This Week in Comedy: NBC’s Late Night Transition Begins

-NBC’s 2014 late night transition has begun as Jay Leno did his final episode, ending with an emotional goodbye. We made a videolist of Jay Leno Tonight Show milestones.

-Leno rivals Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien counterprogrammed his final show with the return of Matt Damon and a Walking Dead theme episode with the whole cast, respectively. It didn’t put a dent in Leno’s ratings though as he scored his biggest audience since 1998.

-NBC canceled its new comedy The Michael J. Fox Show.

-Jerry Seinfeld weighed in on diversity in comedy and started a lot of Facebook arguments.

-We interviewed Beauty Is Embarrassing artist Wayne White, Lena Dunham’s Girls co-showrunner Jenni Konner, and creators of the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast, Ben Acker and Ben Blacker.

-A “relatively new” SNL cast member may be leaving to star in a network sitcom.

-Stephen Colbert did a great language barrier-breaking interview with Pussy Riot.

-We made a guide to the new batch of fall sitcom pilots. Also, Ken Marino was cast alongside Casey Wilson in an NBC pilot from Happy Endings creator David Caspe. Marino’s Childrens Hospital costar Erinn Hayes is joining Wilson’s writing partner June Diane Raphael in another NBC pilot created by Wilson and Raphael.

-Will Ferrell did his first Reddit AMA, which mostly consisted of people quoting his movies to him.

-We looked back at Fred Armisen’s 11 years on SNL and Jon Lovitz’s ABC sitcom pilot The Jon Lovitz Show.

-Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are developing Preacher into an AMC show.

-We made a guide to the best comedies streaming on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

-Amazon debuted three new comedy pilots, including one from Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman.

-We examined Community’s latest season at the halfway point.

-The blog Videogum sadly closed its doors.

-We recommended the Twitter feed of Daily Show producer Miles Kahn and the week’s best podcasts.

And here are your Top Five Web Comedy Videos of the Week:

Funny Or Die - “Leno’s Last Day”

High Maintenance - “Matilda”

Dead Kevin - “Card Game”

Speakeasy with Paul F. Tompkins - Eric Andre

Reggie Watts - “TEACH: Science” (via JASH)

This Week in Comedy: NBC’s Late Night Transition Begins