Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno in happier times.
Let’s go back in time a few months when NBC announced its “ground breaking” late-night turned prime-time programming coup d’ etat. The hype was exhausting. Leno was a bigger news story than both wars put together. Jeff Zucker touted, “The Jay Leno Show will change the face of prime-time television”. The peacock network was basking in the glow of their brilliant maneuver way before the first show aired. Jay Leno even said, “If we go down in flames, we’ll be laughing on the way down, believe me,” during the summer press tour. Do you think Jay Leno and Jeff Zucker are laughing now? Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Or the talk show before the talk show. Yikes.
There is a great quote from Carrie Fisher’s Delusions of Grandma, “Talk show hosts interviewing other talk show hosts. Many held this to be one of the twelve signs that the world is ending–ending or interesting, Cora couldn’t determine which.“ Well, Cora, we now know the answer to that…it is ending. First of all, have you ever seen The New Jay Leno Show? Besides Jay’s monologues, the whole skit-based program is beyond horrible…even worse than most of the horrible skits on Saturday Night Live. And believe me, that is pretty horrible. It is as though no one is sitting in on those daily pitch meetings to say, “Jay, that is simply not funny”. NBC was so busy trying to keep Leno on their network for fear of his jumping to a rival ABC or CBS, that they gave him free reign. The entire cast, crew and writers should be looking in the mirror and saying, “I Mean…What?!? were we thinking?” I can only describe these immature comedy skits on The Jay Leno Show as “quirky”. And we all know what happens when the word “quirky” is used to describe anything. Must I remind you about the “Quirky Man-Hat“?
The Quirky Man Hat is synonymous with the Quirky Comedy Skit.
