Can you feel the excitement? No? That’s probably because tonight’s Tonight Show handoff — after which Conan O’Brien’s show will move ahead by an hour, from 12:30 to 11:30, and Jay Leno (following a summerlong break) will get a new one at 10 that’ll be exactly the same as his current one — is basically no more momentous than the average daylight saving time: it’ll screw everybody up for a week, and then things will pretty much go back to normal. Though Conan will be the only guest on the Tonight Show couch tonight, we don’t imagine he’ll make things interesting by being forthright about how he actually feels about Leno’s new show, or the fact that the two will soon be competing for L.A.-based guests. We expect a couple of montages, a polite, awkwardness-free interview, and what should ostensibly be Leno’s Tonight Show sign-off, except it’ll really just be the announcement of his upcoming four-month vacation. Then musical guest James Taylor will sing a song and Kevin Eubanks will pull back his skin, revealing to viewers that he is, in fact, the Terminator. We’d watch Letterman, but it’s a repeat.
