The Jay Leno Show: Wake Me Up When It's Over

Just how awful was the debut of "The Jay Leno Show?" Let me count the ways.

For months, NBC and Leno have proclaimed the new primetime show would be very different from Leno's "Tonight Show," but what I saw last night was the exact same show, only less funny.

Leave it to NBC, a network that's been in freefall since "Friends" went off the air, to botch the riskiest move in TV history by serving up a carbon copy of Leno's "Tonight Show" that actually managed to be less interesting than the original.

Let's start with the entrance. The new theme song is outright horrible, the kind of crappy, generic jazz-fusion guitar noodling that, now that I think about it, offered a pretty good taste of the mediocrity to come.

Leno strode out from behind glass doors — I almost expected a blue-vested Wal-Mart greeter to welcome him — and shook hands with a bunch of fans, an awkward, uncomfortable and painfully staged moment that was as unnecessary as it was pointless.

And how about that monologue? Bush and Cheney jokes? At least it's nice to know Leno's highly paid joke writers had a nice relaxing summer, without having to, you know, work too hard by coming up with fresh material.

One of the "innovations" is going to be taped segments with "correspondents" like Dan Finnerty, who serenaded a car-wash patron with a silly song. It was only marginally funny. It did not bode well if this was the best they could come up with for the debut episode.

Leno's first guest was his old pal Jerry Seinfeld, who showed up in a tux, seemingly a little surly and not particularly happy to be there. Although he did get off a funny bon mot: "In the '90s when we quit a show, we actually left."

The only lively moment was when Leno grilled Kanye West about how he rudely interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech on the MTV Video Awards. Kanye apologized — again — but if Jay was hoping for any kind of "Hugh Grant moment," well, there's a bit of an indiscretion gap between acting like a jackass on an awards show and being arrested while conducting a business transaction with a low-rent hooker in the back seat of your car. And let's be honest — Leno got incredibly lucky in that Kanye had been booked weeks ago, and the incident happened the night before the show. It's not like Jay will be interrogating a disgraced celebrity every night (although it wouldn't be a bad idea).

The musical performance, featuring Kanye, Jay-Z and Rihanna, was loud, energetic and jarring, an odd juxtaposition to the sleepy-time vibe of the rest of the show.

The show ended with that hoary old "Headlines" bit. Didn't that used to be funnier? Or did it just seem funnier because whenever I watched it before, I was usually half-asleep. My suspicion is that Leno wanted to give viewers the familiarity and comfort of a cozy hour that reminded them of his No. 1 late-show glory days, but the result was actually just dull.

Oh, and I almost forgot the supremely lame fake interview with Barack Obama, in which footage of the president was intercut with Jay asking dopey questions. Not only was it not funny, it was painful to watch. Although one bit did ring true. When Leno asked, "So what do you think of my new show?" Obama answered, "I guarantee it will be pronounced dead."

Sounds about right.