The Jay Leno Show

Jay returned with that smart and smartass mix of talent and controversy that separates the pros from the bores.

Frontloaded to high heaven or not, it was still a solid premiere. Now, that bad news: None of the standard building blocks of the show seemed that impressive on their own--so that when you tried to imagine the show without an overload of starpower and star-drama, it didn't seem that exciting.

He's funny in a familiar, tasteful way; that blunt edge promised in some of his promos never cuts through too much.

That's a lot of pressure, even for Iron Jay, and maybe why Night One felt like a work in progress--terribly rough in spots, not bad in others.

The Jay Leno Show is of course not the "brand-new hour of comedy" its promos claim; it is brand-old to the bone. But the notion of Leno running some combination of pop-culture confessional booth and prime-time torture chamber has some real appeal.

The one moment people will talk about, and remember, from The Jay Leno Show debut was one of the least comic of Jay's career. It's going to get NBC some water cooler talk, and a lot of website hits, but it's not going to work as a signature "This is why Jay is awesome" clip like I think they were hoping.

[This] is why this strange, shallow puddle of comedy is so difficult to accept. With all eyes on Leno, this is the best he, and his writers, and the struggling network could come up with?