YES, I f***ing hated Leno, and even if he didn't do all that slimy shit for which he was rewarded for by NBC, he was unbearably smarmy. I had someone in my dorm who DID watch him regularly, and that's how I found out Leno was lifting a lot of Letterman's classic bits and doing them very poorly. (The worst was Rupert and the hidden camera, a bit Leno's show appropriated with Howie Mandel.)bearcuborg wrote: ↑Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:32 pmI assume you mean the Tonight Show going from Carson to Leno? Because I don't think Leno's tenure had any stretch that was watchable. Newsradio might have got screwed over in promotion, but the show was pretty much great till Phil passed, and even that last season had some good episodes.
The DVDs for NewsRadio mention a lot of meddling by NBC, and to their credit they pushed back. The best was when the network wanted a wedding for Lisa, and the show responded with a hilarious bit with Joe Rogan "confessing his love" and proposing on-air under the direction of Jimmy James. (NBC was not amused.)
But they eventually had to cave - remember the intern during Hartman's last season?
I do NOT remember that well, but if I can track down a clip, maybe it'll jog my memory. Stakeout - did the conversation of smoking come up in that one or was that a different episode? Regardless, I enjoyed that bit when I first saw it, especially as someone who was way too young to smoke. IIRC one pair of detectives was coming to the conclusion that they needed to quit smoking, like NOW, and the other pair, both former smokers, were perilously getting close to falling back into the habit when they recalled the visceral and physical pleasures of smoking, right down the crinkling sound of the polypropylene wrap.I'm not sure if you remember HLOTS season 4 with the stakeout episode, but that one pretty much concludes the Crosetti storyline with Meldrick having a heart to heart with Kay, and Kotto gets some great stuff regarding his daughter - his scene with Pempleton is pretty powerful. Homicide was maybe the first great black TV drama. Kudos to the production team in understanding Baltimore in that regard.