Jay Leno moves to prime time
Jay Leno (Credit: Justin Lubin, NBC)
SO THIS IS WHAT PASSES for new and now, hip and happenin’ on NBC these days — a 59-year-old recycled late-night talk-show host bringing the same act he’s performed for more than two decades to prime time.
Yes, indeed, “The Jay Leno” premiered Monday night. And, other than the fact that it’s on 95 minutes earlier, it was pretty much exactly Leno’s “Tonight Show,” with minor modifications.
The same Leno coming out to the same manufactured enthusiasm from the studio audience. The same opening monologue, complete with jokes we heard last week on all the late-night talk shows.
The same lame comedy sketches, albeit more of them. And they lasted longer. Longer than they should have, given their limited laughs. (One bit, a faux interview with President Obama, was just embarrassingly unfunny.)
And Leno didn’t clean his act up much for prime time. There were sex jokes in the monologue, sex jokes in the comedy bits.
There were a couple of changes. Leno has a really fantastic-looking new set. And instead of sitting behind a desk doing bad interviews and bits that are supposed to look spontaneous but aren’t, Leno dumped the desk and sat in a chair opposite guests Jerry Seinfeld and Kanye West.
And, without the desk, Leno just looked, well, awkward.
But that wasn’t as bad as when he enabled Kanye West to portray himself as a victim for his bad behavior Sunday night at MTV’s Video Music Awards.
If you liked Leno during the 17 years he hosted “The Tonight Show” and the five years he was the permanent guest host before that, you probably liked “The Jay Leno Show” on Monday.
(Except maybe for the musical number featuring Rihanna, West and Jay-Z. That almost seemed designed to drive away most of Leno’s fan before he got to his popular “Headlines” bit — back behind the desk — to end the show.)
The big question is whether you’re going to watch “The Jay Leno Show” in prime time, particularly when it’s on opposite some of America’s top TV shows.
Will you be watching?