The Jay Leno Show: would you buy that for a dollar?

Who can tell about talk shows? Some get off to a great start and run out of steam (Arsenio), some never get off the ground at all (Chevy? Chevy Who?) or start out weak and then grow legs like Conan's act (although all the bowing he does when ballyhooing his guests is enough to make me want to hurl).

But based on his first couple of weeks, it looks like Jay Leno is off to a rough start.

I’ve been watching his new nightly 10pm show on the recorder-thingie religiously since its debut. My first impression: He’d better hope Hugh Grant gets caught with another transvestite prostitute and pronto.

His tongue-lashing of Kanye West on his first show smacked more of a scolding Dr. Phil than a free-wheeling Johnny Carson. It produced the singular effect of making me feel sorry for Kanye West! If you haven’t seen it, clink the link at the top of this graf and be prepared to squirm.

Now I don’t blame Leno for negotiating the 10 o’clock timeslot, although I do think it was craven and short-sighted for NBC to give it to him.

But I do blame Leno for what he's made of the opportunity that NBC hail-Mary-passed his way.

Now even his monologues suck and they used to be the gold standard. I've also noticed variations on the same joke(s) on the different shows, I mean miniscule variations and Bill Maher also did one on Friday this week that I'd heard on late-night TV days earlier. These guys ought to have someone on their staff who watches the other shows then vets their own scripts. Just the same, I'm thinking Conan got the Tonight Show writers in the switch-over.

Leno's new "New Feature(s) of the Day" segments are almost always painful to watch. Although the singer/guitar-player on the Limbaugh episode was pretty good. He must have been psyched about the booking - I'm sure Leno's show enjoyed stellar ratings for the night.

That episode, with the newly-thin Rush Limbaugh, was almost surreal. Limbaugh still has the same giant head on this new, slender body. He's still coarse and abrasive even when engaged in what is supposed to be good-natured banter. He looks and comports himself like an evil Thunderbird. It would be great theater if it wasn't supposed to be real life. Rush Limbaugh is a malcontent marionette in our midst, why aren't the villagers revolting? I mean, against him?

He even acts like an evil Thunderbird on Leno's program, repeatedly running over effigies of former Vice-President Al Gore and actor/advocate Ed Begley Jr. with a race car in another of Jay's insipid, ill-conceived stunts. It seems every guest who comes on the show has to agree to do something to embarrass themselves - Michael Moore tried to sing a song, for instance, even Jerry Seinfeld had to perform some sort of forgettable trick - and they put Rush Limbaugh behind the wheel of a sports car and hung effigies of current, living public figures in his way for him to run over. Then back up and run over again (seriously).

Who the hell at corporate thought that was a good idea?

And there's Jay Leno in the middle of it all, eagerly not offending the crowd of Limbaugh fans who have showed up for the taping.

My guess is it's a calculated risk on NBC's part to save the show, currently plummeting in the ratings. The entire affair is a calculated risk and you just watch NBC cut Leno loose if the embarrassment factor gets too high.

Oh and then poor Smoky Robinson has to come out and try to follow Limbaugh's ode to vehicular manslughter with a love song. Throwing Rush Limbaugh fans some Smokey Robinson is the very definition of lavishing pearls on the proverbial swine. I'm betting a lot of cavewomen got dragged into their bedrooms by their hair that night.

Then Leno throws to the local anchors - Ooh, we have a road re-opening and our local action crew is live on the scene! Can you imagine?

Then Leno closes with, I kid you not, favorite clips from the internet. You know the links well-meaning friends and co-workers and cranky uncles down South email you during work hours that you never have time to click-through? You're off the hook! Jay's got plenty of time for them! Because that is state-of-the-art network-TV comedy. Pixilated clips of puppies that can't roll over and guys getting whacked in the balls by various hurtling objects.

Popular culture has officially achieved "Robo-Cop"'s negative utopia. Except in the case of Leno's show where I'm not sure we'd even buy that if we had to pay as much as a dollar for it.