Jay Leno: It's Not the Tonight Show. It's, Um, the Ten-ight Show
NBC
The Jay Leno Show, NBC has been telling us all summer, was "comedy at 10," not simply a second Tonight Show. Instead, what we got was a monologue, a couple taped comedy bits, an interview, a musical act, another interview and Headlines.
Somebody refresh my memory: what was The Tonight Show again? Because clearly I was watching the wrong show all these years.
OK, so at first blush, NBC and Leno have delivered something pretty Tonight-like. Which means that they're not out to win over critics who liked Letterman better. Instead, they're giving old Jay fans what they like—for far less dough than producing 10 p.m. dramas—interspersed with enough of Whatever People are Talking About Today to get a churning drive-by audience. (Possibly a smart strategy, but we'll get to that.) Let's look at what changed and didn't:
* Jay comes out on a very brightly lit stage, to what sounds like the theme to an '80s cop show.
* There was a monologue, a good bit shorter than what we're used to from the Tonight Show, though it's possible tonight's show was trimmed in spots to make room for Hurricane Kanye. A few jokes stockpiled over the summer, about the Cash for Clunkers program ("I made $5 billion!"), "You lie!" and the beer summit. Best joke—"This is not another annoying promo, this is the actual show!"—comes, per colleague Aaron Barnhart, from David Letterman's Late Show debut. There's a Bush joke, but no Monica Lewinsky joke. You gotta save something for the second night.
* First taped comedy bit: Leno on Cheaters, about to find out who he's being cuckolded by. He drives up to see Kevin Eubanks with—a Jay Leno impersonator. I, and about a dozen people on my Twitter feed, thought the payoff would be Conan O'Brien.
* Second comedy bit: Dan Finnerty and the Dan Band serenade a woman at a car wash. A couple funny moments—"Would you like me any better if I whipped out my hose?"—but the long segment leaves me wishing they'd skipped the full detailing package.
* First interview, old chum Jerry Seinfeld, entering through set of glass double doors like the entrance to his agent's office. He's funny: "You know, in the '90s, when we quit a show, we actually left. Not in the Brett Favre, Lance Armstrong double aughts." Mostly, though, I'm noticing the absence of a desk. Maybe I'll get used to it, but Leno doesn't seem to know what to do with his leg (which is notoriously fidgety). I find myself distracted focusing on how far Jay's pant leg will rise up on his sock.
* An "interview" using cut-tape footage with President Obama, which is about as funny as cut-tape interviews always are. Leno produces a fruit tart to get the answer "tort reform," then smears it on his own face. I check my interview notes with Jay Leno, who did in fact literally tell me he was never a fan of the "throw a pie school of comedy."
* The Kanye! I have to give it to Jay here. Yes, getting Kanye West to cry by bringing up what his mother would have thought about his acting like a jackass on MTV may have been disproportionate to the crime. But it's a totally unexpected question, leaving West silent. In this sense, the question may have been too good—Jay feels compelled to step into the uncomfortable quiet and let Kanye off the hook. (One weird thing: Jay never sets up what exactly Kanye did—grabbing the mic from Taylor Swift at the MTV VMAs. What is the overlap between viewers who follow Kanye West and those who follow Jay Leno?)
* It's a moment. Is it a Hugh Grant moment? People will sure as hell watch it online tomorrow. But it was the opposite of Grant's funny catharsis—it's uncomfortable and a little sad and then Leno asks him, "Ya ready to sing?"
* And he does, with Jay-Z and Rihanna, and the three of them blow the doors off. It's a highlight of the show.
* Finally, we get Headlines, which are... Headlines. Did you know there are Chinese restaurants named "Hung Far Low" and "House of Poon"? Hey, Jay! I hear they serve a pu-pu platter! Use it! It'll kill!
Again, though, what you think of Jay Leno is what you think of Jay Leno. More interesting at this point is how The Jay Leno Show works as a programming strategy, and the first night with Kanye shows an aspect of the show's strategy that could be brilliant or doomed.
Done the right way, The Jay Leno Show could be The Tonight Show Plus. You get the old fans who'll follow Jay anywhere. Plus you get a more fluid audience who tunes in for the new comedians and the collection of hot-button guests and acts he's collected.
The question is: in the YouTube age—though NBC swears the Leno show will be "DVR-proof"—how much of this audience will sit through an hour of Jay, and how many just wait for bits they want online?
Everyone's asking how well Jay will compete against CSI. I wonder if his biggest rival, in the long run, isn't YouTube.
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Video of Kanye apologizing to Jay Leno:
http://www.gotchamediablog.com/2009/09/kanye-apologizes-to-jay-leno-performs.html -
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[...] “NBC insisted ‘The Jay Leno Show’ was not another ‘Tonight’. So what show was my TiVo accidentally recording on NBC at 11:30 all those years?” the critic asked. (Full review here). [...]
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[...] perfectly comfy // Most of the jokes were stale What if "Leno Show" is never funny? // Leno seems to be only targeting his old fans More snoozeworthy than creative // Leno: Cloned? // Bud Light commercial was funnier Kanye West [...]
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I was happy to see Jerry Seinfeld, tittered at the "Obama Interview," and smiled through the carwash skit. The performance by Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Rhianna, though, was a perfect example of the public's refusal to acknowledge the fact that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes! Were we really expected to sit through that torture? Did Leno really think his audience would enjoy that? Was his show the place for Kanye West to try to elicit some pity for the poor, misunderstood thug whose mother wouldn't approve his bad behavior? Please. I would have expected Leno to give the stage to Taylor Swift instead so she could gain back a little bit of the limelight she lost to West at the VMA's. Instead, he gave more to West who didn't deserve it. What a waste of time. That's one show I won't be watching this Fall.
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The performance may have been the only part I truly enjoyed.
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Not to mention, that performance was surely booked long in advance. To cancel it the day of the taping would have been to cancel on Rhianna and Jay-Z as well. And you can't exactly just call VMA-winning artists like Taylor Swift and book them for a performance that afternoon. It just doesn't work like that.
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While I agree that the JayZ/Rhianna/West song brought much needed energy to the show, it was so discordant in terms of the tone of the rest of the show that it threatens to turn out Jay's "regular" viewers. Its the kind of move that affiliates are likely to resent, because Jay's audience is the local news audience (the "younger demographic will tune to comedy central at 11) and that kind of performance is likely to drive that core audience away from NBC affiliates (especially in markets where there is "news" competing with Jay -- older audiences will switch to catch the weather and/or sports scores, and call it a night.)
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A few thoughts, stolen from my live Twittering during the show:
1) I think the opening credits looked far more like an old SNL opening....maybe the one they use for "classic" old episodes?
2) Jay in the sweater for the "Cheaters" skit looked like an old lesbian, to steal liberally from the famous website.
3) If Jay's "acting" in the "Cheaters" skit is the competition, can Caruso even clear that minimal acting bar at 10 EST/9 PM CST on CSI:Miami?
4) "Old School" was released in 2003, so, yes, I suppose the Dan Band does qualify as something that is "new" and "fresh" to Jay Leno.
5) Irony at work: if NBC had given a third of its primetime to Jay Leno in the late 1980s/early 1990s, "Seinfeld" probably would have been cancelled for low ratings, if it ever would have been given a chance to air at all. It's fascinating to think about the shows that NBC might never have aired (or would have cancelled) if they'd always given up that third hour of primetime.....Cheers probably never makes it, for example.
6) Leno interviewing Seinfeld -- an interviewer who asks nothing of substance, questioning a comedian whose comedy is about nothing. The nation stares into an abyss.
7) I wish Kanye West would have interrupted Jay Leno at some point to announce that Craig Ferguson was more deserving of being given a third of NBC's primetime.
For a night where Jay recycled his own Tonight Show (and even the Dave joke you mentioned, James), I'm shocked he didn't lead off the Kanye interview by recycling his opening question to Hugh Grant: "What the hell were you thinking?"9) Jay-Z, Kanye, and Rihanna may have been phenomenal, but you couldn't get a more discordant opening musical act for Jay's audience.
10) Why was Rihanna dressed like Ivan Drago's girlfriend/wife from Rocky IV?
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So I only really dipped in to watch a tiny bit, catching the Seinfeld interview. Which was fine. But more than Jay's leg/sock, I was distracted by the sidetables. One looked like a rolling suitcase, the other like a paper shredder.
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Thoughts:
It was indeed, the Tonight Show at 10:00. They'd have done better letting Jay keep his show and given the 10:00 slot to "The Conan O'Brien Show." It didn't live up to all that hype. It wasn't new, it wasn't fresh or different. They just took away the desk. And it would have been even more of a let down, were it not for Kanye providing him with the perfect series premiere fodder.
The Kanye interview: my friend actually anticipated the mother question, so I was sitting there hoping that is what he would ask. I wasn't taken by surprise as much as you or everyone else (or Kanye), but it was still the perfect question. I think not *too* good, but even better *because* of the uncomfortable 15 second silence. What better way to make him understand what it feels like to be caught off guard like that in front of millions of people, humiliated, at a complete loss for words? I think it got through to him, and so props to Jay for that.
I, too, was expecting Conan during the Cheaters skit. Has Jay ever even mentioned Conan in all this? It's kind of weird.
Car wash skit went on waaaaay too long. Obama interview - really, you can't come up with a better skit on your much-anticipated opening night? It wasn't unfunny, but it was underwhelming.
Overall, I give it a "meh."
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[...] Time Magazine’s James Poniewozik. [...]
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@ James
I agree completely with you about the lack of a desk. I noticed that pant leg thing as well. But that can't be hard to fix...right?
I enjoyed the Rhianna/Jay Z performance but I couldn't help but feel awkward for the live audience and the audience at home. And they put the performance before Headlines. Smart move to keep people from tuning out.
I didn't even watch the Kanye interview. I can't listen to that guy talk. I can't listen to him apologize because I don't think it's genuine. He's only doing what his PR people are telling him to do.
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I was terribly disappointed in Jay's first show. Based on all of the NBC promos & hype, I thought it was going to be a COMEDY SHOW!! I found the promos so much funnier than last night's show. For example, one promo showed Jay on the street asking a passerby how many stars were in the American flag--to which she answered she couldn't count because the wind was blowing too hard. Another was the game show skit where he started the quote "you can lead a horse to water: & the guest finished it with "but you can't drown it."
I expected "funny" with no monologue, etc. I challenge that it wasn't even close in competition to his tenure on the Tonight Show.
I was so looking forward to ending my evenings with laughter as laughing is so therapeutic but found no laughter therapy last night. The car wash was sort of funny but not a "side splitter" by any means.
I recognize that Jay has plenty of time to improve the show's content but he better get cracking or he will totally lose my husband & me!
Willing to give him a little time to improve but NOT forever!!
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I actually did DVR this, and then watched it during the affiliate news, so apparently this show isn't DVR-proof (although I haven't watched any show at its regular time in years). I wasn't expecting much at all, so it wasn't a disappointment. Def is the Ten-ight show--way to coin that one, James. I liked seeing West get all misty-eyed and confused, but I was more distracted by his hair, and I'm thinking Jay should've let the "hard question" sink in, instead of rescuing him with the paternal leg pat--the whole thing felt more like a kid getting reprimanded for smoking pot, than a public figure making an @ss of himself.
Ultimately, I think Jay will have a consistent following simply because he's that big and his fan base still makes up the largest percentage of the population.
I can't wait for Conan to get through this awkward freshman stage and really make Tonight his own...I might actually stay up for that. -
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[...] James Poniewozik, Time Magazine: The question is: in the YouTube age-though NBC swears the Leno show will be “DVR-proof”-how much of this audience will sit through an hour of Jay, and how many just wait for bits they want online? [...]
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I appreciated Conan's opening jokes about it being the night of a thousand monologues. I'm pretty neutral toward Leno & watched last night for the hope of seeing something a little different. Yep, I was disappointed. I would've been more content if he was trying something different, even if it still wasn't funny.
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[...] Tuned In A blog about television by TIME's TV critic James Poniewozik. Tuned In Feed Daily E-mail Updates « PreviousJay Leno: It's Not the Tonight Show. It's, Um, the Ten-ight Show [...]
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Those of us who liked Jay Leno on The Tonight Show still like him-- he makes us smile at the end of a tough day, and going to sleep an hour earlier is a big bonus.
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leno should have canceled kanye west...
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[...] Jay Leno: It’s Not the Tonight Show. It’s, Um, the Ten-ight Show The Jay Leno Show, NBC has been telling us all summer, was “comedy at 10,” not [...] [...]
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[...] Kanye did–grabbing the mic from Taylor Swift at the MTV VMAs,” notes Tuned In. “What is the overlap between viewers who follow Kanye West and those who follow Jay Leno?” Well, we bet everyone’s pretty familiar with Kanye now that President Obama has called [...]
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