Jay Leno's last Tonight Show is tonight. It won't be a tearful farewell. It won't even really be a farewell since he'll be back on TV in a similar, earlier position in a few months, Still, this is a good time to say the following, which is that I like the guy. I think he's done a fine job with the program the last seventeen years…and I admire his sheer survival when so many predicted he'd crash and burn in seventeen weeks. Once upon a time, TV columnists were labelling his selection to succeed Johnny the biggest mistake in the history of broadcast television. That was before he was finishing first in his time slot…a feat he has managed for roughly the last thirteen years.
And throughout those thirteen years, there were still folks betting against him, fearlessly predicting his lead could not hold and that it would soon crumble. Rumor has it that NBC's decision to displace Leno with Conan O'Brien was founded in a belief at his own network that Jay would wear out his welcome by '09. Didn't happen, of course…just as most predictions of Leno failure haven't happened.
I've been a fan of Jay's since I first saw him back at the Comedy Store, back in the days he owned but one car and a motorcycle. He'd zoom around on the latter, doing standup several times in an evening at this club or that. He was so tireless they called him Robocomic. Hard work doesn't always guarantee success in show business — nothing does — but if you have anything to offer, hard work can make a fair amount of difference. It did with Leno. So did his reputation for just being nice to others, including some he might have viewed as competitors.
Though a big fan of Mssrs. Carson and Letterman, I was never one of those who believed that Dave "deserved" The Tonight Show and that there was some grave injustice in him not getting it. TV never works like that and besides, I think a strong case can be made that Leno had earned the job by guest-hosting so long for Johnny, doing a very difficult job and succeeding in both the ratings and key demographics. One of those thoughts that many in the industry believed but no one dared speak aloud is that Johnny Carson was able to stay on top those last few years largely because he had Jay as his guest host. Folks forget how often Jay sat in and how he managed to draw pretty much the same numbers but skewing younger.
I've generally liked the Leno Tonight Show, though I feel like neither he nor Dave have been trying very hard for some time. In interviews, Jay has often bragged about his hard work and told the story of how he was writing monologue jokes one night and he flipped on the TV, saw one of his competitors at a basketball game and thought, "Ha! That guy won't have a good monologue for tomorrow's show." The moral, of course, is that Leno gets ahead while the other guy's goofing off…and that's a good moral that makes you wonder why Jay spends so much time playing Vegas and/or fixing cars in his Burbank warehouse.
Still, I enjoy his show most of the time, even though I occasionally TiVo-skip enough to watch him (or Letterman) in about twenty minutes. And I really enjoy the fact that Leno triumphed over all the predictions of failure, showing up all the people who thought NBC would be forever humiliated by their decision. In the last decade or so, he's turned into one of the few right decisions they've made over there.
I have some thoughts about how his new show will fare and how Conan will do as Tonight host. I'll try and post them over the weekend.