The Bad Boys of Summer

By RICHARD CORLISS

They're baa-ack. After a vacation for NBC's Olympic fortnight, Jay Leno returns to The Tonight Show to find his competition with late-night rival Arsenio Hall fiercer than any jock grudge match. Consider the events. The javelin backstab. The 100-m bad-mouth. Synchronized sniping. Follyball. And -- given Leno's 33% ratings advantage over Hall -- the uneven parallel talk shows. Who needs Barcelona? These are the games of summer.

Suddenly the midnight air is hot and stormy. Hall, whose syndicated show brought a young, mixed-race audience to late night, disses Leno for unspecified crimes against him. The two shows' staffs charge each other with demanding first dibs on the most desirable stars. Dennis Miller, whose talk show was canceled after six months of low ratings and C-list guests, blames The Tonight Show for strong-arm booking tactics. David Letterman, NBC's later- night wit who couldn't conceal his chagrin at being snubbed for Johnny Carson's job, now has other networks and syndicators strewing his restless passage with blank checks. NBC has already retained Saturday Night Live's Dana Carvey as Letterman's potential replacement.

The infotainment press is busy stoking the one-way feud. In April, just before Leno replaced Carson, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story with Hall proclaiming, "I'm gonna kick Leno's ass"; this week the cover copy blares LENO GETS EVEN, and the Gibraltar-jawed comic stares out in a Raging Bull pose. The Washington Post's Tom Shales rags Leno for going "all ponderous and ! stony" and, bizarrely, for overloading his opening monologue with political humor. (Memo to Jay: Better do more 7-Eleven jokes. Memo to Tom: Pssst, it's an election year.)

For Arsenio, the grievance is personal, though he won't reveal its nature. For Leno, the response is bafflement. "People keep calling me and asking, 'What is this fight between you?' I don't know! I don't know! I haven't said anything bad. This is someone who used to be at my house every day. Although we haven't talked much in the past three years." In a recent phone conversation -- in show-biz terms it was a summit meeting -- Leno asked Hall, "So what's the problem? If you're going to do something, do it in a funny way."

This was not the way it was supposed to be. As Carson's heir, Leno would bring both familiarity and freshness to the slot. He would book hipper musical guests and reclaim part of Arsenio's audience. And with his camp-counselor personality, he would retain Carson's senior fans. All this has indeed come to pass. If Hall gets the headlines with shows featuring Ice-T on the hot seat or Bill Clinton torturing a saxophone, Leno still wins where it counts: equaling or surpassing Carson's ratings and ad revenue. The difference is that all this was to be accomplished without sweat or rancor. Who, after all, could get mad at Jay? Everyone knew him as a stand-up comic who was also a stand-up guy.

But that was when Carson still reigned as the F.D.R. of talk-show hosts, imposing through his majestic aloofness and the length and strength of his tenure a benign passivity among his courtiers. Now the President-King is dead -- or, rather, involuntarily retired; NBC nudged him out to make room for Leno. And the Dauphin gets no respect. "No one has taken over with the authority that used to exist," says Garry Shandling, whose new HBO comedy series about a chat show deals with backstage politics and booking wars. "So it leaves a disarray that causes everyone to be a little edgier than they were when one person dominated. Now it's like anarchy."

Miller, the former SNL anchorman who gave his own show an ingratiating edge, has the best view for appraising the survivors. "Arsenio I find to be a classy, nice guy," he says. "I've always loved David. Jay, I had a great time with. But The Tonight Show is tough." Miller reluctantly blames Leno for the bad vibes his staff sends out. "At some point in all of our adult, big boy-big girl lives," he says, "we have to take responsibility for what emanates from us. It's a misassumption to think you have a staff that you don't control. Everything that goes on in a show, every tiny detail, comes from the host."

Leno agrees. "You're the captain," he says. "It's your watch." It annoys him that Arsenio, who reportedly makes $12 million a year to Jay's $3 million, is perceived as the underdog, but Leno can't help being amused at the insignificance of "the feud." As he told Hall on the phone, "It looks like two millionaires throwing silver dollars in the ocean. With everything going on in the country, this seems awfully silly." He adds, "I can't believe that people pick up the paper and hear millionaires whining, 'He got Harrison Ford first!' "

What's funny is that a talk-show host can't realize that he, not the guests, is the star. He is the reason people watch this anachronistic hybrid of variety show and interview show, of Ed Sullivan and Edward R. Murrow. The host is the crooner of TV's comic lullaby; he sets the mood for viewers who want to go to sleep with a smile. And if they don't like him, the screen goes black.

Jay Leno's memo to talk-show hosts: "Do the best you can. If you do good, great. If you fall on your face, great." And then, in his mock-angry tone: "But just shut up!"

With reporting by William Tynan/New York