The Jay Leno Show

With Leno giving The Tonight Show to Conan O'Brien in 2009, the network didn't want to lose Leno and wanted to cash in on both him and Conan, so NBC gave Jay a primetime talk show that airs 5 nights a week.

Essentially, it's a primetime version of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, with his scripted recurring bits like Headlines and Jaywalking to Leno's bandleader Kevin Eubanks joining him in the new primetime show. The only difference between his Tonight Show tenure and this primetime series is that his scripted bits are usually at the end, and there were no commercials to transition to the local news after Leno's show ended.

And we all know how that turned out. The affiliates' local newscasts' ratings were dipping big time when Leno's ratings were dipping as well, leading the affiliates to force the network to make a decision or else.

Leno's primetime show ended, while Conan left The Tonight Show following the proposed announcement that Leno would be edited down to a half-hour, therefore pushing The Tonight Show back to 12:05am ET, which Conan refused to do, so he left the network entirely, while Leno returned to The Tonight Show, and the rest is history.

I watched this in its debut last night expecting the same thing as when he hosted the Tonight Show-and I was right. He did his same jokes, such as headlines, and his same style with the monologues and interviews and skits, which was a good thing. I liked his interview with Jerry Seinfeld, who was quite possibly the perfect first guest. This could be a good sign of things to come. I missed him while he was gone this summer. NBC did the right thing in keeping Leno after he decided to leave The Tonight Show. This seems like a good prime-time talk show, and I hope it lasts for a while. It is basically Leno's Tonight Show with a different set. Yes, Kevin Eubanks is back with him. The band is now called the Prime Time band.

*** out of ****

Jay Leno admits that he will never retire from his job as a stand-up comic. A vacation would be torture to him as he admitted on the View. Jay likes to work especially on the monologue which he has spent hours on working like an art. While his predecessor Johnny Carson was more laid back, Jay Leno has to work constantly and this show is an earlier version of his previous show. I missed him during those three months. This show is pretty much like when he was on the Tonight Show and thank God, there are no more dramas on NBC at 10pm. I'm getting sick of the CSI and Law and Order franchise. As Jay Leno tried to show off in the first episode against his competition, 98% won't be murders solved. There is too many crime dramas on television as it is. I missed the comedies especially the sitcoms. I yearn for the days when sitcoms ruled television line-ups. Until then Jay Leno Show is a welcome change to the line-up.

Jay's monologue seems to have suffered in the transition from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" to this new show. The jokes aren't as funny and there are a lot more duds. Did he lose a lot of writers? Also, it seems like he doesn't have enough material to fill five hours per week anymore, and he can't get the guests he used to get. I've been a fan of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" since the very beginning when he took over from Johnny Carson, but this new show seems so padded and unfunny that I finally dropped it from my recording schedule a few days ago.

It wouldn't be so bad if he just did one hour per week, because then he'd have enough good material to fill the hour.

Seriously, that may be the only radical change in his new show. Everything else is pretty much the same as when he was on The Tonight Show.

For his first show, he had the same politically-themed monologue, used the old familiar Headlines bit and brought a segment featuring a comedian nobody heard of before but I doubt Leno fans will like it. As for the guests, he had Jerry Seinfeld on as his 1st guest and also a music performance by Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kanye West, who also apologized for his infamous interruption during Taylor Swift's VMA award acceptance speech.

Jay Leno continues to do what he had been doing for the last 17 years which is rely on everything and everyone around him to provide the funny for his show while he goes on through the motions, as if his main concern is to finish tonight's show so he can immediately start tomorrow's show.

I wish Jay Leno would try harder at being funny himself than depending on everyone else to be funny for him. The 1st show attracted 18 million viewers so he has a fan base, nobody can deny that but the true abilities of The Jay Leno Show will be revealed when the show goes head- to-head against NBC's dramas. And even if it wins the ratings battle, it wouldn't matter much anyway cause people's standards have been lowered to the point where they will believe anything they see on TV is "great". It won't change the fact that Jay Leno stopped being funny a long time ago.

In conclusion, if you liked the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you will like the Jay Leno Show. If you didn't like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you're probably still waiting on Conan to be himself again.