The Jay Leno Show

On Wednesday I attended a taping of The Jay Leno Show at NBC studios in Burbank.

It was fun.  While Jay Leno is not as funny as Craig Ferguson, he has a much better rapport with the audience- we actually felt like we were part of the experience, and not just onlookers.  It's an efficient taping too- it's "live on tape", so the one hour episode took one hour to tape... well, just over, since we had a quick field trip outside.  Jay also comes out before he changes into his suit, and chats with the audience for a few minutes before the show, answering questions and posing with audience members for photos.  It's a nice touch.

Look, here I am in the audience!  Yeah, I didn't have the greatest seat- it was actually front-row, but waaaaay off to the side, behind the producers and cameras, which you can't really see here (the centre rows go much further forwards than the side rows).  This actually suited me fine, I find the making-of the show to be much more interesting than the show itself.

The main guest was Heidi Klum.  The lucky part about sitting in my way-out-of-the-way section was that we were herded outside during a commerical break to provide a small outdoor audience for Heidi to drive the Green Car Challenge course.  Various guests drive this electric car around a small track, trying to avoid obstacles and beat the time of other celebrities.

 

Here's Heidi doing the course...

Overall, a fun and efficiently-run show, if not terribly highbrow (not that I was expecting highbrow!).  The only negative to the experience was how long they kept us waiting outside before the show- I was one of the later arrivals, arriving just after the 2:15 pm deadline, and it was over an hour before we were herded into the studio.  That's a long time to stand in line.  Good thing I wasn't early!

Note:  it's obvious these aren't my own photos, right?  They're screen captures of the video of the episode from the NBC site.   Shh, don't tell them, I'm sure it's frowned upon!