Cheeky puppet musical 'Avenue Q' opens Jan. 12 in San Jose

Jay Leno may regain 'Tonight Show' perch

Could Jay Leno get his old job back?

According to sources familiar with the situation, the network is in discussions about putting the comedian back on at his original 11:30 p.m. perch, either as a lead-in to "Tonight Show" host Conan O'Brien or replacing him altogether.

NBC officials declined to comment on that specific scenario, the latest of a flurry of rumors to leak out of the peacock network today.

The television industry website FTVLive kicked off a series of reports today about Leno’s future in a post that said NBC had decided to cancel the show. Such a move would amount to a major retreat by the network, which has insisted that stripping Leno’s comedy show across the week has been a success financially, even if the ratings have been lackluster.

Leno's late-night replacement, Conan O'Brien, has not performed well either, and now apparently the network wants to put Leno back at 11:30 and slide O'Brien to midnight, according to people close to the situation. The news that NBC was considering bumping O'Brien out of his time slot was first reported by TMZ.

NBC has felt tremendous pressure from its affiliates over Leno's performance and have been pushing the network to return to scripted programming. This season NBC has averaged 5.34 million viewers at 10 p.m., a 29% drop from the same period last season.

-- Joe Flint and Matea Gold

Not That Good or just Not For Me? Thoughts on 'Big Love' and 'Breaking Bad'
When a lot of other critics praise a show I don't much like, I take notice. And I think, is it because the show is Not That Good, or just Not For Me?

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, especially as it pertains to "Big Love," which returns Sunday on HBO. But the question applies to other shows that get a lot of critical praise. And be aware that what follows is just some noodling of mine on this topic. It's just a little window into the kinds of things I think about when I'm getting ready to write reviews.

One show that has caused me to struggle with the Not That Good vs. Not For Me dilemma is "Breaking Bad."

Let me explain what I mean by the two terms via a music analogy. I came up as a music writer; I had a music 'zine in Chicago in the '90s and freelanced for many publications, doing interviews and record reviews, etc.

I never reviewed techno because I just didn't get it. It's not that I didn't like the occasional techno song, but most of the music of rave/electronic culture just didn't speak to me. Reggae, indie music, pop, rock, even some hip-hop -- I got it. I could not only assess the music but place it in context. I cared enough to at least try to think deeply about the music genres I listened to most.

I never felt it was fair for me to review techno, because it was just Not For Me. It just didn't connect. Now, maybe that means I thought it was Not That Good. But it's not really fair to assess something you're disinterested in. Nobody wants me reviewing hockey games, for example.

(Sidebar: That's one of my pet peeves when it comes to television coverage -- when someone who writes about or reviews TV makes it clear that it's not really and truly worthy of any kind of in-depth scrutiny. Those kind of TV writers are rare, but far less rare than I'd like.)

So, on to a couple of interesting intersections of Not That Good and Not For Me.

"Breaking Bad" has been praised to the skies by a lot of people I respect. Readers constantly tell me how much they love the show. Still, though I can appreciate the fine performances in the show and though the writers come up with wonderfully dry dialogue at times, I just don't care for the show. As I've written in the past, it doesn't do anything for me and I generally find it slow-moving and pretentious.

But because I was struggling with the Not That Good/Not For Me thing at the time, in the most recent piece I wrote about "Breaking Bad," I don't think I completely hit on what bothers me about it. That came to me later in a conversation with a friend.

Here's the updated Not That Good part of my "Breaking Bad" argument: I feel that I too often know where the show is going -- within scenes, within episodes and within the series as a whole. Week to week, it's going to be another drug deal gone bad. Walt's machinations will end up dragging him a few steps closer to hell. No matter what he tries, things are pretty much heading in that direction.

And being able to predict how things end up -- especially feeling like I'm more or less able to predict Walt's eventual fate (it'll be tragic, right?) -- makes the meth saga a lot less interesting for me.

And as I wrote in June, why should I care about whether Walt becomes the most successful meth dealer in the Southwest? Sure, I've enjoyed other shows where the protagonists do despicable things, but the characters on those shows were more interesting. Again, Bryan Cranston is doing great work, and so is Aaron Paul as the unlucky Jesse, but the rest of the characters are one-dimensional (if not irritating, as is the case with the show's female characters).

These thoughts, however, bleed into the Not For Me part of my "Breaking Bad" argument: The fact is, the show's just too grim for me. I've watched a lot of dark shows over the years. I like the dark and twisty. But "Breaking Bad" is just too damn dark for me. It's about a guy who sells drugs and makes desperate people's lives more miserable. Whatever you think of Walt's morality, Walt's world is just a sad, airless place to be.

"Breaking Bad's" relentless grimness -- well, it's just Not For Me. And though I stand by my Not That Good criticisms, the Not For Me part is the deciding factor when it came to deleting the show's Season Pass from my TiVo.

"Big Love," however, is the most potent combination of Not For Me and Not That Good I've ever come across. I actually feel physically and mentally stressed when I watch this show. And it's been damnably difficult to unravel the knot of Not For Me/Not That Good responses I have to the show -- which I also recognize has the occasional funny, interesting or compelling moment.

Over Christmas, I watched about half of Season 3 of "Big Love," which was all I could handle. It was deja vu all over again -- I'd given up on the polygamy drama halfway through its first two seasons as well. But I'd heard Season 3 had some great moments and the show ended up on a lot of Top 10 lists. So was it just me?

As I watched Season 3, I realized once again that there's one thing about "Big Love" that puts it pretty squarely in the Not For Me category. The show is largely about the stresses of marriage and the grinding pressures of domestic concerns -- times three.

Truth be told, I tend not to be drawn to shows that center on domestic concerns, not because these things don't matter to me, but because they're generally depicted so terribly (please don't start me on how "Desperate Housewives" depicts motherhood. For the opposite end of the spectrum, the Ally Walker-Tim DeKay story line in "Tell Me You Love Me" had to be one of the best portrayals of intimacy I've ever seen -- and seeing marriage shown in that compassionate yet nuanced and realistic light is incredibly rare on TV).

And truth be told, I find it a bit creepy that "Big Love" is centered on three women who are, on some levels, competing to see who can be the best wife to their husband -- a husband who gets the final say and whose rules are not supposed to be questioned. I am completely fine with people making those life choices for themselves. But as a feminist, I sometimes find the characters' worldviews hard to relate to.

So those are all my Not For Me complaints. But there's a big Not That Good component here as well.

The fact is, I've never been particularly drawn to any of the characters; three seasons in, they're all somewhat underdeveloped and could be a lot more nuanced. Take Ana from Season 3. I never felt I knew who she was or what she believed in; to me she was just a plot device meant to cause drama in the Henricksons' world.

But once that plot thread was dropped, everything was more or less back to square one. And that happens a lot on "Big Love," where there are lots of machinations but not much actual forward movement. The plot seems to be reset every few episodes. And there are so many subplots and so many people and so many tangled story lines that character development is often squeezed in in a slapdash, hurried way.

From the first season, I've felt the show was permanently stuck on repeat mode. Will the family's secrets be exposed? What shenanigans are happening at the Juniper Creek compound? Will the Henricksons' be allowed to live the Principle?

I. Don't. Care.

This is the central problem, which might just make the Not For Me/Not That Good distinction irrelevant. (Maybe Not For Me is just another way of saying, "I can't figure out why anyone likes this.")

In any case, there's not one single journey on "Big Love" that I'm invested in. I don't have to necessarily like the characters on a show or think they're good people -- but I have to care about where they're going and want to understand why they make certain choices. I have to be interested.

And for all the reasons I mentioned above, I'm just not interested in the Henricksons or the Principle. (In fact, three seasons in, I'm still not entirely sure why the Principle and its attendant polygamy matter so much to them.)

Other critics have written persuasively about how "Big Love" is all about love or God or faith or marriage. Those are all certainly rich areas for storytelling. But the stories "Big Love" tells about these subjects have never compelled me to come back for more.

And that's really all we can do when it comes to the Not For Me/Not That Good dilemma. If someone tells me they've tried to watch a show I love and they just don't get it -- it just doesn't speak to them -- then that's fair enough. At least they tried. As I have with the shows above.

If nothing else, I've learned over the years to really, really try with a show before I declare it Not For Me. I didn't think Westerns were For Me until I saw the gloriously compelling "Deadwood." A show about a girl who kills vampires -- that's just going to be silly, right? Um. No. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- definitely For Me. (But I didn't watch it during its first season because I thought that kind of thing was Not For Me. Oh, I have been quite stupid in this regard at times.)

Anyway, I don't necessarily think this is necessarily my definitive essay on Not For Me vs. Not That Good. I don't know if I'll write about it again -- I'm just saying these thoughts are works in progress. Please share yours if you have thoughts on this topic.

Or maybe the whole post is just Not For You. Which is fine, heh. 

Bracket —Nigerian singers
Corporate. We wear mostly suits and shirts and ties some times.Are you extravagant shoppers like most of other Nigerian artistes?
Cheeky puppet musical 'Avenue Q' opens Jan. 12 in San Jose
The sunny optimism of 'Sesame Street' gets smacked upside the head with 21st-century cynicism in 'Avenue Q.' Make no mistake, this ingeniously naughty puppet show is definitely not family-friendly. Warning: strong language and full frontal puppet nudity!

In Memoriam: 'Ebony' Matriarch Eunice W. Johnson

Johnson, the woman behind the Johnson Publishing Co. and the director of the company's Ebony Fashion Fair, died on Sunday at age 93. Andre Leon Talley remembers Johnson and her impact on the world of fashion, cosmetics and the arts.