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Battle Of The Beards: Leno, Letterman, Conan, And Late Night Return
By Josh Tyler: 2008-01-03 01:59:47
Bad news for striking writers: Late night television doesn’t need you. Tonight Leno, Letterman, Conan, Kimmel, and Fergusen returned to the airwaves after a two month absence brought on by the WGA's writers strike. Letterman and Fergusen returned with writers, the others without. The differences between them? Minimal.
The only thing really out of the ordinary in tonight’s after dark talk show presentations was the proliferation of beards and the low quality (or in some cases the complete absence) of guests. Both Conan and Dave donned strike beards in support of their picketing brothers. Beards which by the way, provided plenty of time filling content, especially for Conan who unlike Dave was working without a writer net. But like Dave, Conan was funny. Leno, as usual, was not. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s the host or the teams of scripters they have working behind the scenes, well here’s your answer. It’s the host. Jay Leno opened and handled his show just as he always has. He did his usual monologue, this time written entirely by himself. As usual, there were one or two funny jokes and a lot of fumbling. If anything, the monologue was a little better than normal. Jay actually seemed to be enjoying himself. Following the monologue he did an aw shucks Q&A with the audience, he had guests, he had music. It was The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as it always is: Lukewarm, friendly, and unchallenging. The only real difference in The Tonight Show in coming weeks is likely to be the guests, who will suck. No one wants to cross picket liens to be on the show. Tonight Jay had a politician, in the form of Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. It’s likely to be downhill from here. Conan on the other hand changed up his format a bit. His monologue was truncated, and spent mostly on musical montages dedicated to the beard. It, like everything else that happened on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the writer free edition, was hilarious. Meanwhile Conan, while hilarious, seemed slightly out of breath. Perhaps even a little nervous. No matter. Conan got laughs, because Conan is funny. Not because he has people hiding behind a curtain somewhere telling him how to be funny. Even when he’s just killing time, O’Brien is just naturally hilarious. Already a master of awkward pauses, he shined in this, the biggest Hollywood pause of all. Noteworthy was a segment in which he gave the audience a tour of his office. It was easily one of the funniest things he’s done in at least a year. In fact Conan was so funny, I forgot to bother with recording and watching Kimmel. He didn’t have a beard. That’s probably all you need to know. For Letterman and Fergusen, who negotiated separate deals with the WGA to allow them to bring back their writing teams, it was everything as normal, except with fewer guests and lots of the same platitudes of support for strikers being pushed by all the other writerless shows. As for Dave’s beard, he looks a little like Lincoln, and I’m rooting for him to keep it. Our bearded brotherhood needs more famous members. Al from Home Improvement is no longer a valid cultural reference. Maybe this will be the first step towards ending the strike. Television is getting back to normal, with or without its writers. How long till the networks start filling their other slots with replacement reality shows and we forget all about scripted television? I need my Lost fix, but as Leno rather plainly pointed out, it’s tough to put so many other people out of work just for the benefit of a scant few. In his case it was 19 striking writers and a greedy bunch of producers keeping 160 Tonight Show workers from feeding their families. In Hollywood it’s hundreds of thousands of industry workers headed for food stamps so 3,000 writers can get better residuals. Maybe the writers in the right, but intentionally or not, tonight it got just a little bit harder for them to win. Late night television is back in action, without even a hiccup.
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