For as charismatic and beloved as he was as a late-night talk show host, Johnny Carson was famously prickly off-camera. There are lots of stories about him being difficult to work with, and once he retired from his gig at “The Tonight Show,” he more or less completely withdrew from the public eye (save an appearance here and there on “Letterman”). So it should come as little surprise that when a documentarian tried to contact him about participating in a film about his life, Johnny wanted no part of it. From Deadline:

The doc’s writer-producer-director Peter Jones confirmed that he had been pursuing Carson in letters from the time he famously retired from Tonight in 1992 to participate in a doc on his life, but he never received so much as a response. “Then one day in 2002 I got a call and heard, ‘Johnny Carson’s on Line 2,’ and I thought it was a joke. But it was really Johnny. He said to me, ‘Peter, you write a very good letter. I know you want me to participate in this, but I won’t be doing anything about my life because you know what? I don’t give a sh-t. … I’ve done everything I want to do and said everything I want to say. There is nothing more.’ And that was that.”

I don’t know why, but I love this story. The idea that this guy had been trying to contact Carson for 10 years (TEN YEARS) without so much as a peep from Johnny, and then Carson called him up one day and was like “Yeah, nice letters. Scram”… it’s just such a ridiculously over the top a-hole move that I have to respect him for it. The man was a walking “Deal With It” GIF.

Until yesterday afternoon, I had never heard of Casey Anthony. Honest. My information intake is carefully crafted to give me every scrap of news from the TV industry, some sports news, Twitter’s trending topics, the front page of the New York Post, and more dog and cat pictures than you can possibly imagine. If it’s serious news, I won’t learn about it unless it becomes a meme.

…which, as you can here, it has. Again, I’m barely versed in the Anthony trial — I haven’t even backtracked through the case like Darnell Dockett has – but I know enough to understand that Michael C. Hall’s Dexter hunts down killers who escape the justice system. I’m not sure how much Showtime wants to do the “ripped from the headlines” thing that “Law & Order” did so well, but I suspect it would make for a very short season of “Dexter.”

Bonus Casey Anthony TV news: Below, Jay Leno’s monologue joke comparing the Anthony jury to Obama’s economic team is met with stony silence from the crowd (fast forward to 1:15). Mmmm, that’s good schadenfreude.

[Image via ZOMG; video via SplitSider]

Yesterday, Lindsay Lohan taped a “surprise” interview with Jay Leno that will air on this evening’s “Tonight Show.” You can watch the preview clip below, but it’s not worth the time you’ll waste sitting through the preview commercial.

In case you’ve been buried in a cave without wi-fi for the last six years or so, Lindsay has spent her entire adult life snorting cocaine, drinking excessively, smoking cigarettes, not wearing underwear, chasing a lesbian lover, and dodging jail time despite several arrests and convictions for DUI and drug possession. In this clip she seems apologetic for those mistakes, stressing “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m 24.” And it’s funny that she mentions that, because that’s the same age I was when I led a tank platoon over the Kuwait border into Iraq. In other words: go to hell, Lindsay Lohan.

We didn’t get around to covering NBC’s cancellation of “The Paul Reiser Show” after just two episodes on Friday, because I was traveling and Danger Guerrero rightly covered stories about stabbings and sexual assault instead. But the unfunny turd did indeed get flushed, according to The Hollywood Reporter:

The comedy premiered to 3.3 million viewers and a 1.1 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic, ranking as the network’s lowest-rated in-season comedy bow ever. Its second episode didn’t fare any better, collecting 2.5 million viewers and a 0.9 in the demo.

If my memory serves, that’s the fastest cancellation since “Lone Star” last fall. Mmmmm… that’s good schadenfreude. Full-bodied and robust, with chocolaty hints of gloating. Delicious.

For those who already miss the presence of Reiser on television — and the numbers say there aren’t many — he’s booked as one of Jay Leno’s guests tonight (Reiser famously wrote about what a nice guy Leno is during NBC’s late-night fiasco with Conan O’Brien). It puts Reiser in the unusual position of being scheduled to promote a canceled show. Oh well, instead of a plug I guess we’ll just have to settle for the naturally hilarious comedic banter between Jay Leno and Paul Reiser. It’s must-watch TV, assuming you only have three channels and the other two are showing snuff films and Holocaust footage.

The Tonight Show (NBC) — Viral sensation Rebecca Black makes her first late-night appearance as Leno’s second guest this evening. There’s nothing else on tonight that I could possibly want to watch less than this, and yet I feel compelled to lead with it. I blame Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday. (Watch a BRVTAL METAL cover of “Friday” below.)

Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen (Syfy) Series premiere. Having already pissed off anyone who cares about cooking shows, former “Top Chef” contestant Marcel Vigneron will attempt to appeal to geeks instead.

Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time (ABC) — Hosts Tom Bergeron and Cynthia McFadden walk the viewer through 15 different categories of movie greatness (Greatest Line, Most Romantic Screen Couple) as determined by American voters. I expect it to be like an episode of “America’s Funniest Videos” but with fewer sound effects.

Traffic Light (Fox) — I haven’t checked in on this promising but uneven comedy since its premiere; I plan to give it another shot tonight.

Big Brian: The Fortune Seller (truTV) — Series premiere. It’s “Antiques Roadshow” for people with head injuries.

LATE NIGHT GUESTS: Eric Stonestreet and Sarah Chalke on Conan; Katie Couric on Letterman; Duran Duran follows Black on Leno; Rainn Wilson, Abbie Cornish, and The Gaslight Anthem on Kimmel; and Brian Williams and Dwight Howard on Fallon. Full listings at TV Squad.

Yesterday I paid homage to what I think were the ten best shows of 2010. Today I’m looking back on my favorite TV moments of the past year. While the best shows list was nice and orderly and numbered, this one is a bit more nebulous: although I’ve selected ten TV moments, I’ve chosen not to number them or give them a specific order, because honestly, it’s just a pain in the ass that doesn’t really matter, and everyone’s gonna squabble over the list anyway.

So let’s do this. For those of you who are months or years behind on your television viewing, please note that this list contains spoilers for “Lost,” “Sons of Anarchy,” and “Mad Men.” Oh no! My spoiler alerts have spoiled the top ten list! SPOILER SPOILER ALERT!

The strength of this episode propelled “The Walking Dead” into my Best Shows of 2010 list. In a cinematic style matched on television only by “Breaking Bad,” the 90 minutes that track Rick Grimes’s awakening in an apocalyptic world move deliberately slowly, ratcheting up the tension in the bright Georgia daylight. Never before has a lit match in an empty stairwell been so scary.

Many critics found parts of this holiday episode too forced, but I thought it was the perfect balance of humor and emotion, tapping into our childhood nostalgia while maintaining a believable premise for the characters in the context of the show. As always, I enjoyed the tiny details that “Community” includes, like when John Oliver’s “Christmas Wizard” opens the curtain of Abed’s imaginary world and reveals the study room behind it. And yes, the ending made me cry. Shut up.

During NBC’s late-night fiasco, Kimmel brazenly donned a wig and fake and did an entire show in character as Leno. And if that wasn’t ballsy enough, he followed it up by going on the now-defunct “Jay Leno Show” and making fun of Leno to his face. Conan may be my favorite late-night host, but nobody has bigger cojones than Kimmel.

After a relatively disappointing and slow-moving season, showrunner Kurt Sutter salvaged the season with one of the most unexpected twists of the year (and certainly the most gratifying): Jax double-crosses the loathsome Agent Stahl, which leads to her death and frees his mother from the murder charges Stahl had framed her for. It. Was. AWESOME. But perhaps more importantly, the twist allowed Sutter to return the show to a delicate status quo, with new dangers and enemies looming for Season 4. I can’t wait.

Showrunner Matthew Weiner has thrown enough curveballs to make us expect the unexpected (Season 3′s formation of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce stands out), but Don Draper’s out-of-the-blue proposal to Megan The Secretary — following a season of binge drinking and hooker masochism – left viewers floored. As with “Sons of Anarchy,” this twist makes me even more excited for where the next season could possibly go (Peggy-Megan catfight?!?).

Oh man, I can’t get enough of Oprah’s retarded fans. They’re like Twilight fans, except instead of getting off on fictional teen-vampire sex, they get off on sequined Uggs. Watch them lose their sh*t not once, but twice.

All because she was in a Snickers commercial and someone started a Facebook page that made it happen. Ordinarily I find Facebook to be a pretty lame way to start a grassroots movement, but even I have to admit that that was pretty cool. And by the way, she knocked her hosting gig out of the park.

The 2.5-hour finale was either emotionally satisfying or a total cop-out that left too many questions unanswered. I don’t care. I’m just happy I don’t have to deal with “Lost” fans any more.

I’m sure you could make the argument that other sports moments belong on this list, like the Saints’ memorable Super Bowl victory or whatever happened in baseball. But that stuff happens (more or less) every year, with Americans choosing sides between the teams involved. This was an extra-time miracle from a beleaguered star player in the world’s biggest quadrennial sporting event that sent the U.S. from the brink of elimination to winning its group. The video above still gets me. I love a non-ironic “U-S-A!” chant.

As the NBC’s late-night fiasco unfolded in the most spectacularly disastrous ways, something amazing happened: the tightness that Conan O’Brien had had since coming to “The Tonight Show” melted away, and for two weeks he delivered funny and carefree shows while an army of Internet nerds rallied behind him. He closed his final show with a touching speech before playing rhythm guitar as Will Ferrell sang “Freebird,” leaving a mark of originality on “The Tonight Show” that 17 years of Jaywalking segments could never do.

The video above is a compilation of Taylor Swift acting surprised at awards shows that was created by Rich Juzwiak and posted on his blog, fourfour (a Warming Glow favorite). Juzwiak was contacted by “Tonight Show” staff, who asked for permission to use the clip. Juzwiak assented, provided that he and Kate Spencer of TheFabLife.com were somehow credited.

On Monday night, Swift was a guest on “The Tonight Show,” where Jay Leno brought up the subject of her success at awards shows. He then introduced the clip by saying, “We put together a little montage of you being surprised.” Watch the video:

Well, that sent the Internet into DEFCON 1, with Juzwiak laying out the full story in a post titled “Jay Leno ripped me off” that was picked up by the New York Times Arts Beat. Which leads us to last night:

Was that so hard?

There. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I love happy endings; they always warm my cock holes.

Check out *this* clown.

Never mind that Jay Leno and David Letterman’s shows start 35 minutes after Conan O’Brien’s new show, and never mind that TBS will be happy with Conan regardless of his ratings, and never mind that a new show’s much-hyped debut is bound to perform well against those in mid-season form, because I’ve got oversimplified eye-catching headlines to write: OMG CONAN BEAT LENO AND LETTERMAN IN THE RATINGS!!!1!!

Conan drew a 2.8 rating. Tonight a 2.7. Late Show with David Letterman a 2.5. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon a 1.2. Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson a 1.4.

These are shaky local market household ratings, but they do suggest good news for O’Brien. Households tend to indicate how the race among total viewers — Leno’s strong suit — will turn out. But 18-49 — which tends to be O’Brien’s strength — is the more important demo. If O’Brien’s total viewer number is on par with with Leno’s, he stands a fair chance of beating Tonight among young adults. [THR]

The lesson, as always, is IGNORE THE DETAILS AND PAY ATTENTION TO ALL CAPS! Context is for pussies.

Anyway, if you missed last night’s show, I’ve got the delightful cold open embedded below, and you can read a detailed and measured recap at The A.V. Club. Cliffs Notes version: nothing groundbreaking, but an enjoyable and high-energy show. That’s good enough for me, but I’m sure someone out there will be happy to piss in my coffee. “He didn’t even, like, transcend the genre, man.”

Vanity Fair has an excerpt from Bill Carter’s new book, The War for Late Night, about NBC’s Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien boondoggle in the winter of 2009-10. Most of the excerpt is stuff you already know if you followed the endless stories in the news cycle last winter, but there are some behind-the-scenes details that are particularly intriguing. Carter’s research (fairly) points the fault less at Jay Leno and more at NBC execs Jeff Gaspin and Jeff Zucker, while coloring in the story with details like this:

Finally [Conan] did have something he really wanted to say, something that was all but burning a hole in his chest. “What does Jay have on you?” Conan asked [Gaspin and Marc Graboff], his voice still low, his tone still even. “What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?”

Neither of the NBC executives had an answer and cast their heads down. Conan thought they were working at looking sympathetic, following some lesson that had been taught at corporate school.

That’s just one of the goodies. For Jeff Zucker sounding like a complete A-hole to Conan’s agent Rick Rosen, read on.

“Hello, Richard,” a voice said. Jeff Zucker often used the formal first name affectionately when he greeted someone. After inquiring how everyone was doing, he asked, “Well, have you seen tomorrow’s New York Times yet? Let me read you something.” He proceeded to share an update on the Conan situation, already available online, which included a reference to overt interest in Conan from the Fox network, expressed by an unnamed executive, as well as an assertion from a representative of Conan’s that the star had not accepted NBC’s plan and was not likely to anytime in the near future.

“Let me explain something to you,” Zucker said. “I want a f*cking answer from you. If you think you are going to play me in the press, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“I haven’t spoken to the Times at all,” Rosen replied, getting a bit heated himself.

“Well, I guess we know who did, don’t we?” Zucker replied, not quite saying the name Gavin Polone. “I want an answer from Conan and I want an answer quickly. You know I have the ability to pay him or play him, and I could ice him for two years.”

“Well, Jeff,” Rosen answered, ignoring the threat, “we’re going to give you an answer when we have thought about it.”

Zucker remained hot. “Just let me tell you something: you are not going to f*cking play me.”

But you know who DID play Zucker? Comcast, when they fired him. That was awesome.

Finally, I found this passage — when Conan decided to release his passionate statement refusing to move “The Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. — particularly cool.

“O.K.,” Conan finally said, “you guys do what you need to do. I just need to go into my office.” He stood up and made for the door, intending to say not one more word about it—just let it happen.

For [producer Jeff] Ross, the room all but spun. He was light-headed; he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this nauseated. “O.K., everybody, hang on,” he said at the last minute, before a set of fingers pressed the buttons to send out the first press leak of the statement. Ross had to speak out; he wanted one last moment of consideration of just what it was they were about to do. Conan stopped at the door.

“Let’s all be aware of this: we’re about to blow this f*cker up,” Ross said, full of portent.

There was only one reaction that mattered. Conan stood outlined by the doorway of the conference room, his swoop of copper hair almost touching the frame. He looked directly at Ross, unblinking.

“Blow it up,” he said.

*air guitar* Oh man, that was METAL. Anyway, you can read the entire excerpt here, and the book will be published by Viking in November. I bet it’s totally exciting and dramatic until you realize that nobody gets beat up or killed.

Good news and bad news everybody.  Good news first – get my hopes up, Hollywood Reporter:

“The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” is pulling a smaller number in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic than when Conan O’Brien hosted the show last year.

In fact, this summer is the lowest-rated “Tonight” on record, though such feats have become increasingly common on broadcast across the board.

Oh, thank God.  America is finally coming to its senses.  I hate this asshat so much.  Hey have you heard about this?  Did you hear about this?  YOU’RE RUINING A PRECIOUS TELEVISION INSTITUTION AND GETTING WHAT YOU DESERVE YOU UNFUNNY, BACKSTABBING PISSPANTS.  HAHAHA.

Oh, wait.  I said there was bad news, too.  Well, after reading that Leno is having the worst summer in the history of “The Tonight Show,” the news would have to be pretty damn bad to bring me down.  You know, something crazy.  Like, despite these horrible ratings, he’s still beating Letterman or something. (*chuckles to self at the hilarity of the mere idea*)

Even with the reduced rating, Leno is back to beating his top rival, CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman,” by a healthy 22% in both metrics. (Ed. – total audience and 18-49 demo)

(*bangs head on wall for 45 minutes*)

Guh.  Look, I love America.  But this is the problem with democracy and a society based around freedom… even dipsh-ts get a say in things.   I’m not saying I’m fully advocating for a revolution where we install a single, tyrannical leader, but if this hypothetical tyrant was Team Coco, I’d at least go to one of his speeches.

Seriously, though.  This is depressing, and I need some cheering up.  Let’s see what I can do about that. 

OMG WOOK AT ‘EM THEY’RE SO KYOOT…

[Kittens via Buzzfeed]