As Jay Leno pleaded with Americans to stop hating him under the soft-focus lens of The Oprah Winfrey Show yesterday, Jimmy Kimmel's name came up. After all, Kimmel was the one who not only dressed up as Leno but also called him out to his face.
And so when Jimmy's great 10 @ 10 segment came up, Leno used the opportunity to tattle on Kimmel to Oprah: "Yeah, I got sucker-punched. It's my show; I could have edited it, but I said, 'No, no, put it out there.' You know when you get sucker-punched, you just get right back up again."
Well, you didn't think Jimmy was going to let that go without commenting on it, did you?
Nope! And so we get a lengthy explanation of exactly what went down leading up to that epic showdown. The scene begins post-Leno impersonation:
"The Tonight Show calls and they ask me to do the 10 @ 10. So I say yes, assuming that we are going to talk about what's going on in late night. So I get on the phone and the producer goes through about 30 questions and none of them are about what's going on in late night. The questions were like, 'What's your junk food weakness?'
"So I say to the guy, 'You know, a little of this is fine, but I really think we have to talk about what's going on with Jay and Conan because that's what people want to hear about.'
"He says, 'Yeah, I know, but there's been a lot of talk about that stuff and we don't want to beat it to death.' But what he did not understand was I did want to beat it to death. I like beating things to death. And so I did. Because if I go on that show and answer 10 questions about junk food, I'm the one that looks like a jerk. 'Hi Jay, oh I love Raisinettes!'
"If I made any mistake, the mistake I made was thinking Jay would have anything other to say than what was written on the cue cards. I figured he'd get into it and mix it up. You know, at one time he was a comedian. But he just stood there, kind of reading through the questions like a robot and then goes off and rats me out to Oprah."
The end.
So it sounds like Jay's damage control didn't really do it for Kimmel, but perhaps this montage will do the trick:
"TV is not fair." —Jay Leno
Yes, let us all remember that. This is TV's fault; it has nothing to do with Jay Leno. He's just a little stand-up comedian with a television show who must follow the orders of NBC.
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Still not done beating this Conan vs. Leno feud to death? Catch up on all you've missed right here.