Commentary

On New Show, Leno's A Comedian In Cars - But He's Not Getting Coffee

Jay Leno lumbers back onto TV Wednesday night in a car series in which he oohs and ahs over engines, discusses brake packages and other minutiae, and engages in juvenile repartee with other car guys.

This hour-long exercise in televised car talk is called “Jay Leno’s Garage” (also the name of Leno’s long-time Web series on the same subject), and it took CNBC more than a year to get it on the air. Wednesday night’s premiere is the first of eight episodes.

The premiere episode plays like one long conversation about cubic inches and horsepower. “Gotta love the sound of a 5.2 liter, huh?” exclaims one of Jay’s guests -- Jim Owens, vice president of marketing for Shelby Auto, a division of Ford -- as he drives up in a brand-new Mustang Shelby GT 350R. Owens is on hand to compare this new Shelby to a 1965 forerunner of the car driven by Jay.

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“Jay, good to see you again, thanks for bringing …” says Owens as Jay boorishly interrupts him to blurt out a question: “So how many cubic inches is 5.2 liters?”

Replies Owens: “5.2 liters converts to a little over 315, so …”

“OK, OK, so I got 289, so you got a little bit on me!” answers Jay, interrupting again.

“A little bigger in there! Yep!” declares Owens, as this idiotic conversation -- incomprehensible to most of us -- comes mercifully to a conclusion.

In another segment, Leno makes an obscene gesture as he prepares to face off against Tim Allen in a contest to see which one of them can produce the most elaborate skid mark – something Jay calls a “burnout.”

The gesture is a crude simulation of oral sex during an exchange with Allen in which Leno teases the famed handyman-comedian about being a “tool boy.”

“Why do people like to do burnouts?” Jay asks in a voiceover that plays while he and Allen each do donuts in a pair of 707-horsepower 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcats. “Look,” says Jay, answering his own question, “if you don’t know, stop watching this show right now, alright?”

That’s not a bad suggestion.

But if you did stop now, you would miss seeing Jay at the wheel of cars, cars and more cars. While driving one of them, a one-of-a-kind sports car called a Pegasus that was designed by General Motors in the 1960s and contains a Ferrari engine, Jay declares: “I always loved the front-engine Ferraris, they were my favorite!”

“Always” loved front-engine Ferraris? How long has Jay Leno, the comedian who cultivated an image as a “blue collar” entertainer in touch with the working man, been driving front-engine Ferraris anyway?

In a segment later in the show called “Assess and Caress,” Leno meets an appraiser of collector cars named Donald Osborne and the two discuss the relative financial value of three mint-condition collector cars -- a 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk, a 1965 Rambler Marlin and a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Cobra Jet 428. “I’ll give him 40-grand for it right now!” says Jay casually, referring to the unnamed owner of the bright-red Cyclone and looking like a man who just might have $40,000 in walking-around money in one of his pants pockets. 

What’s with these comedians and cars? Leno reportedly owns 130 cars and 93 motorcycles that he keeps in a pair of buildings alternately described as warehouses or converted airplane hangars. David Letterman sponsors an Indy car racing team. Jerry Seinfeld -- star of the Web series called “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” -- collects Porsches. Tim Allen’s comparatively modest car collection is glimpsed on “Jay Leno’s Garage.” It includes a 1970 Pontiac GTO, a 1962 Chevy Bel Air and a 1955 Ford Fairlane. The connection between comedians and cars is not explored.

The ostensible theme of this inaugural episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” is the muscle car era. So the show is heavy on GTOs, Mustangs, Challengers and the like. Along the way, Jay drives a Corvette with NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson and gets a drag-racing lesson from Erica-Enders Stevens, a National Hot-Rod Association champion.

What’s missing most from “Jay Leno’s Garage” is comedy. While Jay seems to try hard to come across as lighthearted, his effort seems halfhearted.

“It’s going to be fascinating to see how far the Mustang has come,” Jay says before he and Jim Owens put their two Shelby Mustangs through a comparative road test.

Well, maybe it was fascinating for them, but for the rest of us, not so much.  

“Jay Leno’s Garage” premieres Wednesday night (Oct. 7) at 10 Eastern on CNBC.

 

1 comment about "On New Show, Leno's A Comedian In Cars - But He's Not Getting Coffee".
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  1. Douglas Ferguson from College of Charleston, October 6, 2015 at 1:25 p.m.

    I agree he might need to add some comedy, which he can do. I saw him in concert in June and he's still brilliant at stand-up, even more than I expected. An hour and a half without cue cards or teleprompters, just him and a mic. There's no such thing as polite laughter and he really had us laughing with topical humor.

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