Copious Notes

Conan O

Billy Crystal was two-thirds of the way through his goodbye medley to Jay Leno on The Tonight Show Thursday when he exclaimed, “Why are we even having this fond farewell? You’re going to be back at 10 p.m. in the fall!”

Yes, we are in the midst of another passing of the torch on The Tonight Show — Jay wrapped up his 17-year run last night and Conan O’Brien will take over Monday.

“I’m going to a secluded spot where no one can find me: NBC prime time,” Leno joked in his monologue, referencing his forthcoming 10 p.m. show and continuing his traditional NBC ribbing.

Leno’s farewell was a tidy wrap-up of his Tonight tenure. He identified Rodney Dangerfield as the inspiration for his nightly economy joke. He revisited his signature Jaywalking segments in which he asked people on the street questions any fifth grader should be able to answer, but they couldn’t, including a woman who thought the President nicknamed Tricky Dick was Bill Clinton (not gonna take the bait) and a man who thought Benjamin Franklin was the first President of the United States.

He had James Taylor come in and sing one of his favorites songs — did he change it to “Sweet Baby Jay”? — and ended on a nice note bringing in all 68 children born to Tonight Show staff during the last 17 years.

But the centerpiece was O’Brien, who talked to Leno about having replaced David Letterman on Late Night, when Dave bolted to CBS after being passed over for the Tonight job, and now replacing Leno, who O’Brien said he has been constantly told leaves him with big shoes to fill.

“Just once, I want to replace some local weatherman that’s been on the job three months and everybody hates because he’s horrible at his job,” O’Brien quipped.

Could be nice, but no. Conan gets the keys to the mothership of late-night TV, Monday.

If he maintains his signature zany, idiosyncratic  style — which seems to be intact in show promos and he had it in his appearance last night — O’Brien will be a much bigger game changer to Tonight than Leno, who never took the show too far from the genial mood Johnny Carson established.

Leno noted several times that he inherited the show at No. 1 in its time slot and was leaving it No. 1. True, though he didn’t lead wire to wire, as Letterman’s Late Show mounted a serious challenge to The Tonight Show and other programs have crowded into the marketplace such as ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live and Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report.

It’s a very different late night TV landscape now than when Johnny Carson retired from The Tonight Show in 1992.

Carson’s farewell was one of those legendary moments in television, particularly the second-to-last episode in which Bette Midler sang One More for My Baby to a teary-eyed King of Late Night. It was a perfect, emotional moment in large part because over his 30 years on the show, Carson had become so singular and beloved.

We also got all choked up because Johnny was going away, and he did. That 1992 sayonara was pretty much it for Carson, who truly retired, mostly staying out of the public eye until his death in 2005.

As Billy and Jay said, Leno is going to prime time. In the fall, he’ll start a 10 p.m. Monday-Friday show on NBC that will in a way offer a challenge to O’Brien’s Tonight Show. You can only get so choked up over Leno retiring from a seat he never quite owned the way his predecessor did, particularly when they’re running ads for his new show during the farewell.

It would have been totally if someone had come on to sing See You in September.

That’s when we’ll really start to see how the next era of late night will look and whether Leno is ready for prime time.

• Lynn Elber of AP has a good wrap up of the finale and Leno’s Tonight Show history.