I think he's taking exactly the amount of heat he deserves. First off, he's not even taking most of the heat. Most of it is being aimed at NBC. They're the ones who lacked the fortitude a year ago to say to Leno, "No, we're not going to give in to your begging just because you suddenly regret the deal you agreed to 5 years ago. You were given the opportunity to make a clean takeover of the Tonight Show from Carson, we're going to give Conan the same opportunity." Instead they caved to his whining and pretty much guaranteed failure for Conan. And their response is to punish Conan for it.

But there is still the fact that NBC wouldn't have even been in position to make those mistakes had Leno not been begging them to do it. He made a deal and then regretted his decision. Instead of doing the respectful thing, wishing Conan luck and moving on, he wedged his way back in to undermine Conan. Either he's incredibly naive to have thought that him being on at 10 would be a boon to Conan, or he just didn't care in the least whether Conan succeeded or not. So yeah, I think he deserves the heat he's getting.

I am one of the rare [here] viewers who liked Leno and rarely watched Conan at either time slot. I tuned in to see the trainwreck.

But Leno made a huge deal about leaving the Tonight Show for his 10pm experiment and if it failed he was going to retire. Instead of the "handshake deal", he has an iron-clad contract that says that he is to be paid a ridiculous amount of money or moved back to 11:35.

I don't understand what went down with affiliates threatening to pull out because their 11pm news is losing viewers. If they are NBC affiliates wtf would they air.

On one hand I'm glad Leno is gone from 10pm (I never watched him there) and hopefully there will be some actual programming instead of reality crap (hey, a gal can dream). On the other Conan got screwed.

I'm bummed he wasn't actually wasting the Tonight Show budget.

My DVR cut off near the end of Freebird, but at least up to that point I thought it a bit essentially know acknowledgment/involvement was given to Max Weinberg.

La Bamba got more notice.

It's been like that for a while. Max was gone for a LOT of the 7 month run, La Bamba really became the focal point of the band.

I know, but still, 18 years with Conan and all that.

I'm not going to lead protests or cry for Weinberg, it just seemed and odd slight to me.

Given the option to watch either Leno or Conan, I'd watch Letterman and Ferguson.

:D

I never thought Leno was funny. And, to me, I like The Simpsons episodes that Conan had involvement with but I've never been a big fan of his show.

I love Ferguson!!

I rather enjoyed the 10:00, 11:35, 12:30ish line up. I got a lot of laughs out of it. Without having to choose.

Conan + awesome parting speech - tie + guitar + all around classiness = massive crush.

Oh yes, definitely the classiness

Vomitting Kermit

The Horny Manatee


And of course, masturbating bear.

On the last show and how the situation was handled? Class.