I’m With Johnny

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There have certainly been more pressing things to be concerned with than the late-night situation that’s been unfolding at NBC, but I can’t deny having my own thoughts and feelings about it. All things being equal, perhaps a bit of this silliness is needed after all the other heavy stuff going on, and as great as some of the humour that has come from this situation has been, at its core there’s still some stuff going on that is far from funny and which, as insignificant as it may be compared to things like the crisis in Haiti, deserves a bit of attention.

For those of us who are old enough to have watched Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show on a regular basis, I don’t think it controversial to say that most of us likely consider everyone who has come after him a pale imitation. If I were to pick a favourite of the people who have followed in the Carson mold, it would be David Letterman, but I thought Letterman was a lot funnier when he was at NBC. Somewhere in his transition to CBS, I think Letterman lost a fair bit of what made his run at Late Night so entertaining, the feeling that instead of his show being a "Big Show," it was just a bunch of dumb guys getting together and letting you in on all their dumb jokes. There was a subtlety to Letterman’s NBC work that mirrored Carson’s, and as the years have gone by on his CBS show, Letterman seems to be straying further and further from that.

That being said, I’ve hardly been a fan of Jay Leno’s, at least apart from his stint as substitute host for Carson back in the day. When Leno took over The Tonight Show, it went from being The Tonight Show — as brilliant as Carson was, he downplayed himself perfectly and let his guests shine — into The Jay Leno Show. In addition to relying to heavily on overly staged gags and heavy production, Leno’s interviews were often marked by Leno using the guest to get his own jokes over. This is not a criticism of Jay Leno the person, but Jay Leno the talk show host, but for someone who grew up watching Carson as often as possible, the change was dramatic and altogether uneasy. Leno might be a possible choice for my least favourite post-Carson late night host, had CBS not inexplicably given one of the least funny people on the face of the planet, Craig Kilborn, his own show for five years.

I watched Conan O’Brien’s first couple of weeks in Letterman’s old time slot, and I wasn’t impressed, although I think even Conan himself will admit he was finding his legs then. I didn’t catch his show much after that, and from what I watched it did look like he grew into the role. However, I never cared much for Conan because, honestly, it felt like his comedy was almost entirely shtick and gimmick, flaccid characters and stale bits that, once stripped away, didn’t reveal much of an actual person, let alone comedian, underneath. Even with Leno, as much as his show bothered me, I still got the sense of Jay Leno the person underneath it all, and even though I may not have cared for his show, Leno as a person still seemed likable enough. I watched Conan’s first shows as Tonight host, and it felt like he’d improved a bit, but nearly every show’s first few episodes have a surplus of A-level material.

To be honest, I’ve always identified NBC as my favourite of the big networks; apart from my childhood love of The Cosby Show, I guess NBC has a way of marketing its shows that make them more appealing to me than other networks. That being said, I thought NBC made an unforgivable error by not consulting Carson when it came time to replace him, and giving his show to Leno instead of Carson’s own choice, Letterman. It’s hard not to have sympathy for NBC for trying to avoid that situation by negotiating a smooth hand-off between Leno and Conan several years ago, but at the same time, after the dust has cleared, it’s obvious that Conan got supremely shafted by NBC in this whole deal, and my criticisms of his work aside, I feel incredibly sorry for him. I’m trying to be understanding of Leno’s role in this whole situation as well, but at the same time, there’s a very large part of me that wishes he’d just go away and leave late night to others.

If I were a regular late-night television watcher, I don’t know what I’d do now. Letterman’s okay, but that’s about it for me. Jimmy Kimmel has his moments, but a lot of his material offends me. I’ve tried watching Jimmy Fallon a few times, but his show is literally too painful for me to watch; I worry that my television might short-circuit from all of his flop-sweat. Craig Ferguson and Carson Daly just don’t do anything for me, and I associate Daly too much with the late-90’s crapification of MTV when they went from Daria and Lilith Fair to TRL and Britney Spears.

Honestly, I think the only way I could watch a late night talk show again is if someone resurrected Johnny Carson, and I mean resurrected in the literal sense of the word. Carson had a unique gift that I’m not sure anyone else will ever have, becoming a legend of American comedy and television so sublimely. I’m not even sure his show would work today, though. There’s clearly no big market for the alternative kinds of shows Tom Snyder and Whoopi Goldberg and Bob Costas have tried out, and these days when Jon Stewart so perfectly imitates Carson’s phrases and mannerisms whenever a joke fails, all I hear young people say is, "What is he doing, that’s so stupid and unfunny." I wasn’t even eighteen when Carson ended his run on The Tonight Show; this whole sordid affair is making me feel way too old.

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