start to our favorite show of the night.

What was your favorite moment from the first hour of tonight’s coverage? Share in the comment below! (Photo: CNN.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OKjGBIMjA