…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.