'The Jay Leno
Show,' underwhelming
You can give the star one thing. He was relaxed.
By Tom Conroy
Sep 15, 2009
Usually when critics give a mixed review to a talk show host’s first night on a new job, they say that they hope he (it’s almost always a he) will be less nervous in future shows.
To judge from the first night of “The Jay Leno Show,” Leno should be a little more nervous.
Leno was so relaxed that it almost seemed as if he didn’t care. Perhaps, just as NBC has been doing ever since the network announced that he would be taking over the 10 p.m. hour on weeknights, Leno was trying to lower expectations.
Except for the new set and the bigger guests, the hour could have been any randomly chosen episode of “The Tonight Show.”
One segment had some actual news value. Leno had booked Kanye West, who made headlines Sunday night when he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV "Video Music Awards" to say that Beyoncé should have won. Observers have been comparing this booking to Leno’s good fortune when Hugh Grant appeared on “The Tonight Show” just after Grant’s arrest for soliciting a prostitute back in the '90s.
West, who had been scheduled to perform a musical number with Rihanna and Jay-Z, sat down with Leno in the two facing armchairs that have replaced the traditional desk and couch. West delivered an inarticulate but apparently sincere apology. The problem was that he couldn’t reach a conclusion; he kept repeating variations on “It was wrong” and “I was rude.”
Channeling Barbara Walters, Leno asked West what his late mother, whom Leno had met, would have thought of what West did. An awkward pause followed, during which West bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t break down, but he did give a strange response in which he said that he’s never dealt with his “hurt” because he’s been so busy with his music but that he planned to take time off to reflect.
Leno seemed glad to end it there, and the crowd applauded wildly, either in support of West or out of relief. It was the kind of interview that David Letterman would probably have nailed, either by drawing better responses from West or by making the awkwardness the point of the segment.
Throughout the show, Leno failed to rise to the occasion. After an oddly subdued introduction by the announcer and a low-key performance of the new theme music by Kevin Eubanks and his band, Leno walked out and shook hands with a small crowd of audience members who had come onto the stage.
Although he had three months to prepare material, the monologue was shorter than the usual “Tonight Show” one, and less funny. For example, he said that President Obama was going to have a “root-beer summit” with West and Swift, then explained that Swift is only 19 and thus can’t drink alcohol.
Leno set up a taped segment by announcing that he had made a foolish choice during his break from TV and had appeared on a reality show, which turned out to be “Cheaters.” He discovered that Eubanks had secretly been seeing a Jay look-alike. The segment fizzled out, but the audience burst into applause anyway.
After the commercial break, Dan Finnerty and the Dan Band appeared in an overlong taped piece titled “Everything Is Better With Music,” in which Finnerty serenaded a carwash customer as she waited for her vehicle to be cleaned.
The biggest booking coup of the night (at least before West’s "VMA" incident) was Jerry Seinfeld, who came out in a tuxedo in honor of the occasion but then proceeded to mock Leno. He pointed out that he hasn’t been on TV much since quitting “Seinfeld” a decade ago. “In the ’90s,” he said, “when we quit a show, we actually left. But not in the Brett Favre-Lance Armstrong double O’s.”
After getting Leno to admit that he’d tried to book Oprah Winfrey as his first guest, Seinfeld said that he’d managed to get her with no difficulty. Sure enough, Winfrey appeared on a monitor and chatted pleasantly with Seinfeld while Leno pretended to try to get a word in edgewise. Again, it was something of a missed opportunity, but at least that was the point.
Leno kept teasing his “interview with the president,” which turned out to be a moderately funny tape of him asking questions with answers taken from Obama’s interview on “60 Minutes.” When Leno asked the president if he thought the new show would succeed, the reply was “I guarantee you this will be pronounced dead.”
The interview with West followed, leading into a performance of “Run This Town” by West, Jay-Z and Rihanna, which was by far the most energetic part of the hour and helped clear the air after West’s embarrassing moment.
Leno introduced the next commercial break by saying that it would feature a preview of the local news. Indeed, a news tease was the first spot during the break; this is presumably one of the ways that NBC is attempting to calm local affiliates that are worried about the expected smaller lead-in audience. Later, Leno signed off by urging people to watch their local news, which followed without a commercial break.
The final comedy segment was the popular “Headlines” bit, in which Leno reads typos, goofs and strange advertisements from newspapers. You can’t miss with headlines like “Q&A With Local Attorney Dick Talkin” or an ad for a Chinese restaurant called Hung Far Low.
But that’s a bit that is lifted directly from “The Tonight Show.” If all Leno is going to do is tweak that show’s format for his new time slot, he’s going to have to come up with better material. People simply have higher standards for entertainment at 10 p.m.
Of course, Leno started out slow on “The Tonight Show,” too. But then he acquired a real competitor in David Letterman, who inspired him to up his game.
Leno’s lackluster first night on “The Jay Leno Show” made it seem as if he were going along with the NBC party line and planning to concede the ratings race to the dramas running on ABC and CBS.
He never was the hippest, funniest or most interesting man in the late-night business, but he always was the hardest-working, and that was a big part of his appeal to Middle America.
If he starts to come across as a self-satisfied star coasting through the hour, his audience might drop so low that even NBC will start to worry.
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