Hey gang, another week of Late Night Joy, which, of course, means another week of us bagging on Leno. What do you want? You know our stance on monologues, and the guy takes such apparent pride in that dumb thing. Listen, his show is the exact same garbage it was when it was on an hour later, we’re honor bound to bag on it.

However, the question has been asked, why do we let SNL get away with the same lazy nonsense that we lambaste Jay for? That show is 85 minutes of the exact same lazy, unfunny comedy that Jay Leno employs and then sometimes we get lucky and an actually funny sketch makes it to air. Take this, um, thing:

That, right there, is better than anything Jay’s ever done. Absolutely. But, then why was the rest of the show unwatchable? SNL clearly employs funny people, why can’t they make a funny show? And this year hasn’t even had one of those. It’s been 90 minutes of unfunny sketches without endings and U2 songs. It’s not like they had a big turnover in the cast and nobody knows what they’re doing. They replaced two featured players, both of whom were great, but neither was a full cast member, so that’s still a relatively minor change. Why isn’t the show good?!? We’re not asking for 90 minutes of beer jars either. The nature of sketch comedy is that there’s bound to be some clunkers, and there’s obviously no accounting for taste, so there’s no way every sketch will work. But some of them should. It’s ridiculous that all these funny people can come together and make something so consistently unfunny.

So, you got us. We shouldn’t be complaining about Leno so much, but how can we not? His show is still terrible. So, our pledge to you, our beloved reader is this: every time we complain about Leno, we’ll make sure to mention something terrible about SNL too.

Now, let’s get to the listings:

Monday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Dana Carvey, Justin Timberlake
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Jamie Foxx, Jason Alexander, Grizzly Bear
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Garry Shandling, Kaley Cuoco, Tim McGraw
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Kathie Lee Gifford, Penn Badgley, Love & Theft
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - David Boreanaz, Match Albom, Dierks Bentley
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - David Duchovny, Carmelo Anthony, Kid Cudi
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Frank Caliendo, Casey Currie, Emily Wells

STEPHAN: Speaking of SNL and Leno, they come together horribly tonight. Justin Timberlake’s SNL appearances used to be a highpoint. Then somebody must have told Justin he was an actor and he started mugging and trying to tell jokes and the wheels fell off. Or was that Dana Carvey? Either way, skip that for Garry Shandling!!! If everyone goes out and buys The Garry Shandling Show DVD, we might even get all the Larry Sanders Show episodes released. We can do this people!

ERECH: Leno actually is pulling in some fun guests this week, that almost fools me into wanting to watch his show. Problem is, I know how poor all the interview segments go on the programme, slipped in between all the unfunny comedy bits. Seriously, how horrible to watch are all these Dan Finnerty pieces? I think maybe I’m supposed to like the guy, because he’s friends with actual funny people - but whatever he’s doing on Leno is not doing it for me at all.

At least we’re getting Ross the Intern back on Friday. Think he’ll have a better honorific than “Intern” on the new show??

Tuesday:

• The Jay Leno Show - John C. Reilly, Ben Roethlisberger
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Ice-T, Eddie Izzard, the Flaming Lips
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Sienna Miller, Aziz Ansari, Dead by Sunrise
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Andy Samberg, Greg Proops, Baaba Maal & the Brazilian Girls
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Tim Robbins, Adam Goldberg
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Jack Black, the latest “Dancing with the Stars” castoff, Cobra Starship
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Chris Kattan, Lily Allen

ERECH: Look, this is going to be an easy call, since there isn’t a whole lot on tonight to get my goat. No matter how you cut it, or how you like it cut, Ice T on Conze is the way to go. Not because I like Ice T, or think Conan will say anything funny while interviewing him, but because Ice T is guaranteed to spew at least 3 completely batcrap insane sentences that go COMPLETELY UNCHECKED tonight, and it’s our job as viewers to catch them. And laugh ridiculously after hearing them. I said “at least” - we’ll point them out for you next week if you miss them, LNT faithful!

STEPHAN: Is this the first time a hot chick has been on Letterman since he announced his creepiness? That Kardashian lady was on the night of, but I don’t think everything had really sunk in yet. The crowd cheered Dave’s activities that night. I can understand not caring about them, but cheering them seems a little weird, so I think maybe that whole night is a mulligan. Anyways, this is probably the first hot chick on Letterman since the unpleasantness. Unless Kaley Cuoco is a hot chick? I was assuming that was one of those Dancing with the Stars people, but now I’m wondering. Not wondering enough to look it up, or even to stop typing, but wondering nonetheless.

Wednesday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Bill Cosby, Toby Keith
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Serena Williams Ken Jeong, Rascal Flatts
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Tina Fey, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Mika
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Monty Python
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Kristen Bell, Robert Carlyle
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Jamie Foxx, Kristin Cavallari, Toby Keith
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Charlie Hunnam, Phoenix

STEPHAN: This is a great night. A Great Night! Even Leno and Carson Daly have good lineup. Phoenix brings it, no matter what, and Charlie Hunnam is the best guy that might be Heath Ledger in the world. And Bill Cosby? Even Leno can’t mess that up. Just don’t make the mistake of watching Kimmel tonight and you’ll be fine.

ERECH: CBS is on top of the game tonight, no two ways about it. If you happen to hate good things though, you can check out Fallon and see what this Monty Python interview is going to be like. I might be taxing the batteries on my remote between Kristen Bell and Jimmy2, but I’m a pro at television and you’re reading this, so you may not be ready for it. LEAVE THE HEAVY LIFTING TO YOUR TIVO!

Thursday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Matt Lauer, Jeff Dunham
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - John C. Reilly, Matt Braunger
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Don Rickles, Built to Spill
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Gerard Butler, Ivanka Trump, Hockey
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Forest Whitaker, Adam Savage & Jamie Hyneman
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Harper Simon
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Mike Rowe, Keane

ERECH: Carson has Keane on. Doesn’t David Cross do a bit about getting super trashed with that crappy band or something?

If you’re not up that late though, Carson has 2 funny and awesome guys on, who we should all support. Well, except for Reilly, because that vampire movie thing he’s doing looks awful (even though the cast, writer AND director have all done great things - Hollywood is weird). What doesn’t look so awful though tonight is the newest episode of Supernatural, written by friend of the house (and friend of my loins) Andrew Dabb. That show is getting all kinds of buzz from the internets, and is turning into quite the cult classic show I hear too. I’m kind of a jerk, because I’m not fully on board with the thing, even though one of my best friends is a writer on it, but I’M TRYING TO FIX THAT! And I’ll be tuning in tonight, to see if Murdershow gets a namecheck like Andrew swore that $20 would buy!

STEPHAN: Craig Ferguson spent most of his interview with Sophia Bush talking about his love of the Mythbusters. Sure, this might be more about Sophia Bush’s interestingness than Mythbusters, but I thought she was playing along gamely, so I think Ferguson might just really love Mythbusters. Although, who doesn’t? This is going to be a good one!

Friday:

• The Jay Leno Show - Ross Matthews, Sen. John McCain
• The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien - Max Records
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Uma Thurman, Tim McGraw
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Eddie Izzard, Gina Gershon, Amy Shumer
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Toby Keith, Michelle Monaghan
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Serena Williams, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Eric Church
• Last Call with Carson Daly - Eva Amurri

STEPHAN: If you ask me about Gina Gershon, I’ll gone on and on about how great she is. However, if you ask me to be specific, I’ll hem and haw and then mumble something about Face/Off. I’m not sure what the disconnect is there. Sure, she’s good looking, but there’s lots of good looking people I hate. I probably shouldn’t be writing about things, I guess.

ERECH: Ross the Intern and Uma Thurman. One is lovely and the other has a nice caboose. YOU FIGURE OUT WHICH IS WHICH.

Other than that, I’ll be knee deep in a bottle of merlot, and probably taking pictures of some kind of action figure I’ll never actually post a review for, yeah? (I swear, we’ll have some more by the end of the year, I SWEAR!)

Closing out the week on a more positive note, considering the boys of Late Night Thing have spent the last thousand or so words pointing out the negative, let’s talk 30 Rock. It’s back, and not at a moment too soon. Sure, Community has been a fun little show so far, but where is that going to go? It’s My Name is Earl for semi-literates. The endgame on that program will never work, because anybody in real life actually in community college for more than 2 years doesn’t deserve to have millions of people tune in each week to find out about their exploits. It’s a high concept show that was probably an idea for a movie at one point, fleshed out for no good reason at all. Chevy Chase is pretty good on it though, and good for Joel McHale for being so good on it, but seriously? If this thing is around for 3 years, it’s going to get cancelled.

The Office has been pretty good this year, and was even exceptionally charmingly sweet during the wedding episode last week, complete with Chris Brown songs during the ceremony. Still, this show only has so much left to it, and we already know how it will end, because we’ve seen this show already, when it aired on the BBC. Not a whole lot there to see that you haven’t already. Our favorite joke around the LNT offices when anyone asks if we saw such and such episode of that show, is to reply “oh, is that the one where Michael said that inappropriate thing?”.

Exactly.

30 Rock being back though widens the field, and reminds us all why we watch tv to begin with. LNT was foolish enough to disparage season 3 of the show, but we absolutely take that back. Sure, S3 wasn’t as good as S1 or 2, but damnit it wasn’t worse. The Funcooker™, Night Court reunions, Salma Hayek, and Jenna Maroney? That show was as good as it got this year, or at least as good as we can hope.

With a peek into the new season, hopes for more interplay with Jack and Colleen Donaghy, more episodes written by Tami Sagher, and even an appearance or two by Jon Glaser? Late Night Thing is as excited for this as we’ve been for anything lately, and that’s saying a lot considering we have Sunny AND Ventures AND 30 Rock are all running new episodes at the same time.

TV, she’s being good to us now. SO good.

LNT - We should be getting paid for shilling this hard, holy cow NBC hook us up already.

PS: Read the LNT ARCHIVES.