Late Show - Foo Fighters "Everlong"

 

This has been on youtube since it aired but now we have an "official" version and I thought it was worth re-watching anyway. Makes me emotional every time. Taylor Hawkins' death is so strange.

Conan Says Farewell

 

It's the "end of an era" or whatever... I don't know.

If you'd like to see the remote where Conan met his wife, it's this one:

The Last Late Show: First Take

The last Late Show with David Letterman just aired and I thought it was fantastic. It's hard to imagine a more perfect hour of television. It was amazing how it could be so funny and yet how it could be such an emotional an experience.

From the time I was made aware that David Letterman existed I wanted to watch every piece of television of his that I could get my hands on. I have so many great memories wrapped up in the show - not just watching (alone, mostly in my bedroom), but sharing it with friends and talking about the jokes. It's impossible to see the old clips of the show without remembering where I was in my life when it first aired and what I was doing. For these reasons, I couldn't help but be swept up in a wave of nostalgia and the bittersweet look at an era that is officially gone. As of tonight, it's gone.

Dave is nothing if not unpredictable and so one of the things I've loved to do through the years is "play the Dave" and try to predict things. One of the things I would have predicted about the end of the last show - that I would have predicted wrongly - is that he would end the show sitting on a stool. Jack Paar signed off for the last time while sitting on a stool, Johnny Carson signed off his last show while sitting on a stool, I thought Dave would make that nod to tradition but it didn't happen.

But there was one thing like that, I think. If you read the reviews of the show tomorrow (and, really, why would you?) it's altogether possible that they will cite the "A Day in the Life of Dave" segment as the only weakness and an "uncharacteristic" one at that. But in his final days Johnny Carson did a segment like that and so Dave's doing it too.

The Last Episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

Friday was the last episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Watch it here.

Total Number of Episodes: 969.
Last Guest: Andy Samberg.
Last Musical Guest: Arguably Buckwheat Zydeco.
Last Guest Performance: The Muppets.

The last episode has a strange feel to it - the timing is off and Jimmy doesn't have any "punch" in the jokes because he's constantly verging on becoming "emotional". But the weight of the moment justifies it.

Speaking of "the weight"... the last segments of the "last shows" are part of TV history and lore. Jack Paar's "Come on, Lika... we're going home", Johnny Carson on the stool, etc.

In terms of "Late Night", when Letterman left Late Night, the last segment, he sat behind the desk and spoke to the audience. Conan's last segment on Late Night was the similar. Jimmy's bucked the trend (perhaps partly because he wouldn't be able to get through it without becoming a weeping mess). Instead of a speech, he performs The Band's "The Weight" with the Muppets and does it in a loving recreation of the version that appears in the movie "The Last Waltz".



"The Last Waltz" is a concert movie that covers The Band's last concert. The parallels with the situation of Jimmy's last show are obvious. Jimmy plays drums and plays on an identical set to Levon Helm's drum set in that movie. Jimmy grew up in upstate New York, not far from Levon's adopted home. I love that they got all the little touches right. The lighting is the same, the colors are the same, the recreation is so complete they even mimic Scorceses style of rotating around the musicians in tracking shots. Compare. I obviously love it. It's a great way to say goodbye.

The first episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon airs February 17th 2014.
Late Night with Seth Meyers starts February 24th 2014.

The Last Tonight Show

Last night was the last "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" ever. You can still see it for a limited time here.

From June 1, 2009 to January 22, 2010, the show lasted 7 months, 21 days and aired 146 episodes totaling 150 Hours, 52 Minutes of programming (counting commercials). I watched every single show.

I found the last episode oddly emotional. I mean, Conan isn't retiring, he doesn't have a terminal illness, he's still making tons of money, it only lasted 7 months - there isn't that much loss to really "mourn" over but nevertheless, I did feel very sad and nostalgic throughout the entire hour. The montage of great moments was a particular mix of laughter and melancholy. Seeing Wax Tom Cruise and Wax Fonzie being shot out of a cannon, Conan pool cleaning, Conan and Andy boating, the motorized podium, smashing the pumpkin, and so on, was liking looking through a photo album (yes, even though it's only a show that lasted 7 months).

Tom Hanks was good, Neil Young was good, Steve Carrell was funny. Conan's goodbye speech was especially good even though he did just do one 7 months ago. I can't decide if Will Ferrell playing with Beck, Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper and Conan, himself, was epic or kind of a waste of time. Probably it was a little of both. I love the song, the musicians and the return of "more cowbell" but I couldn't help but wish that there was an amazing singer to match the amazing music. The "comedic" aspect of it just didn't seem worth it.

Given that the show runs past midnight, the last show ended January 23, 2010 - the 5 year anniversary of Johnny Carson's death to the day.

There's no telling where Conan will end up - though it looks to me like FOX - or when he'll start airing shows - though all reports speculate that it will be MONTHS - but I'll be watching.

A final note about NBC: I made a joke before about them running their network like "Kruger Industrial Smoothing" and I have to say that doesn't even feel like an exaggeration. When Johnny Carson was on the air NBC basically had 100% of the audience. The other networks didn't even pretend to think that they could compete. When he retired, NBC took the good fortune of having the agreed upon rightful heir to the throne, David Letterman. Faced with a slam dunk, NBC decided to screw everyone and send Letterman to another network. So now they have %50 (let's say) instead of 100%. That's a bad business model and a huge public blunder but they learned an important lesson and moved on. Oh, no, wait, because 20 years later with a new, young, innovative host, they decide to piss him off too and send him to another network and now they can have, at best, 33% of the audience and a major P.R. nightmare where people generally think they (and their "new" host) are evil. A ratings share cut into three, an old and soon to be retired host, an ageing demographic, increased competition, bad press, it all sounds like good, solid planning.

In a nutshell, NBC's decision was "these ratings aren't good enough, let's cut them in half." Until such point that 2+2=5, there's no way that can make business sense. And yet somehow it happened. The most legendary franchise, the home of Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson is officially dead.

Epilogue: A lot happened in over the past week or so and there won't be any more Conan for a while so I'll probably post past clips from the show periodically.