Event Television for a slice of a certain age group, it would seem.

Not only would that be by far the biggest rating in that age group for any kind of show at any time Friday night (if it holds up as a national rating and it will probably decrease only slightly), it is also a better number than almost every prime-time show that has appeared on NBC this television season.

In the current television week, only three entertainment shows on television — “American Idol” on Fox and CBS’s two Monday comedies, “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory” — have exceeded a 4.8 rating in that younger adult group.

Or maybe not.  It’s not like “Two and A Half Men” is “Event Television”. 

Nonetheless, this ratings item is strking.  And it is probably something that makes no sense to, say, my parent’s generation.  Just as it makes no sense that Jay Leno might have been this fresh personality back in 1990.  Some things  need a bit of sense in context to explain.  Sample Conan back in 1993 and 1994, and the impression is probably not all that great.  Your twenty-something demographic came to it as it developed, out of sight a tad.

To be fair, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show beat Conan in even this demographic.  Until these last couple of weeks.  To be further fair, everyone’s ratings were sliding — including The Tongiht Show with Jay Leno.

The word being floated about with Conan’s “Goodbye” speech is “classy”.  I myself had thought he would thank Jay Leno, but then again the classy thing to do there would be to leave that name out and avoid the ensuring chorus of boos.  I don’t quite understand it.  The entire gist of the last two weeks’ of programming was a comedicly exaggerated classlessness.  They insult the venetration of the “Venerable Institution” of “The Tonight Show” by putting on the “Masturbating Bear” — smuggled from what he had thought was retired at the end of his Late Night Run, and that is the joke.  (Not quite on this wikipedia list, though.)  I gather everyone is on the joke here except Leno, see Letterman’s surge of Leno and NBC jokes.  But here, Conan has an advantage: his “burning down the house” has a natural time limit of his final prgoram — Letterman just has to fade away his current running gag eventually.

Watching the montage sequence — to Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” — heavy on what was arguably the most memorable skit of his short run of his program, the very first one — and the search for visual humor.  An odd mark of Letterman’s old show sits there — that “Human Bowling Alley” has a strange similarity to, say, Letterman’s “Human Sponge”.  The Monster Truck destroying a Giant Pumpkin is oddly similar to Letterman throwing Watermelon out the window.  Odd, given they’re too very different personalities.  (But then again, these things were Stolen from Steve Allen, as he says.)
Visual gags.  But  nary a Pimpbot in there.

I have a tough time imagining Jay Leno piecing together a montage of visual humor and cues of similar kinesis.  Then again, the same might be true of Letterman CBS.  With Jay, it’s a distorted face to a “Brain” character, a distorted face to a “Jock” character, and a continuous loop of him asking Hugh Grant “What the Hell Were You thinking?”

Which is fine.  These shows are, at the end, merely entertainment promotional vehicles.  Leno will return to The Tonight Show, ratings leader.  Here I’ll toss in one irresponsible suggestion  The NBC brass will promote it with something that has eerie echos of the “Great Silent Majority” behind the beleagured Leno, similar to his “America is Standing Up for Jay” ad campaign.  So, if you want to continue in the great George Wallace — Richard Nixon — Jay Leno tradition, Go for it — who am I to stand in your way?

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