Hasta la vista, Leno

Tonight is the last “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Although he’s not leaving our screens forever — he’ll be on in a new show at 10 p.m. this fall — I thought I would watch the finale and write a mini-review.
It won’t be available until early Saturday, but if you have any thoughts, please feel free to leave them here.
Personally, this will be the first Jay Leno show I’ve watched all the way through in about five years (I last watched all the way through when the Watersmeet Nimrod basketball team was on — in 1994). I just never thought “Tonight Show” was appointment viewing (especially when I have primetime shows stacked up on my TiVo).
What do you think?

Everybody’s talking about … ‘Supertrain’?

A publicity still of Supertrain from the TV series of the same name.In what is probably one of the year’s biggest headscratchers, I’ve noticed a number of bloggers writing about the failed 1970s NBC TV series called “Supertrain.”

Haven’t heard of this “Love Boat” on rails? Neither did I, until I stumbled upon a post from sitcom writer Ken Levine. Here’s how he described it:

Television at its worst but cheese at its very best.

This landmark example of how not to create a TV show was also mentioned by prominent blogger Jason Kotke and The Infrastructurist.

I’ve seen the first 10 minutes of the pilot and it’s pretty bad. I broke out laughing during the teaser with the train company’s leader launching the Supertrain concept. It wasn’t the line that the train would be powered by an “atom powered steam turbine machine” that cracked me up. It was the leader’s “reassuring” response to a critic’s charge that the train was a huge gamble that could ruin the company.

“So you think it’s a gamble, do you? Well, gentlemen … Since I can count my remaining years on the fingers of one hand, from my point of view, it’s not much of a gamble at all.”

How is that supposed to be reassuring in any way?

Other than the fact that the pilot is exquisitely cringeworthy (Steve Lawrence gets top billing), I have no idea why it’s still getting mentioned 30 years after the show went off the rails. Perhaps discussions of creating regional high-speed rail networks has sparked some fond memories of bad television. It also might be better than most of NBC’s fall schedule, but I’m hoping not.

Here’s the first 10 minutes of the pilot. The remaining nine segments are on the Infrastructurist blog.

Photo: NBC publicity still originally provided to J. Morrissey and hosted on the NBC Supertrain Web site.