It's not a good sign when the Bud Light commercial is funnier than the comedy show it interrupts.
Sixteen minutes into the new "The Jay Leno Show," it was difficult not to panic. This is the future of television? This wasn't even a good rendition of television past.
Clearly Leno believes that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and he has been very vocal about the fact that his late-night talk show was not broke. So here it is again, different time slot, busier set and same old jokes. Literally.
Yes, there was a reference to an Obama-held "root beer summit" between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, but there was also a Bush joke, a Cheney joke, a Wal-Mart joke, a Cash for Clunkers joke (getting warmer) and a Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi joke so dated that Leno had to precede it with "people are still talking about. . . ." All of which made his opening monologue seem like an attempt to cash in on the current vampire fixation -- comedy of the undead.
Cut to a flatly bizarre musical car wash skit -- in which Dan Finnerty tortured some pleasant-looking woman named Meg with his silly and sexually suggestive songs -- and by the time a tuxedoed Jerry Seinfeld (Really, Jerry? Was it a tuxedo event?) appeared through the set's May Co.-esque doors, it was hard not to hope he would simply release the audience with the promise that they would not have to serve for another 12 months.
"I'm just trying to grasp what's going on here," Seinfeld said instead, just as if he could read our minds. "In the '90s, when we quit a show, we actually left."
Who thought we'd feel such nostalgia for the '90s?
For a moment, Seinfeld seemed a breath of fresh air, expressing concern that he was the biggest name Leno could get: "Is your staff aware that I have not been on television for 11 years?" and quipping that he was there to announce his new talk show. Then the star power of Oprah Winfrey appeared like a living fresco via teleprompter and it all went downhill again.
A mock "interview" with President Obama containing an actual Viagra joke ('90s alert!) was followed by a supremely uncomfortable "unplanned" chat with West in which the rap star apologized for "stepping on the emotions" of Taylor Swift, whose acceptance speech he had trampled over at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night.
