To the amazement of a large part of the industry, Arsenio Hall's talk show has been picked up for a second season. On last night's show, Jay Leno made a "surprise" walk-on to deliver the news to the host. If you want to watch it, it's here…
It's really a good example of why late night TV has lost its appeal to me because it's so phony. Arsenio didn't know Jay was about to enter but you can see him pausing as he speaks, waiting to be interrupted. I'm guessing the audience was told before Mr. Hall came out that someone would be walking out during the monologue and not to applaud him, because Leno's little "shhh!" gesture to them could not have been enough to silence an audience reaction that would have started the instant he stepped onto the stage.
The whole dialogue is way too planned, including the part at the end where Arsenio sets Jay up for this exit punch line. Remember the old days when the host of a talk show occasionally did not know what his guests were going to say or do?
By the way: I worked with Arsenio many years ago, when he was just starting out. He was the co-host of a short-lived variety show on which I was one of the writers. He was a very good, talented guy and I wasn't the least surprised that he easily recovered from the cancellation of that show and went on to do pretty well for himself.
We did actually set up a genuine surprise walk-on on that show — a surprise for Arsenio, that is. Everyone else involved with the show knew about it in advance. (The show, by the way, was called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour and it was on ABC for about eight seconds in 1983. There was another show with that name later on, I believe, Comedy Central. No relation.) It occurred on our last episode.
On every earlier one, Arsenio had been making jokes about lusting after Jayne Kennedy, who was then the most prominent TV sex symbol of color. Unbeknownst to Mr. Hall, the producers arranged for Ms. Kennedy to walk on during the show's closing and confront him about all these remarks. They planted her just off-stage so she would not be seen by him until she stepped out there. In fact, they planted her behind me. The way the stage was designed, there was no place for her to stand and not be seen so they had two large folks — me and the Associate Producer — stand there and she hid behind us.
At the right moment, she walked out…and Arsenio really didn't know what to say or what to do. It was very funny but I'm afraid it didn't make him look very good. I'll bet you today, on his own show and with much more experience, he could have handled it if he didn't know that Leno would be coming out. But talk shows don't think like that these days. The Big Stars they want to book generally do not want to risk looking silly or inept at talking…and even if they would take that risk, the producers of their new series or movie don't want them to. So this kind of thing is always planned and sometimes even rehearsed. (I don't think the Arsenio/Jay bit was rehearsed. It's too awkwardly staged for that. But I'll bet they both knew when it would occur and what each was going to say.)
It's all a shame because the thing that made Late Night different from Prime Time was that sense of "something unexpected might happen" and the occasional rough, unpolished moments. I still think that if you could put on the air a series as unplanned as the old Steve Allen Show or even Johnny's early years, it would crush all the current practitioners of the genre known as The Late Night Talk Show. Of course, that would mean finding a host who could improvise and tolerate looking foolish at times…and it would mean finding guests who were willing to take a teensy gamble with their reputations. So maybe we'll never see it again.