EXEUNT, NOT PURSUED BY A BEAR:Reports indicate that the NBC/Conan debacle is about to come to an end, with Conan getting a large payout, substantial severance for his writers and crew, and no restrictions on his right to compete, and a final week of Tonight Show episodes airing this week. Sadly, part of the deal is that the characters and bits Conan and his writers created will remain in NBC's name , though there's some lack of clarity about the fate of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Interestingly, the linked story (aside from having an awesome headline) indicates that Conan wasn't terribly interested in keeping rights to any of those characters, which might give hints as to his future plans.

NEVER BURN BRIDGES. TODAY'S JUNIOR PRICK -- TOMORROW'S SENIOR PARTNER: This weekend, Sigourney Weaver will establish a new SNL record for longest gap between hosting appearances, it being twenty-three years and two months since her last time. (Good episode, too: debuts for Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson and Jan Hooks; skits included "Chopping Broccoli," Pathological Liar, Church Lady, Subliminal Man.)

So here's my question: given this chronological list of SNL hosts, who would you like to see come back and beat Weaver's record? It's unlikely that Eddie Murphy (12-15-84) will ever return, but why not Jeff Bridges, who last hosted (with his brother Beau) on February 26, 1983? Of course, if they could ever lure Jodie Foster back it might set an unbreakable record -- she last hosted on November 27, 1976.

A REVIEW OF A MOVIE I BARELY REMEMBER*: With Parenthood, a TV show, debuting some time this fall on the Haiti of TV networks, I thought it would be worth a quick, research-free examination of the show's source material, 1989's Parenthood, a movie.

When Parenthood (pronounced, according to my friends' unfunny joke, "Paren Thood") came out in 1989, the world was a different place. Everybody in America lived in large colonial revival houses in leafy suburbs. You may not remember this, but back then, before European explorers discovered gay urban gentrification and the entertainment value of gunplay, it was quite common to make a movie like Parenthood. So common that Steve Martin managed to make two, simultaneously, on the same set, with the same director and many of the same actors -- in fact, both Parenthood and Father of the Bride even use common footage spliced into both reels. This doesn't quite explain why, at 19 years old, I saw the movie, and frankly, I cannot remember or imagine the circumstances that led me to the theater, although I'm sure it happened. In that respect, this movie is like sleep-eating or an alien abduction.

The central struggle in Parenthood is that Steve Martin is extremely successful but feels like maybe he should be only very successful, because his father is a dick. Essentially, he wants to be exactly successful enough to assume the role of patriarch of his extended family without worrying about the mortgage on his large colonial revival house in a leafy suburb, and any of his success beyond that is just wasted success. He has one son who he believes is a psychotic murderer in training, but who actually is only a chronic masturbator who sexualizes a brown paper bag and is exactly as weird as the actor playing him will grow up to be. His other son wears a garbage can on his head and runs into walls.

Nobody in the entire extended family looks the least bit alike. If you were to do a statistical study of caucasian DNA and identify the ten or so samples least like each other, you would have identified the cast of Parenthood.

A lot of the middle parts of this are hazy, but I'm pretty sure three things happen: (1) somebody walks in on Martha Plimpton having sex; (2) somebody accidentally activates Dianne Wiest's vibrator in the middle of a family gathering; and (3) Steve Martin's brother, Tom Hulce, shows up, unannounced, with a biracial son named Cool in tow. You could think a long time about what it's supposed to signify that Hulce's son is a ridiculously named biracial kid and that the family is scandalized, either by the race or the profession (Las Vegas showgirl, anachronistic even in 1989) of the mother, but don't get too worked up. Nothing in this movie means anything -- it is a grab-bag of prefabricated folly slapped together without concern for cogency, so if you try to dig into subtext you'll hurt only yourself. Anyway, Hulce is the black sheep of the family, the anti-Steve Martin, because his self-loathing has its roots in failure (rather than excessive success) and his response to it is to fail more (rather than succeeding).

As an aside, it is difficult to decide which was worse: Hulce's performance or his being cast in the first place. He is supposed to be a chronic fuckup and self-styled rebel with fraying ties to his middle-class past, but Hulce makes no effort to suppress his college-theater diction and demeanor, relying instead on a bad MTV Veejay Mark Goodman Halloween costume to create the character for him. Hulce as a dead-end drifter must rank up there with Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist and Tara Reid as a southern trophy wife in the annals of credulity-straining performances.

I'm quite sure some other things happen, including Hulce's inevitable and welcome disappearance, but I can't remember exactly what. What I do recall is that the movie ends with everybody suddenly and simultaneously giving birth.

You can see why this needed to be made into a television series.

*Due to fading memory, some facts in this review may be inaccurate.

WHERE THEY ARE NOW: When we last saw ANTM's Jenascia, she was tearfully talking herself into going back to Hooters waitresshood, the hell reserved for beautiful models too short to change a lightbulb without a ladder. Thanks, though, to the Spaceboys' newfound love of Wheel of Fortune (an entirely different hell), I'm happy to report that Jenascia is: (a) the fashion director for a magazine in Seattle; (b) the kind of person who would run the table on Wheel against a lawyer and an economics grad student but for the poor spin that brought her to "lose a turn"; (c) someone who can figure out the bonus puzzle before choosing her letters; and (d) the winner, in a half-hour, of half the $100,000 prize money that went to her season's ANTM victor, Yoanna House. And she cried at the end again, this time in happiness.

FROM NEW YORK CITY, THE GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD: It generally seems that it's a foregone conclusion that The Nighty-Night Show with CoCo will wind up on Fox, possibly as early as September 2010, but I think there's a different play which could be much more interesting. As soon as any contractual issues are resolved, Conan appears on Late Show With David Letterman, where he and Dave make the following announcement:

• Effective September 2010, Late Show will no longer air a show taped earlier in the week on Fridays. Instead, there will be a new Late Show, taped on Friday, and hosted by Conan.
• Conan becomes Dave's permanent guest host when Dave takes vacation. (Both of these mirror the model that Carson used in the years before his departure.)
  
• Dave leaves the desk either in August 2011 or August 2012, handing over the show to Conan, who's given a long-term contract with timeslot guarantee.
  
• In the interim, Conan remains under contract with CBS/Viacom, and will do things like host awards shows, develop new sitcoms and other programming, and the like.

This lets Conan return to NYC (which he clearly never wanted to leave), gives a gigantic middle finger from both Dave and Conan to NBC, which they clearly relish, gives CBS a stable future in late night and allows them to youthen their image from the "Tiffany Network," and lets Letterman (at least potentially) go out on top as he deserves. Obviously, there are a lot of moving parts and other players there--Craig Ferguson was beating Conan at one point in the late night slots, and Viacom also has cable talent like Stewart and Colbert who may have their eye on the Letterman show, but if they could work it out, I think it would be a PR coup.

ETA: One thing I wasn't clear on here--what's critically important to this plan being even remotely plausible is for Letterman to be 100% on board with no bitterness whatsoever and to willingly be riding the pony off into the sunset. If there's any sense Dave's being forced out or doesn't want to go, it kills the idea.

JAY REPRESENTS TRADITIONAL AMERICAN VALUES, THE THINGS THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT ON, LIKE KILLING INDIANS BECAUSE YOU WANT THEIR LAND: Jay Leno let Jimmy Kimmel onto his show last night. Perhaps he shouldn't have:

At the start of the interview (which has not yet been posted in its entirety on Mr. Leno’s official Web site), Mr. Kimmel’s answers were merely snarky. He said that his impression of Mr. Leno was equal parts Curly Howard of the Three Stooges and the cartoon characters Sylvester the Cat and Scrappy-Doo. And when Mr. Leno asked, “Besides impersonating me, what’s the worst idea your writers have ever pitched you?”, Mr. Kimmel replied, “Actually that was my idea.”

But as the interview progressed, Mr. Kimmel’s responses became more scathing. Asked what was the best prank he ever pulled, he answered: “I told a guy that five years from now, I’m going to give you my show. Then when the five years came, I took it back almost instantly.” And when Mr. Leno inquired if there was anything Mr. Kimmel wanted to host but hadn’t yet, Mr. Kimmel replied, “Oh, this is a trick, right, where you get me to host the ‘Tonight Show’ and then take it back from me? Listen, Lucy, I’m not Charlie Brown - I don’t fall for that trick.”

Even when the interview appeared to be over, Mr. Kimmel made one last appeal on behalf of himself and Mr. O’Brien. “Listen, Jay, Conan and I have children,” he said. “All you have is cars. We have lives to lead here. You have $800 million. For God’s sake, leave our shows alone.” Mr. Leno could not do much more than awkwardly thank his guest and go to a commercial break.

About half of that video is here, and here and here are more compiled highlights from last night's shows. Among other things, Dave's enjoying this and Conan's putting the show for sale on Craigslist. Meanwhile, NBC's Dick Ebersol has finally tried to turn the PR war in their direction, stating that O'Brien is “chicken-hearted and gutless to blame a guy you couldn’t beat in the ratings" and that “what this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan" to maintain the Tonight Show's ratings.

added: Via NYMag (via Fark), a 10-23-92 NYT article in which Leno explains what he would do if NBC tried to bump him backwards from his 11:30p slot. "I am disappointed," Mr. Leno said. "I feel like a guy who has bought a car from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and made it look nice and then the guy comes back and says he promised to sell the car to his brother-in-law."

MISOGYNY PRETENDING TO BE FEMINISM: NYMag polls 43 major film critics to determine the ten worst films of 2009. The critics' comments on particular nominees include:

• It's not possible for the greatest action hero of comic book lore to have a boring backstory, right? Wrong.
• I wouldn't be surprised if seeing what his beloved genre had been reduced to may have hurried John Hughes to his grave.
• I like overblown digi-super-spectaculars as much as the next guy, but seriously. Smurf tigers getting their Baraka on under the Tree of Life?
• The last note I took for this movie was "Just die already." If wishing death upon one of the twentieth century's great feminist icons is what Mira Nair had in mind, bravissima.
• A special sort of train wreck that unfolds like some fever-dream, recycled-parts mash-up of Anchorman, Mad Love, and a drunkenly self-amused improv sketch.
• Finally, a film that deals with the plight of the wealthy Canadian immigrant.