The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Jay Leno and his version of THE TONIGHT SHOW are simply not funny. His style of humour is cornball. His lame jokes do not elicit laughs from the audience but groans. His voice is irritating. His regular features like JAYWALKING are stupid and not original. Wearing a denim shirt with jeans looks ridiculous. What he has just done to Conan O'Brien is unforgivable. My bet is that many people in Leno's committed audience (retirement home patrons) have either forgotten him or died and won't be back. I say his ratings will be flat and within one year he will be yanked from NBC for good. Bets?? Many people in the entertainment business will boycott his show. He will never woo the younger audience NBC very much needs. Hot bands will refuse come in his show. Jay, please go away.

How 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' is still on the air is beyond me. Not only is Leno always hung up on news or topics that seem to be so boring that the audience doesn't even laugh at, he also doesn't 'connect' with his guests. He sits there in his chair through the however many minutes he (supposedly) interviews the stars and lets them do all the talking. Sometimes I feel bad for the guests because they keep carrying on a conversation with themselves while Leno just stares at them. It should be the other way around.

His jokes are dull and it's easy to tell that he doesn't come up with the majority of them. Thanks to his writers, the show has the tiniest bit of flare needed for the tiniest bit of laughter.

The comedy sketches that he puts on make no sense and even he doesn't understand them once in a while. I wish that this show would be cancelled and finally a funny man can step up to the plate. Yup, Conan O'Brien's the one.

1. O'Brien - - 2. Letterman - - 3. Leno

And what's the matter with Kevin Eubanks? He always sits there with his guitar acting like he doesn't speak English. Lighten up, Kev.

Of the 3 late night talk shows,Leno's is definitely the worst.The problem is,he rarely comes up with any jokes himself,unlike Letterman and O'brien,who have the rare gift of being able to think of things to add to their material on the spot eg-the monologues and it actually be funnier than their given lines.Leno,however simply does not have this ability,and it is the writers you admire and not the host,which shouldn't be the case,as the most important thing is to love the host.

Another thing the show suffers from is that it feels more like a comedy show than a talk show.There are far too many unfunny comedy sketches and obviously set up occurences for it to have the unpredictable feel of Letterman,which thrives on its spontinaity.It tries much too hard for laughs.A very annoying and unnecesarry part of the show is the black band member(I can't remember his name)that is really only there to let out huge and put on sounding laughs at everything Jay says and to be the butt of a lot of Jay's jokes.

I don't hate the show,I mean if there's nothing else on,I'll watch it but it comes nowhere near its two competing talk shows.

If it's one thing Jay Leno does better than any of the late night comics I've seen it's that he is the best at recovering from a bad joke. His everyman's style is very appealing, relatable and funny. I also love the shows variety, its not uncommon for him to pull the rug out from under feet and make things funny out of weird and unusual situations. I love Jay's correspondence and both Jay and Kevin are good for bouncing off each other. Oh yes, and I also love the Headlines.

Obviously being in the UK I might not see this show in the same light as it's seen in the US, but I discovered the show in April-ish 2003 when it started broadcasting on the little known UK channel Ftn (also broadcasts on CNBC Europe, although only a couple of episodes a week)...

Soon grew to love the show's topical humour (we've normally heard of the particular subject in the UK) as we don't really have a show that broadcasts on the same level for the whole year. The guests are also obviously well known to us, so pretty much the whole programme makes sense and is always worth a watch!

Only when it comes to the musical performances do I get a little stuck as not all the bands have much (or if any) UK exposure.

Stu