This will be a mercifully short review simply because about 10:15 I was surfing during commercials and found a test pattern which was funnier and more interesting than NBC’s primetime offering last night.
If I had to guess, I would say that Mr. Leno was spending today rethinking all those jokes he used to tell about just how poor the NBC primetime offerings were.
This highly forgettable premiere began with a very weak monolog and was followed by a car wash skit which lasted about an hour too long. A real feat since it was probably ran a total of about five minutes – it just seemed like forever.
Was this Mr. Leno’s revenge on NBC? Or, did he really spend several months working and couldn’t come up with anything better?
His first guest, Jerry Seinfeld, questioned whether the staff couldn’t come up with a better opening guest – someone who had been on TV or in the news recently. He was pulling Jay’s leg, but after a few minutes I was thinking that almost anyone would have been better.
Sure, the audience reacted wildly at such funny bits as when Jerry S. said he had almost been married a decade and a bit less so when we learned that Mr. Leno had about 29 years in.
Oprah showed up via a probably live TV link to plug her own show and ignored Jay, which showed remarkably good judgment on her part even though it was obviously intended to be funny – a fake putdown which turned out to be all too real.
That’s about all I can say about the premiere because I ran across that test pattern about that time and found it far more entertaining.
I was mildly looking forward to this debut in prime time because it looked to have some promise of being an hour of watchable TV.
My lady and I used to watch “The Tonight Show” until it was turned over to a younger crowd so I had no prejudice against Mr. Leno and only wished him the best.
Unfortunately, he seems to be competing for title of “the worst.”
To be fair, he was working without his staff writers due to a labor dispute but I would have expected him to at a minimum have better delivery if they were his own “jokes.”
