The Tonight Show

I've long found Fallon as one of those hosts who didn't impress me at every level of his career - SNL, Weekend Update, hosting - yes, he keeps getting better jobs. The Lane Kiffin of his industry.

 

Really? I think Parsons comes off as hilarious there.

 

I agree; what I think annoys me about him most is delivery. He can't through a joke - he did this on Weekend Update too - without laughing at it himself before the punchline. I can't stand that in comedians. All he does during the interview portion of the show is feign thunderous laughter at any and every story.

 

Jaywalking is a Howard Stern bit. If you want to laugh, google those two names and listen to some great interviews.

 

I like Fallon, but I prefer late night hosts to have more of an edge to them. The fact that Fallon doesn't have much edge leads me to think he'll be successful in this role for the next 10-15 years.

I loved Leno when he was guest-hosting for Carson. When he took over, it wasn't the same. I'm sure he was doing what he was told to.

He's not going to be remembered well, which is insane for someone who was as successful as he was.

 

I agree on Fallon, that his lack of edginess may be the key to his success. Conan pushed the envelope at 12:35 and worked to great success. But it was too far out there for 11:35. He was doomed no matter what in that time slot - he can't do the vanilla comedy of Jay Leno, but the 11:35 audience didn't "get" his comedy.

Fallon is vastly different than Jay. He's much more musically focused and his bits are more about getting stars to laugh at themselves. It may be bumpy going with the audience at first. I could see some viewers defecting to Letterman, who is at least similar to Jay.

But Fallon is definitely funny.

 

Yeah, but really, that's the case for just about all of them.

This goes to your earlier point, but the medium changed during Leno's tenure. That's not Leno's fault, but it guaranteed he'd never be a Carson-like figure. (And believe me, I'm not suggesting he's in Carson's league on any level.) Everyone watched Carson every night. It was the ultimate next-day water cooler chat for three decades. Not only was he the only talk show at that hour -- he was virtually the only late-night programming, period.

When Ed Ames threw the tomahawk into the wooden outline's crotch, everyone saw it, so it became a legendary TV moment. The same thing could happen on Leno and 2% of the country would see it.

The number of memorable moments for current hosts is short, and except for Letterman, all of them are because of the internet. Dave had a few -- the velcro suit, the post 9/11 speech -- that were memorable on their own. Outside of that, the list is short. Fallon has his musical impressions, which are tremendous. Kimmel has the tweakier on fire. Leno has the singing gas pump people. All of those are because they went up on Facebook and went viral the next morning.

 

It's really amazing to think of the power and hold that Johnny Carson had, not only on television, but how America received entertainment.

Carson could make new comics, ignore others. The guy could also reach out to Sinatra, Olivier, the real giants of the time in entertainment. I could never see Leno as a guy who could call up George Clooney and tell him, "want to plug your movie? Wednesday is open. All I got."

Leno is a joke guy. A good guy, a nice guy (met him twice when he did station visits to NBC affiliates) but he's about the joke all the way. A grinder who made tons of money in the 1970s from all of his shows. NBC, for all of the mistakes in how Leno/Letterman was handled, made the safe choice and a very profitable one.

Letterman was revolutionary for his time but, as has been noted here, 12:35 humor is different than 11:35. His first week on CBS in 1993 was memorable but, after that, he was going through the motions. For a kid growing up in the 80's, recording his Late Night shows on NBC on my VHS recorder was like gaining admittance to this hilarious club.

 

I watched one Tonight Show with Conan - the last one - and haven't watched any shows regularly or semi-regularly in at least 10 years. But, I always found Leno's jokes to be funnier than the skits (except hedlines, which I don't really find as funny now that I'm in the business) and the reverse with Conan. In fact, I would almost guarantee the last episode I watched was when Larry the Cable Guy (I used to find him funny. Don't judge) in 2005, the last time before that when the Rock was on in 2004 and the last time before that was probably when I was living in my college dorm in 2003.

I think I have watched less than two episodes of late night shows not involving Leno or Conan since Letterman left NBC and if I did see it, it was only long enough to watch a particular guest.

 

The only good thing about Leno was 'Headlines,' as I prayed one of my pages didn't end up on there.

 

I love Ferguson, but he's not going to work in the 11:35 spot. Someone else will replace Letterman. I think he signed through 2015 anyway.

 

Who has the best sidekick right now? I'm half-tempted to go with Geoffrey Peterson.