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I never liked Jay Leno. I won’t try to be objective here. His humor has
all the edge of a plastic knife. His “Aw shucks … geez… golly… I kid around
but I really love everybody” schtick was comedically flaccid and just plain NOT FUNNY from when he first started hosting the Tonight Show, was it 17 years ago? God. I remember Johnny Carson handing it off to Jay and having the reaction,“What’s Johnny thinking?” Letterman was the logical choice, but as time went on and Conan started his Late Night with Conan O’Brien show, I thought, “Well, here’s the born successor to Carson – he’s actually funny, he’s self depreciating, he isn’t afraid to do goofy skits like Johnny (In the year 2000…) and he’s got that likability that Carson had – damn - he’s the guy who ought to be on the Tonight show!” Of course, the half-dead brains of the mediocre masses in America thought Leno was just fine, because he was never nasty like Letterman and Conan was just too silly.
Jay Leno walked the safe and uncontroversial path every time – nice guy always, until in recent years when he started doing the quizzes on the street, asking America’s young people about basic knowledge. These bits were funny and damning documentary on our education system and us as
a country, in general. They were also slightly nasty, which was fine, but it was a condescending kind of nastiness, as Leno stood there with a smug expression and air of righteousness, which always made me squirm. Still,
it had some edge, some cut to it. It was as if Leno was finally letting out a little of the steam he’d kept bottled up all those years from doing what the corporate boys wanted.
Remember that once Jay Leno was known as a cutting edge stand-up comic who did social satire in the spirit of Mort Saul and even… can we use their names together …Lenny Bruce? Leno was no Lenny, that's for sure, but he’d skate out onto the edges of safe ice now and then, talking about the absurdities of America life. He could be pretty funny back then, so you have to give him his due for that. (see video right)
And he came from around Boston, my home town. But then, so did Conan. America's Athens, Boston... Poe, Fredick Douglass, Emerson and Thoreau, Malcom X, Noam Chomsky and lots of others all lived here... it's a place where the cutting edge gets sharpened... before it goes out to someplace like Hollywood where it gets dulled and numbed, but I digress...
Carson started auditioning for his replacement and Leno came on, along with Letterman, Gary Shandling and Steve Martin. Out of those, Carson picked Leno. Leno still had a bit of his edge back then, but quickly lost it
the second he hit the Tonight Show stage. He couldn't sell edginess to middle America, so he started selling his likablity, which he sold to America like one of the commercials he used to lampoon. He gushed up to guests,
he had his laugh at anything "ow, man, ho ho ho" Ed McMahon in Kevin Eubanks (but Kevin comes off as a lackey without Ed's smarmy charm)
and it was a close enough approximation of the old Tonight Show to keep viewers. Letterman stood on the sidelines and glowered, taking pot shots
at Leno whenever he had a chance, but eventually Letterman just went on and proved himself the funnier talk show host, with bits like Stupid Pet Tricks, trips to local businesman Rupert Lee's "Hello Deli," the Top Ten list, dropping stuff off the roof and games like "Will It FLoat?" He was also just a funnier monologist and interviewer. For many, though, he was still too caustic and mean-spirited for their tastes and they watched the more paltable, pretend edginess of Leno instead.
Jay bought a thousand cars, made hundreds of millions of dollars, solidified his position as late night talk show king, but the problem was, he still wasn't funny. He was almost funny, tepidly funny, snicker now and then funny. But never laugh out loud funny.
At least not to me. Admittedly, again, a subjective view.
Now, his new show tanks, and according to his version of the story, NBC wouldn't let him out of his contract and forced him into the 10PM show. So it looks like Leno will be back on the Tonight Show as host again, something that I find maddeningly retrograde - a bad step backwards. NBC should be ashamed of themselves for the way they're treating Conan O'Brien, who hasn't been given a legitimate chance to build his audience, the way they gave Leno his chance at the beginning of his run of the Tonight Show - which didn't get such great ratings at first either. Conan has made a schtick of being the hapless guy for so many years, and now it's a sad irony that, given the level of success he's reached and his mastery of comedy, that they put him in the hapless position of be cast-off so shabbily. The recent $45 million contract buy-out will sweeten it, but still, it just isn't right, everyone can see that. Conan exhibited such true class on his last show, in thanking NBC for all the good things that had happened to him over the last twenty years, that it was impossible not to cheer for him.
Conan will survive and go on to do something great, somewhere. Jay, meanwhile, gets ready to return to the Tonight Show. Has there ever
been anyone in television history who came back to a show in such a sullied
and unwelcome fashion? Jay says NBC wouldn't let him out of his contract, that's the only reason he's still around.
Right.
In the light of this, the editorial staff of Muddy Water magazine, meaning me personally, is taking a hard, righteous stand and boycotting the Tonight Show, as long as Jay continues to be on it. While the magazine, again meaning me, is taking that personal editorial stand, this in no way endorses or encourages an organized boycott of the Tonight Show by our readers or anyone else on the planet.* After all, you're all free to think for yourselves.
The only question is whether you want it to be funny or not.
Will Brennan*(Legal disclaimer, in case anyone missed it.)
The Great Tonight Show Fiasco
(or, Muddy Water Magazine adopts Tonight Show boycott)
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