RACHEL ZEVITA, COME BACK! As a reminder to the veterans (and in case new visitors were wondering), while this blog promises (and delivers) the best American Idol team coverage you'll find on any website averaging around 10,000 visits/week, we don't generally cover the audition rounds on a show-by-show basis absent something as awesome as the second coming of twee urchin Josiah Leming. There's just too much crap to fast-forward past, which is why we rely on friends like Dan Fienberg to recap these early episodes to find out if The Next American Idol may be sitting on the TiVo -- and phrases such as "he's like an Italian Taylor Hicks" suggest I haven't missed anything. Did I? [Use this thread for tonight's episode as well.]

YOU'VE GOT SOME...LENO...ON YOU: We've spent too much time today talking about this year's model of The Late Shift (which I've never read, though I've seen the movie--guess I need to head to Barnes and Noble tomorrow), but two questions:

1. We have to assume there's a book about this entire mess--assume it begins with the press conference where they announce the impending handover to Conan, hitting not just on the current Conan/Leno mess, but also the Letterman sex scandal. Obviously, we don't have the ending yet, but I'm guessing it'll be Conan taking the stage on his new show for the first time. Who writes it? Bill Carter again as a career-capper? Someone new?

2. Looking down the road, who plays these folks in the inevitable movie? Daniel Roebuck is still available to play Leno (his most recent memorable role? Arzt!), and John Michael Higgins could probably be persuaded to play Letterman again, but who plays Conan? Jeff Zucker? Of course, the most memorable turns in the original movie came from actors playing agents and managers, and those stories will take a while to tell.

HE'S HERE ON A SPECIAL WORK PROGRAM. HE'S SLOW, YOU KNOW, IN HIS BRAIN: The AV Club talks to actor Brian Baumgartner about the craft of creating the character of Kevin Malone on The Office.

BIG RED STANDS UP: Bill Carter recounts a sequence of events towards the end of The Late Shift when Letterman was finally offered The Tonight Show by NBC (after Leno had already started in the slot), only under certain conditions -- no offer on paper, less money than the CBS offer, and Leno would continue hosting the show until his contract expired seventeen months later. It's a crappy offer, yet Letterman is so attracted to the legacy of The Tonight Show that he wants to take it. Producer Peter Lassally begs Letterman to understand -- the Tonight Show that he fell in love with didn't exist anymore, having ceased to exist once the show had been handed over from Carson to Leno.

[added: Found the quote: "It's damaged goods," Lassally said. "You're not taking over for Johnny Carson. You're taking for a show that no longer has any class. That's not worth anything; that's not any kind of victory. We can start from scratch at CBS and it will be your victory and it will be your show and you're not taking over for this damaged show." Bill Carter, The Late Shift p. 214.]

So Lassally pulls out his final card -- Carson himself -- and as Carter recounts:

Lassally went back to Dave. Call Johnny, Lassally urged him. Ask him what you should do.

"Why are you doing this to me?" he snapped at Lassally. "Don't you understand? I don't care. I cannot lose 'The Tonight Show' twice."

Letterman had never been so conflicted in his life. He knew he had to tell Ovitz which way he was going. He had very little time left. He was running out of ways to analyze it. But he still needed help. So he called Johnny Carson....

"You have to do what's best for your career," Carson told Letterman. "Do what's in your heart." The problem for Letterman, of course, was that in this instance those two sentiments didn't precisely coincide. He asked Carson what he really wanted to know: "What would you do if you were in this situation, Johnny?"

Carson didn't dodge the question. "I'd probably walk," he said. "I'm not telling you to do that, David. But if you're asking me what I'd do, if I had been treated like that, I would probably walk."

This afternoon, Conan O'Brien is probably walking, and for the same reasons. From his statement:

It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction.

The word "consider" before losing indicates that Conan's not walking yet -- the ball remains in NBC's court. The Tonight Show stays at 11:35p, or Conan goes.

HOW I STILL DIDN'T MEET YOUR MOTHER: I'll leave most of the discussion of the production number to the production-number-lovers. I have but two observations from last night's HIMYM:

1. In any singing/dancing number, it is impossible to turn away from Jason Segel. He is not a good singer or dancer, but he is funnier with less effort in song than anyone who comes to mind right now.
2. Your Mother is cooler than Ted by several orders of magnitude, and out of his league by a comparable margin (as, obviously, is Rachel Bilson).

YOUR WORLD FRIGHTENS AND CONFUSES ME! SOMETIMES WHEN I FLY TO EUROPE ON THE CONCORDE, I WONDER, AM I INSIDE SOME SORT OF GIANT BIRD? AM I GONNA BE DIGESTED? I DON'T KNOW, BECAUSE I'M A CAVEMAN, AND THAT'S THE WAY I THINK! WHEN I'M COURTSIDE AT A KNICKS GAME, I WONDER IF THE BALL IS SOME SORT OF FOOD THEY'RE FIGHTING OVER: Can I call bullshit on this alleged "urban caveman" trend? I do not believe that there are so-called "paleos" out feasting on organ meat and deer ribs, avoiding foods unavailable before the rise of agriculture and then fasting for 36-hour periods, while engaging in workouts consisting of "scooting around the underbrush on all fours, leaping between boulders, [and] playing catch with stones."

[That said, obvs, I'm fine with the whole "at war with the vegans because they're a rival tribe" thing.]

For a truly awesome trend story, on the other hand, see Sunday's Cape Cod Times for the menacing tome "Hoodies: Fashion and Fear."

PERHAPS THIS IS WHY THE OPED PAGE HAS FAILED TO CONDEMN THE TACTICS OF BAD HORSE: Apparently, there are a lot of Whedon fans at the NYT, especially amongst the editorial page folks. Hell, I'm just endlessly amused by the statement from columnist Gail Collins--"I had this very big discussion with Paul Krugman about Firefly; that was fun."