Copious Notes

Jerry Seinfeld was the life of The Jay Leno Show's opening night party. Photo by Justin Lubin | NBC.

Almost half-way through the first episode of The Jay Leno Show, Jerry Seinfeld sat down and cracked a joke about how in the 1990s, when Seinfeld went off the air, people actually retired. But now, in the Brett Favre ’00s, people retire, take a three-day weekend and come back.

It didn’t feel quite like a compliment.

After all, though Favre had a good first game as a Minnesota Viking yesterday, he hasn’t exactly come out of retirement and won Super Bowls.

And really, the initial episode of The Jay Leno Show felt more like the product of a three-day weekend than a three-month break. At half time of Sunday Night Football, Leno joked that NBC was throwing a big Hail Mary pass with his new prime time comedy/variety/talk show that will run at 10 p.m. five-nights a week.

Even if it fails to achieve, Law & Order- or ER-like ratings, the Leno show reportedly could be a success because a whole week of the show costs less than an hour of a scripted drama.

But the debut episode felt like a pass that went through the receiver’s hands and fell to the ground. And despite all the chatter about this being different from The Tonight Show, Leno’s gig until May, the only things that seemed to differentiate The Jay Leno Show were changing the order of some Tonight Show staples and taking away Leno’s desk.

The show opened with a title sequence that looked like something out of the first few years of Saturday Night Live. Then Leno emerged on a set that looked smaller than his old Tonight Show digs — or Conan O’Brien’s new Tonight Show digs, for that matter — though it is reportedly a bigger studio.

Leno came out and delivered a mildly amusing, topical monologue which led into two taped bits. In the big spotlight piece, Hangover actor Dan Finnerty sang to a car wash customer who seemed as uncomfortable experiencing this as it was to watch it.

Seinfeld finally sparked the show to life, including a short Oprah Winfrey interview in which he asked all the questions before a faux flummoxed Leno.

The most compelling moment of the show wasn’t humor, but actually Kanye West coming out to discuss his classless hijacking of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech on Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards. Leno clearly hit a nerve with West by asking what his late mother would have thought of his behavior. Then West joined Jay-Z and Rhianna for a solid performance of Run This Town.

But Leno’s first show was far from solid — a routine Tonight Show at best. Of course, Leno’s Tonight Show is proof you can’t count the man with the anvil chin out early. He struggled early, only to dominate his time slot for most of his 17-year late night run.

But there, he was facing news and other talk shows. At 10, he’ll contend with scripted dramas and other standard network fare. And it’s first night out, The Jay Leno Show was a not ready for prime time player.

Note: 35-minutes later, on The Tonight Show, O’Brien welcomed viewers to NBC’s “night of a thousand monologues,” and proceeded to deliver a much funnier one than Leno’s, covering many of the same topics.

Some other views:

• Newark Star-Ledger’s Alan Sepinwall.
• Atlanta Constitution’s Rodney Ho.
• Ed Bark of Uncle Barky’s Bytes.
• Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times.
• Time Magazine’s James Poniewozik. (Interesting here that several commenters seem to be people who never stayed awake for the musical guests on The Tonight Show.)

Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1992. Photo by Douglas C. Pizac | AP.

With the latest changing of the guard at The Tonight Show we were once again chatting about late night talk hosts, asking the question, could anyone truly replace Johnny Carson?

But the obituaries Tuesday morning brought a reminder of late night’s truly irreplaceable man: Ed McMahon.

Yes, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel have all comanded the desk of a late night chat show and millions have watched. But none of them has had an Ed McMahon.

Leno and Letterman each used their bandleaders as foils. Jimmy Fallon is currently out there on his own in his new Late Night gig, and could desperately use an Ed or Tina Fey — his old Weekend Update partner on Saturday Night Live. O’Brien has come closest to an Ed with Andy Richter, who actually performed an Ed-like role at the beginning of O’Brien’s Late Night gig, and has returned as the announcer for O’Brien on Tonight.

But even Conan acknowledged that there’s been nothing like Ed’s straight man to Johnny — and sometimes vice versa.

“Sitting alongside Johnny, Ed was an indelible part of what I think is the most iconic two-shot in television history,” O’Brien said on Tuesday’s Tonight Show. “It’s impossible for anyone to imagine the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson without Ed McMahon.”

And it is. Think about Carnac the Magnificent, and Ed is there. Think about any Johnny Carson skit, and Ed was there. He was a star who never really threatened to eclipse his star. He created a role and perfected it.

Johnny has had numerous successors. Ed has yet to be succeeded.

Conan O'Brien at the Tonight Show desk, Monday. Photo by Paul Drinkwater | NBC.

In a way, Dave won.

Sort of.

Back in 1992, Johnny Carson was leaving The Tonight Show desk, and the battle was between genial comedian Jay Leno and scrappy David Letterman, whose Late Night followed Tonight, to take over the hosting gig. NBC opted for the relatively safe choice of Leno, who had his own-shtick, but didn’t really divert Tonight from it’s easygoing, mid-American tone — none of that Letterman goofiness, like dropping watermelons off buildings.

David Letterman on The Late Show in 2008, sporting his "strike beard," to show solidarity with the writers' strike. Photo by John Paul Filo | CBS.

Meanwhile, Letterman bolted NBC to launch an 11:30 talker on CBS that, though it still trails Tonight in the ratings, is the only late night talk show to successfully directly compete with Tonight.

Replacing him on Late Night was Conan O’Brien, who continued that late, late goofball aesthetic with the non sequiturs, idiosyncratic skits and off-beat stars and musical guests. So, with Conan making the move to Tonight, would he be Conan-lite, for the earlier hour, or bring the after-midnight vibe to 11:30.

The answer started coming pretty quick on his debut, Monday night. The show opened with O’Brien sitting in a New York office going over a check list of things he needed to do before his new show got started. When he hit the last item, “Move to L.A.,” it started a montage of O’Brien running across the country, making stops at Wrigley Field and — first non sequitur — dropping by a doll shop for a detailed discussion of doll hair.

When O’Brien arrived at the studio , we saw that he had forgotten his keys back in the Big Apple, so he knocked down the door with a tractor.

The introductions brought a flurry of familiar faces for Late Night with Conan O’Brien fans, including original Late Night sidekick Andy Richter as the Tonight Show announcer and Max Weinberg now heading up the Tonight Show Orchestra, which plays a variation on O’Brien’s Late Night theme.

O’Brien started the show with a reliably funny monologue, saying he figured he had timed things perfectly by staying with a last-place network, moving to a bankrupt state to host a show sponsored by General Motors. Quite a bit of humor focused on Conan moving from New York to Los Angeles for The Tonight Show, and then he launched another video segment that showed while this production may have a little more SoCal cool than Late Night, it is very much Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show.

In the bit, he commandeered a tour tram at Universal Studios, where his Tonight Show is taped. The ride included driving the tram in circles with the passengers chanting, “Circle! Circle!” and Conan directing the tram out onto the streets where he, among other things, stopped at a dollar store to get something for everyone.

When he came out of the segment and the studio audience was chanting “Circle! Circle!,” Conan was clearly in his comfort zone.

If O’Brien stays on this course, it will signal the biggest stylistic shift for The Tonight Show in 47 years, save for dropping from 90 to 60 minutes. It sort of feels like a generational change for those of us that liked and appreciated The Tonight Show, but viewed Late Night as our own.

On Late Night with David Letterman, Dave used Tonight’s basic format, but injected it with a hip, irreverent and frequently abrasive humor all his own. When O’Brien took over for Letterman, he kept that vibe going, and in some ways perfected it.

Now that O’Brien has made to the Late Night-to-Tonight move many anticipated for Letterman nearly two decades ago, and has done it staying true to himself, that Letterman aesthetic truly dominates after-hours chatter.

With O’Brien’s ascension, Letterman probably has lost any hope of ever hosting the flagship late-night talk show. But as he looks across the dial at Conan’s Tonight Show, he can take some satisfaction in knowing he changed the genre.

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.

Twilight star Robert Pattison chats with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. Is this the sort of thing viewers want to see at 10 p.m.? Copyrighted NBC/Universal photo by Paul Drinkwater.

When Jay Leno’s prime time deal with NBC was announced Tuesday, I did some math — which is really rare for me.
Jay + Conan + Jimmy = 3 hours of talk TV every night, + 35 minutes of local news thrown in at 11 o’clock.

That’s a lot of yakking.

Oh, I forgot Last Call With Carson Daly — 31/2 hours of yakking.

There are some things that are obviously smart about NBC’s decision to re-sign The Tonight Show’s outgoing host for a 10 p.m. prime-time show, slated to start next fall.

Leno is still enjoying a 13-year reign as the king of late-night chat, so if the Peacock had allowed him to walk, he probably would have taken a substantial audience with him, potentially making life miserable for his successor, Conan O’Brien.

Jay Leno and Jeff Zucker, president and chief executive officer, NBC Universal. Copyrighted NBC/Universal photo.

And with the move, NBC gets more of what chief Jeff Zucker has been going for: cheap programming.

This was the man who in 2006 declared that the 8-to-9 p.m. block would be all reality and game shows, because those were cheaper to produce, though that has clearly changed.

According to Business Week, Leno’s show will cost $2 million a week to produce versus $15 million to fill the 10-to-11 p.m. slot with dramas.

And something Leno’s show will have over reality and game shows is a truly time-tested formula. Since the reality craze took hold nearly a decade ago, there are scads of concepts that have hit big and fizzled as viewers got tired of them — anyone seen Queer Eye for the Straight Guy lately?

But that monologue-sketch-celebrity-guests-musical-act-and-out format has endured for decades.

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