Thursday night's goodbye was seen by 14.6M people, more than all Tonight Show with Leno episodes except the one following the Cheers finale, his first episode, and the one following the Seinfeld finale. I guess not coincidentally, those are 4 of the relatively few Leno Tonight Shows that I have seen as well:
http://www.eonline.com/news/508460/jay-leno-s-final-tonight-show-ratings-the-biggest-audience-since-1998 I watched it yesterday, and realized I am not in a good position to evaluate it. It seemed pretty much what you would expect. The main retrospective (perhaps they did other similar things all week and this is the only one I saw?) was introduced by Leno saying something like one of the things he would remember best was the fun he had had with politicians. I am pretty sure that if Dave were to give a similar intro to a retrospective on his last show, what would follow would be highlights of his interviews with politicians; for Leno, it was all various bits - I guess one of his signature pieces has been photoshopping video of politicians in humorous ways. I'm sure most of these were funny in the original context (some were funny just as clips), but it struck me as a strangely impersonal way to summarize Leno's 22 years at the show. It would have been better introduced as an homage to his writing and production staff than as a retrospective on his own contribution to the show. It was also odd in that everything I have read about Leno vs Fallon has emphasized Leno's almost complete lack of an online, viral footprint (which apparently is Fallon's signature). These videos seemed to scream: "Here is the kind of thing we were never very good at, but the next guy is great at". Bill Crystal, who for my money has aged the worst of every comic of his generation (I don't mean in his looks, but just in how annoying and unfunny he has become) did some kind of pale echo of his old Oscar intros, but at least tried to get closer to what I would have thought would have been the Leno signature - highlighting jokes, or at least punchlines, from his monologue over the years (at least, I assume Crystal was giving us actual Leno punchlines, and not making up lame parodies of the kind of think Leno would have said). I would have much preferred seeing a montage of say Leno's 22 best monologue jokes (one for each year?). That is supposed to be his strength - lets see it (we certainly did not see a lot of evidence of that during the actual last monologue). He did at least reference Carson at the very end (as I recall, he did not mention him at all in his first show, or if he did it was very muted) - though to my ear it was clunky and, predictably, derivative. Again for me the inevitable comparison to how I think Dave would have done it was unavoidable (if obviously unfair). Nobody in late night television (including IMO Paar) is as good as Dave sitting behind his desk just talking to the home viewer. Though to be fair, I did see Dave on Thursday night, and while he did acknowledge Leno's last show, it was perfunctory (it seemed like he was reading from Leno's wikipedia page) and lacked the intimate notes from their personal history that he has at times dropped. The central paradox that is Jay Leno to me was best captured (really, reenacted) in his final comments at the desk. He said: "It's just been incredible. I got to work with lighting people, who made me look better than I really am. I got to work with audio people who make me sound better than I really do. And I got to work with producers and directors, and just all kinds of talent people. They made me look a lot smarter than I really am." Certainly nice enough that he gave credit to the "little people", though it seems trite and forced to me. But more importantly, it seems so opposite the actual truth, which is that Leno has never looked and sounded worse and dumber than he did when he was actually on camera in the Tonight Show, and he comes across so much better in almost every other forum (as long as Oprah is not around) that I have seen him in. I don't think Garth Brooks sang this song, but for me it would have been a fitting benediction to Leno's career: "How Can We Miss You When You Won't Go Away"? -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
