By Mary McNamara TELEVISION CRITIC It's not a good sign when the Bud Light commercial is funnier than the comedy show it interrupts. Sixteen minutes into the new "The Jay Leno Show," it was difficult not to panic. This is the future of television? This wasn't even a good rendition of television past. Clearly Leno believes that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and he has been very vocal about the fact that his late-night talk show was not broke. So here it is again, different time slot, busier set and same old jokes. Literally. Yes, there was a reference to an Obama-held "root beer summit" between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, but there was also a Bush joke, a Cheney joke, a Wal-Mart joke, a Cash for Clunkers joke (getting warmer) and a Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi joke so dated that Leno had to precede it with "people are still talking about. . . ." All of which made his opening monologue seem like an attempt to cash in on the current vampire fixation -- comedy of the undead. Cut to a flatly bizarre musical car wash skit -- in which Dan Finnerty tortured some pleasant-looking woman named Meg with his silly and sexually suggestive songs -- and by the time a tuxedoed Jerry Seinfeld (Really, Jerry? Was it a tuxedo event?) appeared through the set's May Co.-esque doors, it was hard not to hope he would simply release the audience with the promise that they would not have to serve for another 12 months. "I'm just trying to grasp what's going on here," Seinfeld said instead, just as if he could read our minds. "In the '90s, when we quit a show, we actually left." Who thought we'd feel such nostalgia for the '90s? For a moment, Seinfeld seemed a breath of fresh air, expressing concern that he was the biggest name Leno could get: "Is your staff aware that I have not been on television for 11 years?" and quipping that he was there to announce his new talk show. Then the star power of Oprah Winfrey appeared like a living fresco via teleprompter and it all went downhill again. A mock "interview" with President Obama containing an actual Viagra joke ('90s alert!) was followed by a supremely uncomfortable "unplanned" chat with West in which the rap star apologized for "stepping on the emotions" of Taylor Swift, whose acceptance speech he had trampled over at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night. Attempting, perhaps, to recapture his ratings-rocket Hugh Grant moment, Leno assumed the role of disappointed uncle, gravely asking West what he thought his mother would have to say in light of his actions. After several beats of silence, West said he was going to take some time and "analyze how I'm going to make it through the rest of this life." Then he got up and rocked the house with Rihanna and Jay-Z. Which, given the smashed-flat-in-the-middle-of-the-road nature of all that had gone before, seemed just plain weird. Rihanna and her orange thigh-highs can work many forms of magic, but save this show? Probably not. Then it was back to those wacky headlines with school lunch, cabbage boob and Chinese restaurant jokes galore. Because this is Jay and that's what he does. The only thing he does, apparently. To be fair, it's difficult to imagine a show under more squint-eyed scrutiny than this one. In recent weeks, Leno has been on the cover of as many magazines as Ted Kennedy, often with the same celestial backlighting, and allowed to repeat his already oft-repeated genial amazement that NBC took "The Tonight Show" away from him when he was at the top of his game. Now, if the media is to be believed, Leno is currently the Most Powerful Man alive, the Mad Scientist of the digital age, capable of ending scripted drama with a single show. (And the week after Larry Gelbart died, which just seems wrong.) So anything that Leno did Monday night would inevitably be combed through with the frantic intensity of "Lost Symbol" speed-readers. Which is why this strange, shallow puddle of comedy is so difficult to accept. With all eyes on Leno, this is the best he, and his writers, and the struggling network could come up with? A "Cheaters" parody in which the joke is that he and bandleader Kevin Eubanks are having an affair? Edgy stuff for Jay, perhaps, and brave of any middle-aged man to appear on TV in argyle, but honestly, NBC. Has it come to this? Yes, "The Jay Leno Show" promises to be better than, say, Rosie O'Donnell's mad flight into variety, but gosh darn it, at least Rosie took some chances. Leno, with the world at his feet, took none at all, unless you count some bawdy word play on the nickname for Richard, which I most emphatically don't. The best we can hope for is that "The Jay Leno Show" will get better, much better, or at least provide good fodder for Conan.
New 'Jay Leno'? Nah. And That's the Silver Lining
By Hank Stuever Washington Post Staff Writer They said "The Jay Leno Show" wouldn't feel like going to bed really early, that it would feel new. But it's like going to bed really early. It feels old. For a lot of people, "The Jay Leno Show," which premiered Monday in its game-changing 10 o'clock weeknight format, it might feel perfectly comfy. There was an uncomfy moment with a chastened Kanye West, who 24 hours earlier acted like a jerk by interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. "What would your mom have said about this?" Leno asked the rapper, who sat frozen at the mention of his mother, who died in 2007. What was weird about this was how quickly West stammered through his repentance ("Obviously, I deal with hurt"), saying he needs to take a vacation from performing and the celebrity grind under which he lives, then recovering immediately to perform with Jay-Z and Rihanna, proving that really, after all the talk, Jay's show is still a place to promote your product, your song, your movie -- and in special guest Jerry Seinfeld's case, your "Seinfeld" reunion on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Leno and his producers kept saying it wouldn't be like this, this usual shill game. The jokes are the same. (Why wouldn't they be?) The theme song is different but the same, accompanying opening-title pictures of Leno as a young man, the all-American boy who grew up to love cars and tell jokes. The guest spots take place sans desk, in easy chairs. Seinfeld came on and made playfully condescending jokes about the Leno "farewell" show in May on "The Tonight Show": "In the '90s, when we quit a show, we actually left," a tuxedoed Seinfeld said. "But not in the Brett Favre-Lance Armstrong double-oh's."
So How Was Jay Leno's First Show?
by Linda Holmes It was about like his years on The Tonight Show, only much more unevenly paced, because they've changed the proportions and don't have the flow right yet, and he brought on guests who didn't have anything to say -- with one exception. The jokes (such as they were), the interviews and the big headliner, after the jump... The monologue looked exactly like every Leno monologue. If you like Jay Leno jokes, it probably worked for you. A sample? "Fifty percent of women wish their men would take control in bed. The other fifty percent just wish the man would put down the remote control in bed." Yes, that is the joke, complete with the strained connection between "control" and "remote control," despite the fact that no one I know uses the phrase "remote control" anymore. But in any event, that's the joke: Men are distracted and watch television! Ha ha! Also, Blondie really wishes Dagwood would knock it off with the sandwiches. The monologue was followed by a long (and it felt even longer) comedy segment in which Dan Finnerty, who played the wedding singer at the end of The Hangover, sang and danced for a woman who was getting her car washed. As he pressed ahead with oh-so-daring "hose"/"suck" jokes while gesturing at her with various elements of the car-wash machinery, she didn't even laugh; she just smiled politely. It was a particularly inauspicious start for the feature Leno has probably hyped the most: performances from young comedy performers. If this is the best thing they had in the can after a summer to prepare, that's a little concerning. The supposedly "lead" interview with Jerry Seinfeld turned into an interview with Jerry Seinfeld and (via video) Oprah Winfrey, and neither of them were particularly funny or had much to say. The real lead interview, and the headline-maker, was Leno's talk with Kanye West, who wouldn't have been an especially interesting subject 48 hours ago, but since his antics at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, he's at the top of everyone's list of quotables, however briefly. West expressed -- again -- how bad he felt about leaping on stage, as if he hadn't known in advance that Swift wouldn't welcome someone interrupting her speech to say she didn't deserve to win. Then Leno hit him with an actual interesting question, if only for the intense cringe factor. He asked what West's mother, who died in late 2007, would have thought of his behavior. West paused, sat, and considered. The silence got very long, and then it seemed like West teared up. Ultimately, he told Leno that he's been working constantly and needs to take time off to think, because he was sad that his "hurt" caused "hurt" to someone else. He appeared, though it wasn't entirely clear, to be saying that his unresolved feelings about his mother's death are responsible for his behavior at the VMAs. It's an interesting theory, because it might be true, or it might be the tackiest attempt to escape responsibility for your behavior in celebrity history. Obviously, it's not something Jay Leno is going to challenge (and he didn't), so West had very little to lose. West went on to perform with Rihanna and Jay-Z, seeming pretty much like himself. The performance was energetic, at least. But the fusty comedy, of course, returned with the show-closing "Headlines" segment. Always an uneven bit, it ended this time with two Chinese restaurant bits that amounted to little more than assertions that words in foreign languages sound hilarious.