The Tonight Show

Thanks for clarifying that. I knew one of them had done a week in NYC. I thought it was Jay.

Also, if I can find it, there was an article in the Chicago Tribune explaining specifically *why* "Tonight" was being re-located to NYC (has more to do with movie studios PR, I thought the article said, than with anything to do with relocating Fallon to L.A.).

 

Rivers being on for that skit was awesome. I always liked her and Johnny treated her like shit after she tried to do her own show...

I always liked that Letterman still had her on. Kimmel had her on.

It was funny, about three weeks ago, Kimmel, Fallon and Letterman were all on Stern's 60th birthday party show together. It's well-known that Kimmel worships Letterman and I think there's a lot of mutual respect between Kimmel and Fallon. This may be the friendliest late night TV has been in a long, long time...

 

That is a great thought. It never occurred to me.

 

I thought last night's show with Seinfeld was pretty weak.

I get what they were trying to do with Fallon pretending to wave Seinfeld over after the stand-up, I think it was something that sounded like a good idea, but it was poorly executed.

 

I will always admire Johnny Carson but agree it was crappy what he did to Joan.

 

It's interesting how many people love Johnny, but there were definitely a few people he dicked over.

 

Didn't one of the recent books or documentaries about Carson get into his issues with women? I mean, maybe I'm just misrememberin' things here, but I thought they were extensive, between the treatment of Joan Rivers and his various ex-wives.

 

Johnny cheated on all his wives, may have beaten one, and may or may not have briefly contemplated killing Frank Gifford for having an affair with his second wife.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4059956/

 

And Fallon and Ferguson love each other. They even "waved" at each other at the same time

I just watched the show. I'm a hardcore Craig guy, so I just wanted to say I saw the first, I probably won't watch again...but wow, Jimmy's opening was touching. He was close to crying a few times, his parents are there and he mentioned his 6-month-old kid....hard not to hope he does well.

 

Seinfeld was pretty weak. So was the use of the snowboarder gold medalist; they could have done much more w/ her (for instance, it would have been funny if, on the lone time they cut to her as they went to a break, she could have been playing the bass guitar, since that's who she sent off). The barbershop quartet was funny. Gaga is weird.

 

I remember reading an article on Kimmel when he was moved to 11:30 and they were saying that one of the reasons ABC stayed with him even when ratings weren't great was because he was always willing to cross-promote ABC shows. He's done some funny things where he bets on the winner of DWTS and rags on The Bachelor where it doesn't feel as painful as it could.

I get the sense Fallon is willing to do the same thing to stay on the good side of NBC. He doesn't strike me as someone who will piss off the higher-ups the way Letterman and Conan did. I don't get the sense Letterman does it as much anymore, but he definitely did it early on...

Fallon will play nice and that will be one big reason why NBC will give him the chance to grow his audience if ratings aren't great and we won't know that for a few more weeks since I'm guessing ratings are high because of the Olympics and people who don't regularly watch The Tonight Show are checking out to see how his first week goes.

 

Carson was a great host, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest he was a fucked-up person.

Letterman has some of the same demons, although I think becoming a father late in life has taken some of the hard edges off him. There were stories that nobody was allowed to make eye contact with him if they passed him backstage before the show. There was also a story that when he was still at NBC, he'd go back to the office and review the tape, screaming when he came to things he wished he had done differently.

For his overall sanity, it's probably better that he clearly doesn't give a shit about the show now.