There’s this disaster in Haiti that’s making the news. They had a devastating earthquake that will take a lot of time, effort, and money to recover from.

So why should we care about a late-night brouhaha on NBC? Why should we care about Jay Leno, villain’s sidesick, and Conan O’Brien, former (as of 1-22-2010) host of the Tonight Show?

I can think of two reasons off the top of my head.

One, which is a personal reason, is that it angers me that stupidity and selfishness would be so prominent in our entertainment and affect so many people. This is nothing new, and it’s something we should be used to, not to mention the fact that everyone can be stupid and everyone is at least just a little selfish. Actions based on stupidity and selfishness are the fault of humans and can be controlled if just a little thought was put behind them. The earthquake in Haiti? A natural disaster, not a man-made disaster. It’s something that couldn’t be prevented, unless we somehow develop the technology to stabilize tectonic plates. NBC’s blunder in changing their late night strategy? That could’ve been prevented. Leno’s lap-dog, and seemingly selfish, actions of going along with the boss, essentially ousting O’Brien? That could’ve been prevented. Causing a couple hundred people to move from New York to Los Angeles to work on the show, only to put them out of a job seven months later? That could’ve been prevented.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a pretty ridiculous story to write about three time, in my case. It’s ridiculous to get upset over. But for some reason, I am attracted to this story about stupidity and selfishness because, though it happens every day, my mind can’t wrap around the fact that people act this way.

I have no idea what really happened behind the scene, only what has been reported. But I can tell you that comparing O’Brien’s Tonight Show ratings to Leno’s final Tonight Show ratings is an illogical, unfair, and uneven comparison when you take into account a) Leno had years to build his audience and ratings; b) Leno’s 10 PM prime time show was such a failure, is was a bad lead-in to the local news, which had ratings drops, which lead into and affect O’Brien’s Tonight Show; c) Leno’s ratings were bad his first few years, but after those first few years he started to beat David Letterman in the ratings. Dick Ebersol, NBC Universal’s Chairman of Sports and Olympics, called O’Brien “chicken-hearted and gutless” and “an astounding failure”, and went on to compare O’Brien’s Tonight Show ratings to Leno’s final Tonight Show ratings. This is an executive at a huge TV Network? A man who can’t recognize the lack of logic in his point-of-view? This is a guy who is a frequent consultant on changes NBC makes to their late-night lineup?

I’ve already commented on Leno being the villain’s (NBC) sidekick, so I’ll leave it at that.

This leads me to my second reason, which is that people love a story about good and bad.

Think about this. Aside from the looting and criminal behavior of some in Haiti, which is really a string of stories within a story of the horrible earthquake, the devastation in Haiti has no villain. It’s a story of a country being a victim of a natural disaster. It’s not a story of good VS bad. It’s simply a story of natural disaster.

The story of NBC, Leno, and O’Brien? This story has “good” guys and “bad” guys – you can choose the side you want, and that’s really the appeal. If you’re reading, you know what side I’ve chosen. And some people have chosen Leno’s side. Hell, some people have made all three parties to be the bad guys, viewing them as rich brats that are fighting over a TV show. This is the appeal. This is the reason we, the audience, follow the story so intently, with so much opinionated involvement, because we get to choose sides and root for our good guy. The disaster in Haiti? Well, I guess you can choose sides… Pat Robertson chose the side of God when he “explained” that Haiti was turned to rubble because of its pact with the Devil. So yeah, I guess you could choose sides in the story of Haiti’s earthquake. But most people wouldn’t. Most people would recognize it as a tragic event.

People love a story with good VS bad. They want to choose sides. And they love a controversy. This is why we follow. Our following of the NBC/Leno/O’Brien debacle doesn’t belittle what’s happening in Haiti, nor does it mean we’re not paying attention to it. It’s simply another story to follow, something we can get ridiculously riled up about and make our own.

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As an aside, I just wanted to say that O’Brien’s last Tonight Show was wonderful. He’s witty, talented, intelligent, and fun to watch. He went out with a bang and I will be watching when he returns to television (hopefully with the same theme song; hopefully NBC didn’t keep the rights to it). I never really watched Leno in the first place, except when he had a guest I really wanted to watch, and even then my viewing was rare. In the future, I may watch because of a guest or out of morbid curiosity, but I await the day when Leno takes a backseat to someone new, someone fresh, someone like O’Brien. In fact, I see Conan beating Leno in the ratings given enough time, and all NBC will be able to do is watch the future they let go.

…but he is the sidekick.

I don’t know what Jay Leno’s motivation for going along with NBC upcoming late night programming shift, but I do know that going along with it isn’t a show of class. This is NBC’s mess, and Leno is aiding its happening. That’s what a sidekick does: he aids the main villain.

Recently, Leno made a joke about how this controversy has helped increase Conan O’Brien’s ratings. I cry foul on this one. Perhaps Jay needs a reminder that when he took over for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, he trailed behind David Letterman in the ratings for the first two years. Eventually, he won the ratings in that time slot, but not without time.

By the same token, O’Brien’s Late Night show needed time to find its stride and its audience, something it eventually gained.

The seven months of low ratings with O’Brien on the Tonight Show isn’t logically comparable to the kind of ratings Leno was receiving after his first few years on the Tonight Show. NBC gave Leno time. They did not give O’Brien time. So to accuse O’Brien of having a failure of a Tonight Show is a false accusation. NBC is the one to accuse.

Of course, it’s hard to judge O’Brien’s Tonight Show ratings anyway, since it is supposedly the Jay Leno Show that contributed to lower ratings of NBC affiliate’s news programming, which in turn supposedly contributed to low Tonight Show ratings. Returning Leno to the Tonight Show, if that happens, won’t prove O’Brien to be at fault, nor will it prove that NBC made a good decision to revamp its late night lineup. It will defeat NBC’s original purpose: to not lose Leno or O’Brien as network personalities. The network will be moving backwards, not forwards. And it will follow the same bad decision that, unfortunately, plagues much of television nowadays, which is that time is not something new shows can afford.

But, I digress…

Leno left the Tonight Show and wanted a smooth transition to happen when O’Brien took over. By going along with NBC’s shake up, Leno has essentially become an Indian giver, taking back the 11:35 time slot. O’Brien has stated that doing the Tonight Show at 12:05 AM would be, amongst other things, unfair to Jimmy Fallon, current show of Late Night, which airs after the Tonight Show. That’s class. That shows understanding that his actions affect others.

Without this show of class, Leno fills role as the villain’s sidekick. As long as he stays in this role, it won’t matter how many people would love to see his return to the Tonight Show. He’s added his villain’s sidekick role to his legacy. This lack of class will be one of the things he’ll be remembered for, tainting his long, high-ratings run on the Tonight Show.

I started working on Payday on what I think is the week of 4-20-2009 (my first post about it was made on 4-24-2009).

It’s been my policy to draw for at least an hour every weekday morning, which isn’t a lot of time, this was implemented with the consideration of a few things:

1. I have a ton of projects that I have unwisely started, and this is my way of helping me to prioritize.
2. I need to learn to belt out a page, so a time limit forces me to accomplish a lot in a little amount of time.
3. If I don’t give myself a time limit, I may not stop which means impeding on my other tasks.

I’d say, since starting Payday, I had done fairly well for, oh… 60% of the time? Maybe 70%? That’s not a good grade. That’s a D or a C, depending on what percentage you go with.

I did take a small break to illustrate Fighting David Parrot, written by David Hopkins. But I count that as time well spent. Other than that, drawing Payday became less and less of a constant as I began to grow frustrated with the scriptless experiment I committed to, as I’ve stated many times before. The fun was leaving.

At what point does one admit that an experiment in the creative process isn’t working and that one should go back to the norm?

I’ve decided that if I don’t make some sort of significant progress in penciling the pages by 4-24-2010, then I’m going to give up the experiment and write out a script. What is significant progress? Well, I’m on page 22. Yes, that’s it. Page 22. And I’m pretty upset at myself about that, especially when there are other comic projects I have that I want to work on but won’t allow myself to start until Payday is finished. In any case, that gives me 14 weeks. I’ll commit to completing 28 pages of pencils, which is two pages a week, drawing at the rate of an hour to an hour-and-a-half every weekday morning. That’s a lot of work. We’re not even counting weekend mornings, which would help me stay on top of things. This would bring me to 50 completed pages, meaning I could finish the rest of the pencils by the beginning of May. If that happens, I can go back and finalize the dialogue for the entire graphic novel.

If it doesn’t happen, if I fail, I give up the experiment and write out a script for the pages I have and the pages that are thumbnailed before returning to penciling the unfinished pages..

There. It’s in writing. Now I have to commit.

Despite the fact that I don’t find Jay Leno funny, I respect him. Or rather, I respected him. The man works, and works hard. He hosted a late night show every weekday, never missing a show until forced to do so for medical reasons, and performed stand-up when not producing the Tonight Show. He always presented himself to be a classy fellow that seemed like he’d be likable in person.

Before I go on, read this Rolling Stone interview with Leno posted before Leno’s departure from the Tonight Show.

And here at NBC, they have this thing that they like you to leave before you peak out and you’re over the top. And that’s what they wanted to do with me. So I said, “Guys, whatever you want to do.” I’ve never been one of these guys that breaks up with a girl and goes, “But why? If I do this, will you go out with me?” I’m more like, “Babe, if you don’t want to see me, I’m gone. It’s over. Thank you.”
–Jay Leno

When Leno left the Tonight Show, my understanding from what I’ve read, including the Rolling Stone interview, is that he did so of his own accord. Sure, Conan O’Brien wanted to advance in NBC from his Late Night show, but Leno did not have to endorse O’Brien as the next Tonight Show host. He did not have to step down. If O’Brien was indeed going to ABC, Leno could have let him. If NBC has “this thing that they like you to leave before you peak out and you’re over the top,” he could have certainly countered that by reminding the network that he was still on top. Instead, Leno decided to go along with the notion of leaving willingly. Then, about five years later, he came up with the idea for a 10 o’clock show.

It didn’t do very well. Now, NBC is relocating Leno’s show to 11:35 PM and bumping back the Tonight Show to 12:05 AM, something Conan won’t support.

First, NBC is just a huge example of bad-decision making. Forget the gamble of a five-day-a-week comedy talk-show at 10:00 PM. Forget the lack of Must-See-TV (remember those days?). Leno’s show didn’t do well in the ratings because either a) it wasn’t very good; b) it wasn’t what people wanted at 10:00 PM; c) both a and b. The move to 11:35 is essentially asking Leno to do a show it was suggested he leave, which he did willingly–I say suggested because no one forced him out. No one fired him. This isn’t logical at all. Why suggest that Leno leave the Tonight Show at 11:35 only to put him back in the same time slot with a different show?

Second, if Leno elected to step down, he should stay down. He willingly stepped down, setting his own departure date. He suggested the 10:00 show, it’s not doing well, and now NBC wants to move him back to 11:35 which will affect more than just him. It affects O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon, current host of Late Night. I think it’s selfish to return to an old time slot that he willingly left to do a half hour show that will bump everyone’s time slot back, changing showtimes that have been in place for a long time.

Third, networks don’t give anything a chance anymore, including NBC. Changing the hosts of the Tonight Show means there will be a loss in viewers as loyal fans follow the host they like. Leno presumably took fans with him, as did O’Brien. And a reboot means a new show, and a new show means time needed to build a new following. O’Brien needs more time to gain new fans to add to his already faithful followers.

The classy thing to do would be for Leno to think twice about his support of the move and decline. He can do something else, whether at NBC or another network. He made his decision five years ago to leave. He should honor that decision.

On a related note, even though the Internet and DVRs have given us the ability to watch TV programs whenever we want, outside of their scheduled programming, the fact is people still watch scheduled TV. People still set aside time to watch certain things. The least networks can do is is provide quality programming and let the programming take the time to grow and build an audience. Seinfeld needed time. Leno’s Tonight Show needed time. Just because the landscape of TV watching has changed, doesn’t mean that scheduled programming has gone away. It still needs an audience, and audiences are earned, not awarded.

So I’ve been back at the drawing board, and it’s nice to draw comics again. But while working on Payday, I just felt… dull. I’d spent some time doing thumbnail layouts (and if you’ve been reading, you know how I feel about doing those) and thusly lost the feel for drawing some of the characters. I needed a break from what I was doing. I needed to draw something fun and quick, and I wanted to draw something I didn’t write myself.

Enter my friend, David Hopkins. He was putting together a minicomic called One Night Stand, a project for which he wrote 30 one-page stories and one two-page story, all with different artists. Unfortunately for me, I heard about the call too late. So, I asked him if he had any short stories lying around that he wanted illustrated. At first he wasn’t sure he had any, but after some digging he found a story he scripted in 2003 called Fighting David Parrot and emailed it to me. I had a great time drawing it and my sessions at the drawing board have been injected with new fuel.

Read Fighting David Parrot here.

David’s stuff is fun to read, so be sure to check out some of his other comics.