It was a great twenty-seven year run. Shame it had to end in rape by demon.
In 1993, when the nation’s television critics were forecasting doom for NBC’s Late Night based on its choice of host (some inexperienced Irish dork named Conan O’Brien), they should’ve been focusing on Worldwide Pants and Carson Prods. ceding control of the show to Lorne Michaels’s Broadway Video. Yes, while they were beating up on the neophyte, motherfuckers should’ve been dropping to their knees and thanking Uncle Miltie that they weren’t tuning into Late Night with Kevin Nealon.
‘Cuz now, Lorne is continuing his Jimmy Fallon experiment in the time slot made holy by David Letterman, Robert Morton, Paul Schaffer, Chris Elliott and a steamroller.
Not that this is a huge surprise. Fallon’s ascension to O’Brien’s chair has been in the works for the last year or so, and, given Michaels’s puzzling loyalty to the ruiner of all good things, no one expected that the producer/kingmaker would suddenly reverse himself and go with a talent who… well, just a talent full stop. Evidently, Michaels believes that viewers crave a vacuous late night host who laughs at his own jokes and stumbles over big words on the teleprompter. And while I may question this, you just can’t argue with the combined grosses of Taxi and Fever Pitch.
Well, good luck with that, Lorne. I just know that, for the first time since grade school, clicking over to NBC at 12:35 in the morning won’t be a option.