I’ve never been a big Jay Leno fan, and I actually found it hard to watch The Tonight Show the last few years as ole lazy-joke Leno made more or less the same 10 jokes every night (OJ’s guilty, Clinton likes sex, hyuk yuk yuk). I can’t say Jimmy Fallon is any better though, but he really is the perfect successor to Leno: very bland and not actually all that funny but everybody likes him.
Except that not that many other comedians actually like or respect Leno. I mean, it makes sense that Conan hates him, and Letterman hates him, but why Jimmy Kimmel and Howard Stern and a bunch of other comedians to a lesser extent? It’s not all just jealousy. Other comedians are successful too (Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Steve Carell, etc.) but they’re not hated by their peers. Comedians have a community going, and Leno never really felt like a part of that.
Anyway, the final show…nowhere near as good as Conan’s final show (which was equal parts hilarious, bitter, and uplifting) although Leno did put more effort into it than his first goodbye. There was a nice but unremarkable interview with Billy Crystal, and a nice but unremarkable musical performance by Garth Brooks. [The best country-song-talkshow-goodbye remains Clint Black saying farewell to the fictional Larry Sanders on The Larry Sanders Show, excellent moment that was touching and hilarious.] The most painful part was the monologue where Leno was still doing standard Bieber jokes-of-the-day as if he’ll be there forever.
The best part? When Leno cried about how much his audience has actually become his family during the show’s run, and we saw a brief glimpse of a person beneath that polished talkshow-host persona. Still, it was noticeable that Kevin Eubanks (Leno’s fired band leader who was actually Jay’s longtime second band leader and not his last) wasn’t “able” to show up, and none of the people who started the show with Jay made an appearance. Leno’s been looking pretty lonely up there for years, and it seems like he’ll be leaving The Tonight Show with less friends than he came with. Somewhere there’s a great Aaron Sorkin-scripted “reimagining” of a Shakespearian tragedy with Leno as an ambitious and paranoid MacBeth. Still, I kept wondering what Letterman was saying about all this over on CBS instead…