Late Night Logjam

Jay Leno doesn't do this.

It always comes as a shock to me that NBC remains America’s Least Popular Network™ in spite of the fact that they run all my favorite shows – evidence once again that I define good taste as “things I like” and bad taste as “Twilight and Sex In The City.” I just have trouble getting my head around the fact that the network that shows 30 Rock, Community, and The Office, three of the funniest shows on TV, could be trailing to CBS, whose entire programming lineup is David Caruso taking off his sunglasses and Charlie Sheen going, “That’s what she said.”

That being said, my preferred late night talk show is The Late Show With David Letterman, if perhaps for no other reason than that the man has been in business for so long that he can say and do basically anything he wants without any sort of repercussions from anyone of consequence. Most nights, I’m pretty sure that Paul Shaffer is drunk (and some nights, maybe Dave is too), but there’s just something fun about watching this golden god of late night television holding court on which baseball players have knocked up which B-list celebrity’s daughters.

I’m also a Conan fan (and how could I not be, since one out of three people I meet tell me that he and I have the same hair), but I don’t watch his show quite as often. When I do, I’m always pleased by the shenanigans I see, but it’s hard enough for me to commit to one late night talk show that conflicts with my rigorous pornography schedule, much less two. I tend to enjoy his clips on Hulu a few days after the fact, when Digg notifies me that some interesting shit went down.

So imagine my shock when Digg recently notified me of the following interesting shit: Jay Leno, who did a great service to American television by quitting The Tonight Show in favor of some 10:00 PM variety crapfest, is having the aforementioned crapfest moved back to 11:35, bumping the following shows back by half an hour and forever upsetting the delicate ecosystem of the late night talk show.

If it were anyone else rocking the boat, it probably wouldn’t be as frustrating. If it was The Neil Patrick Harris Show or Ten PM With Zooey Deschanel or The Teddy Roosevelt Comedy Hour, I would dismiss all of this as a bunch of hoopla. It is, after all, only a half hour. Maybe we’re taking this too seriously. After all, at the end of the day it’s just a bunch of old guys making jokes about how stupid Sarah Palin is.

But Jay Leno? Him?

To see a legitimately talented individual like Conan O’Brien lose out to a talentless jerk like Jay Leno is just one big slap in the face to people everywhere who like good things. It’s like if you entered a talent show and were doing a really great job and everyone was loving you, and then the judges turned around and gave the prize to Jay Leno because he’d have a TV show for a long time.

I’ll admit, I didn’t put a lot of thought into that analogy, but this shit is hardly fair to Conan.

In every Leno interview I’ve seen, he talks to his guests like there’s a big glass wall in between them. There’s just a certain disconnect – he seems somehow disinterested, as though he’d rather be fucking around with some old car than talking to this particular celebrity. And hey, who can blame him – there’s a fair number of celebrities I’d rather not talk to. But the thing is, sometimes I don’t want to go to marching band practice. But I still go, because it’s what I do. Likewise, interviewing celebrities is what Jay Leno does. He has no excuse to suck at it. The man’s entire job is to sit at a desk and ask beautiful people what’s going on in their lives.

Furthermore, one of his most famous segments – Jaywalking – consists entirely of tightly edited clips of him asking people on the street simple questions and laughing at them when they get them wrong. Is it bad that people don’t know who Hillary Clinton is? Yeah, probably. But even though they signed the releases and agreed to be interviewed, I feel like it’s kind of unfair to put their stupidity out there for the world to laugh at, as though we’re better than they are. If a stupid person gains a national platform, like Sarah Palin, then it’s open season, but when a big-chinned douche with a microphone approaches some innocent stupid person minding his or her own business, I can’t help but feel differently. Maybe some stupid people should just be left alone.

One of Conan’s most memorable sketches, on the other hand, is about a dancing guy with bulletproof legs who repeatedly gets shot in the chest. It’s high concept and doesn’t offend anyone – except for perhaps gay rights advocates, who said that the sketch promoted violence against gays and got it discontinued.

All I’m saying is that NBC is dead last in the ratings right now, and shaking up their late night lineup and abusing their talent is probably not a good way to get ahead. Conan O’Brien is like the smart, sexy girl NBC took to the dance, but right now they’re neglecting her in favor of some cheap slut who they know will put out. It’s straight up dick behavior.

Truman Capps doesn’t give a fuck about Carson Daily.