40,000 Hits and Counting! A Special Look at Leno, Conan, and a New Era of Comedy!

40,000 hits, baby.

In light of another big milestone for this here blog, I'd like to once again say thanks to everyone who's been reading. True, about half of those come from me hitting "reload" on my browser thirty times every night, but still ... Actually, for the last year or maybe more I've been importing my posts onto Facebook, which I suspect has increased my readership but also lowered the hit count on the actual blog. So wherever you're reading this from - thanks! And hey, I've amassed 40,000 hits WITHOUT resorting to scandalous tales of Hollywood debauchery. That's right folks, The All-New, All-Awesome Adventures have enjoyed smashing success thanks to something that is rapidly vanishing in the age of Twitter and Facebook status updates: good, old-fashioned, fully-formed, long-winded writing.

So with that said, here is yet another post that is all killer and no filler. Well, at least 70% killer.


- In any case, with this post I'd like to take a moment to talk about the big Leno to Conan transition in late night. Yes, I know it's already been two full weeks since the big changeover, but a.) I haven't had time to write about this yet, and b.) I wanted to bide my time a bit and ge a better grasp of what Conan as host of the Tonight Show would really be like.

But first off, I do want to reflect a bit on the end of the Leno era. Sure, Leno will soon be back at 10 pm, but to me he has basically taken his curtain call, and everything that he does from this point on is basically an epilogue of sorts. For me though, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno will always hold a certain significance. When I interned for Late Night With Conan O'Brien, it was a fanboy dream come true. But when I worked at the Tonight Show, as an NBC Page, it was a sign that I wasn't in Kansas (or Connecticut) anymore. Even if I was never the biggest fan of Leno's comedic sensibilities, I stil lremember the rush I got as a Page during my first week or two of working the Tonight Show. The lights, the cameras, the band, the huge audience, and the parade of bigtime movie stars that I saw in person almost every day for several months. It was my big Hollywood moment, if you will, and it was a great run overall as a Page. I felt like working at the Tonight Show consistently gave me some sort of interesting story to tell, and a lot of those were documented over the months here on the blog. In fact, working at the Tonight Show, and as an NBC Page in general, was one of the main motivators for me to keep this blog going for the first year that I was here in LA. The Tonight Show to me, regardless of the host, is the epitomy of "showbiz" in the traditional sense, and I was right there in the thick of it, clad in blue polyester, every afternoon.

As an NBC Page, I got to meet a lot of the bit players who worked with Leno, and met a lot of interesting people. More than that, I led hundreds of NBC Studio Tours, the centerpiece of which was always a visit to the Tonight Show studio. I memorized all the facts and figures about that studio, and could tell its story to a group of tourists with just the right amount of over-the-top flourish. Similarly, there was the daily rush just before each show, as we desperately tried to seat everyone in the studio. It was like playing a human game of Tetris, except that if you screwed up, you'd be screwing up something on a live show that didn't have time to delay if the front row wasn't filled correctly. There were some close calls. I remember the time when we had two empty seats right in front of Jay as the show was about to begin, and me and another Page had to toss off our Page jackets and sit front and center. Then there was the time when I got caught right in the spotlight in front of Jay as the show was seconds from going on-air. Another second and it would have been me delivering the nightly monologue.

Then there were all the celebs I got to see while working the show. Some I just saw from a distance. Some I escorted to their dressing rooms. Some I awkwardly tried to make small talk with (cough*Avril Lavigne*cough). Not only that, but the number of bands and musicians I got to see play live thanks to The Tonight Show is amazing when I look back on it. Everyone from The Killers to Robert Plant to Billy Idol.

Finally, working at The Tonight Show allowed me to meet random people from all over the country and the world. Some of the most fun times at the show came while I was with my fellow Pages, helping to work the long line of would-be attendees - joking with them, hearing their stories, and, for the more easily-agitated of them, keeping them in line when necessary.

Some nights, Leno was on. The band was rockin', the jokes were hitting, and the guests were game. Some nights, not so much. But either way, there was that undeniable aura of old-tyme Hollywood glitz around the show. The show could be cheesy, the jokes were often as stale as a week-old bagel, and some of the interviews were cringe-worthy in their awkwardness. But hey, it was THE Tonight Show. And I was and am proud to have been been a part of it.

Now ... the CONAN era begins. After the final episode of Late Night, I gave a long tribute to Conan and what it meant to me to intern at the show in 2004. So I won't go back into that whole spiel. But, I guess the thing with Conan is that if you're of a certain generation and/or a certain sensibility, you can't help but root for him. Whereas Leno's humor is pretty canned, Conan's is the kind of finely-tuned madness that only a true comedy nerd could deliver. Conan is the geek who made good, and on Late Night he was willing to do comedy as out-there as anything that's ever been on network TV. Conan's #1 priority has always been not "will this play in the flyover states," but only "is this funny?". So the big question now is - can that anything-goes stlye of humor work given the new audience expectations that come with hosting The Tonight Show?

I think Conan has done something smart - rather than awkwardly adjusting his show to match the expectations of the Leno audience, he is instead bringing Late Night to The Tonight Show. He's doing a sort of "Conan O'Brien 101" for the uninitiated, re-introducing some of Late Night's most popular sketches while also introducing some new bits that are squarely in the Late Night tradition. I think the strategy is really working - maybe not so much in hooking older fans, but I think that what Conan's done is reintroduce himself to the Gen Y'ers who never got into him at 12:30. The fans who have been there all along are getting their usual dose of Conan, just earlier. But the new fans are getting a great mix of old favorites like "In The Year 2000" (now "In the Year 3000") and new buzzworthy bits - Twitter Tracker, anyone?

That said, there are definitely a lot of kinks to work out. The biggest may be the question of what to do with Andy Richter. Andy is fine as the announcer, but they need to figure out how to better work him into the rest of the show. Conan is such a fast talker, and so free-flowing in his thoughts, that there's really no room for Andy to just randomly interject comments into the monologue. I think it might be best to use Andy like Joel was used in the Late Night days or how Max Weinberg is used now - use him in random sketches, and have certain segments that incorporate him - but don't include him in Conan-centric pieces like the monologue or guest interviews. It's just too awkward to do so.

In general, I think they probably need to refine the flow of the show a bit more as well. Having a monologue followed by a sketch, and then another sketch after that, feels a bit stilted. I say go back to the Late Night format of having monologue, sketch, a guest, a secondary sketch, and then guest #2. That format kept you watching, even if you werent' crazy about the first guest, to see what the second sketch would be.

Finally, I say get rid of the Mario Bros. blue background behind Conan during the monlogue. The colors are too bright and don't contrast well with Conan, and anyways I think it'd look way better to just have him in front of the cool curtain that is behind the blue barrier. In general, the darker backdrop of Late Night was a much better fit for Conan, I think.

Ultimately though, Conan's stint as Tonight Show host has been great so far, and, certainly, a breath of fresh air. You get the feeling that Conan is still finding his footing to some degree, and there is definitely that feeling that it will be a few more weeks or even months before the show really hits its stride. Still, in only a couple of weeks' time, there have already been some truly memorable moments, and at least a few sketches that you might call instant classics. The pre-filmed intro to that first show, with Conan running cross-country, was a bonafide bit of awesomeness - a classic bit that was oddly profound even as it was hilarious. The thing that I love, as a writer, is to see great comedy writing finally make its way back to The Tonight Show. To me, Conan's best bits are the heavily-scripted ones that show off he and his staff's writing prowess. The combination of Ivy League intelligence and Mad Magazine zany-ness is what makes Conan's brand of humor so frequently hilarious.

In any case, it's definitely the end of an era. It's odd to think that new NBC Pages won't spend their days in "beautiful, downtown Burbank" with Jay Leno and co., and it's sad to see the old Burbank lot looking so empty. But as a comedy fan and a Conan supporter, I feel good that one of comedy's oldest institutions just got re-charged. The Tonight Show, ladies and gentlemen, is in good hands.

- And with that, have a great weekend everyone. Keep the hits coming!