You know how bad films often end with the villain coming back to life after it looks like he’s been killed?
Jay Leno does. He’s just like Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze, only with a deadly razor-sharp chin and bad jokes instead of metal claws. Fans of late night television probably thought they’d seen the last of Jay Leno when he left the Tonight Show last year to start his stupid new 10pm programme. But – and brace yourself for this – he might be back soon.
According to reports, Leno may soon leave 10pm, reclaim the Tonight Show and push NBC’s late-night schedule back so far that Jimmy Fallon‘s show would air to an audience exclusively made up of badgers, werewolves and weeping, emotionally distressed would-be murderers. So it’s not all bad news, then.
What you’re about to read is the reason why America is brilliant. The biggest entertainment story of the day involves Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and whatever’s on TV between 11:30 and 1:30 at night. It’s the biggest news story of the day. That’s like if, over here, the biggest news story of the day was about Channel Five moving its live roulette gameshow SuperCasino forward by an hour, or if The Sun dedicated an entire front page to bemoaning the fact that BBC Two was replacing the 12am BDO darts championship highlights with the 1am extended BDO darts championship highlights.
Again, America is brilliant.
But this is a little different, because it’s basically about Jay Leno’s inability to die. Last year Jay Leno hosted his last-ever Tonight Show then, instead of retiring with grace, bagged his own 10pm show to kick the wind out of Conan O’Brien’s sails. However, since Leno’s 10pm show turned out to mostly be about him grilling celebrities about how disappointed their dead mothers would be of them, it hasn’t done very well, and is reportedly on the verge of cancellation.
And that means that Jay Leno is finally going to retire with grac… what? He might be getting the Tonight Show back? Oh heavens. The LA Times reports:
Jay Leno, the former king of late-night television who was pushed out as host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” last year and then struggled in his new prime-time slot, is in talks to return to 11:30 p.m. Conan O’Brien, who succeeded Leno, would either go back to following Leno or leave the network.
Of course, the obvious thing to do here would be to commiserate with Conan O’Brien. He’d spent five whole years preparing himself to host the Tonight Show and now, because Jay Leno’s Deceased Maternal Shame Hour turned out to be as crap as everyone expected, he looks set to be screwed out of his dream job after just six months.
That’s unless the other rumours – the ones about Jay Leno getting a new 30-minute Tonight Show that Conan will follow for an hour at midnight – are to be believed. That’d be an interesting prospect, and by ‘interesting’ we mean ‘mindblowingly cack-handed’. Still, one thing’s for certain – this story looks set to dominate the news for the next couple of months. Congratulations Jay Leno – you’re the new Kate Gosselin.
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Summer Charlotte says
I think there are going to be some very unhappy Conan fans out there! I was never a huge Jay Leno fan, so I’m not likely to watch his show, no matter what time it airs.