Friday, October 02, 2009

The new Jay Leno show - much of the same

I've watched the new Jay Leno show a few times since it started, and I'd have to say NBC built it up to be a lot bigger than it actually is. The show has the exact same premise as his Tonight Show, except he doesn't have a desk.

The show opens with Leno's monologue, which is now longer than the one he used on the Tonight Show. He still covers his basic topics (politics, current events, celebrities) and some of them are pretty funny. Nothing new here, though.

After the monologue, he'll go into a comedy segment where he'll talk to the audience, have one of his "correspondents" come in and share their latest "story", etc. More of the same here, as well.

Next up: the big guest. Seeing a pattern? Last night it was Chris Rock. The night before it was Steve Carell, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus before that. The difference here (as I mentioned) is that Jay doesn't have a desk, so the two are just sitting in to chairs next to each other chit-chatting. Jay makes every guest "earn" their plug for their respective movie, show, book, etc. Last night, Chris Rock had to read a couple passages from former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey's book, in which he describes how he was hiding his homosexuality while in office and resigned because of it. Rock got to plug his new movie "Good Hair" afterward.

Following the chat with the celebrity, Jay does another couple segments to fill up time before the show's end. Last night, it was correspondent Liz Feldman's story on her attempt to teach Twitter to the elderly. To close the show, he had on a guy from India who would put clamps on his ears and pull around really heavy stuff, like we haven't seen that before.

Anyways, this show is just the Tonight Show without the desk. Nothing special, but pretty funny at times.

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