The Jay Leno Show: Steve Carell/Vince Gill & Emmylou Harris
We've seen comments the past few days regarding the fact that we're reviewing this show daily so I thought I should go ahead and address this at the top. We're continually evaluating our coverage of this show, but for the rest of this week at least, these will be daily reviews. Regardless of how we or you feel about it, the very existence of The Jay Leno Show is a groundbreaking chapter in television history.As such, we'd be remiss to not acknowledge it and cover it upon its premiere. It is a primetime major network show that has completely shaken up the television landscape this season, after all. As for how we'll continue covering it, we have considered weekly roundups or even sporadic reports. And we do listen to you, our readers, as to what you want to read.
Tonight, Jay brought us Steve Carell, "Celebrity Pets," and the "Jackass of the Month." If you think about that last one, I'm sure you can figure out who it was.
"Great White Moments in Black History" are pretty funny. I think that's because they're short. Tonight they honored the white president of VH1 canceling Flavor of Love, which was a great day for not only African-Americans but for all the people of the world. The show wrapped with "Celebrity Pets," where they find animals that look like famous people. It wasn't particularly funny, because I think we've seen all this before.
"JACKASS OF THE MONTH"
Adam Carolla offered up the comedy video segment this time. It was an idea he'd pitched to Leno before the show was on the air called "Jackass of the Month." These were basically Internet videos featuring at least two participants, one of whom is a jackass. The idea is for Jay to pick whine one.
Once he picks the obvious jackass, Carolla goes on and on about how and why Leno is wrong and how someone else is the true jackass. While it was clearly all set up, as you'd expect, there were still some funny moments. Particularly in that Carolla was just bagging on Jay the whole time. And the winner wasn't any of the four videos. But that's fair, because it was Kanye West at the VMAs.
STEVE CARELL
As I expected, Carell was a very good interview. Leno just kind of sat back and let him do his thing, and we wound up with several funny stories about his daughter, marriage, honey whipped cream raisin sandwiches, and scaring the bejeezus out of his father ... just for fun. I do wonder why Carell didn't have to "earn" his clip.
Leno in primetime is nice for these moments. People who don't stay up for those late nights shows probably don't get to see their favorite celebrities outside of their television characters, so it's a good opportunity. Of course, in order to tune in you have to skip some of those television characters. But I guess that's okay because they're on ABC and CBS and they don't want to let their stars on Leno anyway.
GREEN CAR CHALLENGE
Why???
VINCE GILL & EMMYLOU HARRIS
I enjoy all types of music, but I won't admit to being hip on country music enough that I even recognized this song. I thought Harris was a little weak in voice, but for the most part it was a solid if unremarkable performance. Are they promoting anything, or just there for kicks? If they are promoting something then they should have been able to promote it for real on the show.

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