YMMV / The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

• Growing the Beard: It's generally agreed that it took a couple of years for the show to come together, with Jay only truly becoming comfortable when Kevin Eubanks became the bandleader and they began building a rapport. Jay's famous post-arrest interview with Hugh Grant ("What the hell were you thinking?") is regarded by some to be the show's turning point, in terms of content and ratings success.
• Harsher in Hindsight: During the last week of Leno's first run as host, he had Conan O'Brien on as a guest. During the interview, Leno repeatedly stressed that NBC did a great thing by keeping Conan on Late Night a couple of very poorly-rated years and letting him find his footing and eventually become successful. As it turned out, NBC wasn't interested in giving Conan a second opportunity to play around to find what works.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Leno is often accused of stealing the Tonight Show out from under David Letterman, whom the public considered to be Johnny Carson's true successor. This discounts the fact that Leno had been regularly substituting for Carson for years and bringing in great ratings and NBC executives were leery about bringing Letterman's edgier comedy to their flagship late night slot^note as well as getting tired of dealing with Letterman's abrasive attitude and wanted to rock the boat as little as possible when Carson retired.
  • The initial reaction to Conan's departure from Tonight had some of this for Leno, namely on how plenty of people online (and even a bit on TV) thought Jay forced NBC to give him back Tonight just to spite poor Conan. However, the decision mostly rests with NBC executives^note who asked Jay to step down, despite his dominant ratings, and hastily gave him a prime-time show once they belatedly realized that his departure would let one of their cash cows move to a different network. Then there's the whole debacle that erupted when they panicked at Conan not pulling in equal ratings right out of the gate., and Jay really can only be blamed for accepting the job back instead of leaving.
  • It's now known in hindsight that NBC was the main antagonist in the conflict and Executive Meddling played a much bigger role than was previously known. It turns out that when Leno described the conflict as "all business" and stated that the real issue at play was that "NBC [stands for] 'Never Believe Your Contract'", he was correct. In 2001, rival network Fox was going all out to poach Conan for a 11:00PM show. Still stung by how Letterman's departure to CBS ended NBC's monopoly on the 11:35PM timeslot and proved that a Tonight Show competitor could be viable with the right host in the post-Carson era (and having just finished repairing the damage his departure had done), NBC feared a deja vu with Conan. NBC signed Conan to a contract extension that promised he would eventually take over as host of Tonight in order to retain him.^note Conan's circle urged him to take the Fox deal as it was so much more lucrative, but Conan stayed at NBC because he dreamed of hosting The Tonight Show. Observers have opined that this may have just been a cynical gambit to avoid increasing Conan's salary to match what Fox was offering and to bring down Tonight 's production cost as he was being paid significantly less than Leno. Nevertheless, NBC didn't inform Leno of their decision until they extended his contract in 2004, which devastated Leno, who felt like NBC was effectively firing him despite his success hosting the show. As 2009 approached, NBC realized they were staring down the same dilemma they had with Conan but with possibly worse consequences - by kicking Leno off Tonight while still in his prime and being uneasy about retirement, they were now opening the door to Leno being poached by another network and possibly devastating Conan's iteration of ''The Tonight Show'' by being put on as counter-programming in the same timeslot.^note Jimmy Kimmel has claimed that ABC was indeed trying to poach Leno to host a 11:35PM Tonight Show competitor as his tenure with NBC was reaching its end. NBC then scrambled to retain Leno and find somewhere else for him in their lineup, giving birth to The Jay Leno Show.
• Never Live It Down: Double subverted. Despite what some David Letterman fans think, Leno did live down the "talk show wars of '93" ... but what Leno has not yet lived down ever since it happened was taking his show back from Conan. Regardless of how much blame belongs to the higher ups and Jay, it's a massive black mark on his career that many still have not forgiven him for.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Jay Leno's public image was permanently damaged by his perceived role in the 2010 Tonight Show conflict. Regardless of whether or not it's fair, Leno's conduct gave the impression that he was behaving possessively towards The Tonight Show and simply didn't want to give up hosting it. The Jay Leno Show was perceived as an intentional gambit to undermine Conan O'Brien, his Just Following Orders response to the controversy was seen as disingenuous and his willingness to go along with NBC's plan to bump Tonight to midnight to put The Jay Leno Show at 11:35PM gave the impression that he had been angling to take Tonight back from Conan the whole time.^note Howard Stern accurately predicted this in 2006 when he told Conan during an interview on Late Night that he didn't believe Leno would ever give up The Tonight Show willingly. Conan's willingless to give up hosting Tonight to preserve the show's integrity lead to the majority of the public siding with him and against Leno. Additionally, a 2004 clip from one of Leno's monologues in which he said Tonight was a "dynasty" that didn't belong to one person and that he was happy to hand the show over to Conan in 2009 was relentlessly used against him. This lead to a friend of Leno commenting to the Los Angeles Times, "The thing Leno should do is walk, period. He's got everything to lose in terms of public popularity by going back. People will look at him differently. He'll be viewed as the bad guy." The damage to his reputation cut even deeper among his peers, who almost unanimously sided with Conan and offered scathing public criticism of Leno - Jimmy Kimmel did an entire episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! impersonating Leno and later confronted Leno about the controversy on The Jay Leno Show.^note Leno: What's the best prank you've ever pulled? Kimmel: [...] I think the best prank I ever pulled was, I told a guy once, "Five years from now I'm going to give you my show." And then when the five years came, I gave it to him and I took it back, almost instantly. As Patton Oswalt put it, "Comedians who don't like Jay Leno now, and I'm one of them, we're not like, 'Jay Leno sucks;' it's that we're so hurt and disappointed that one of the best comedians of our generation… willfully has shut the switch off."
• Ron the Death Eater: Leno gets this treatment by supporters of both Letterman and Conan.
• Values Dissonance: A 1998 monologue Leno gave about the Monica Lewinsky scandal received renewed attention and scrutiny in the late 2010s as Leno's jokes were seen as being little more than slut shaming Lewinsky while letting Bill Clinton completely off the hook for his own behavior. Nobody had any issue with Leno's material when the episode aired, as they matched the general public opinion at the time - keep in mind that Clinton's approval rating went up during the scandal. The renewed scrutiny on Leno's handling of the scandal came during a significant public reevaluation of Bill Clinton's scandals and sexual misconduct allegations in light of the #MeToo movement and his ties to the infamous billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein coming to light.
• Vindicated by History: The show had Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in its shadow for quite a while, and the Jay Leno Show debacle in 2009-2010 earned ire from some longtime viewers who were also Conan fans. But many now appreciate the show for the monologue - one of Leno's fortes, and because it was one of the last talk shows not to overly mine politics for its jokes (though to be fair, it certainly made its fair share). Plus, many of the recurring segments (Headlines, Jaywalking) were guaranteed hilarity, something which wasn't appreciated at the time because they were done so frequently.

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