'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
Stuttering John relegated to writers' room for new Leno show
by Joel Keller, posted Jul 23rd 2009 3:01PM
As a longtime Howard Stern fan, John Melendez will always be known as Stuttering John to me. Over the many years he was on the show, Melendez somehow managed to get control of his stammer, but not his annoying Long Island accent. So when Jay Leno decided to add a little bit of "hipness" on The Tonight Show by plucking Melendez from Stern's clutches and making him the announcer of the show five years ago, you had to wonder about the wisdom of that decision.Of course, the move didn't work: Melendez may not have stuttered while he was introducing the show, but hearing him butcher celebrity names -- did he call Pamela Anderson "Pamaler Andason" once? -- on a daily basis was brutal. And Leno quickly realized that without Stern and his writers to support him, Melendez wasn't all that funny.
So it's not a surprise to learn that, with the clean slate provided by a move in timeslot, Melendez won't be the announcer on The Jay Leno Show.
He'll be among the staff of 19 writers, but you won't hear or see him on the program. I bet he won't write anything, either, but we'll never know that for sure. I can just see him pitching joke ideas now:
John: "How 'bout something where Jay goes and asks people questions, like I used to do on the Stern show?"
Head Writer: "We do that already. It's called 'Jaywalking.' Can you just go and get us lunch like we asked you to?"
This just feels like a case of Leno backhandedly admitting he made a mistake in hiring Melendez but being too nice of a guy to let him go. Good for Melendez; the last thing he needs to do is come crawling back to Stern, which I'm sure would have been his next move.
[via TV Week]
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