Pee Wee Herman on Jay Leno

Pee Wee Herman appeared on on The Jay Leno Show on Wednesday night. Paul Reubens actually showed up dressed in full Pee Wee attire…gray suit, white wingtips and bow-tie. He even managed to sneak in a few Pee Wee giggles.

Pee Wee Herman discussed his upcoming stage gig in L.A., which will reunite characters from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. The Pee-wee Herman Show begins on November 19th at the Music Box @ Fonda in Hollywood.

Check out the video here for more…

Modern Family imdb

There’s a school of thought in TV scheduling that says new shows need to be supported by airing next to veteran shows, and that putting on a night of all new shows is madness.

ABC laughs at this theory when it comes to Wednesdays. Two years ago, the network introduced a lineup of three rookie dramas: "Pushing Daisies," "Private Practice" and "Dirty Sexy Money." This season, they’re trying it again, with four new sitcoms — two debuting tonight, two next week — leading into a remake of "Eastwick."

The ’07 plan might have worked if not for the writers’ strike, but "Daisies" and "Money" are gone, and "Private Practice" had to move to Thursdays. Will the All-New Wednesday 2.0 work out any better? Well, it helps that both of tonight’s new comedies, "Modern Family" (9 p.m., Ch. 7) and "Cougar Town" (9:30 p.m., Ch. 7), are strong, with "Modern Family" being one of the season’s best freshman.

"Modern Family" is shot mockumentary-style like "The Office," as we get to know three branches of one family tree. The patriarch is Jay (Ed O’Neill), who has a Latina trophy wife, Gloria (Sofia Vergara), and had to take Gloria’s sensitive son Manny (Rodriguez) in the deal. Jay’s son, Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), is in a long-term relationship with partner Cameron (Eric Stonestreet), and they’ve just returned from Vietnam with an adopted baby daughter. Jay’s daughter, Claire (Julie Bowen), is part of a more traditional nuclear family, with husband Phil (Ty Burrell) and three kids.

In Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd’s sharp and funny pilot, Jay resents being mistaken for Gloria’s father, even as he insists on wearing velour track suits everywhere. Mitchell gets hung up on being perceived as being too gay now that he’s a parent — "We need to stop having friends with names like Andre," he says — and doesn’t appreciate Cameron’s "nesting" weight gain.

Claire, meanwhile, winds up having to parent not only her children, but Phil, who’s obsessed with being "the cool dad," even though he’s anything but. Burrell embraces the deluded Phil’s Peter Pan quality, making him one of the new season’s early breakout characters.

And after trying to distance himself from Al Bundy with roles in a series of short-lived dramas ("Big Apple," "LA Dragnet," "John From Cincinnati"), O’Neill slides comfortably back into the comedy world. The style is different than "Married... with Children" — no laughtrack, a more realistic tone and more buttoned-down humor — but O’Neill still knows how to sell a good joke, like Jay’s exasperation at his stepson’s attempt to woo an older girl at the mall.

Though I enjoyed NBC’s pilot for "Community" a little bit more, "Modern Family" has as assured and entertaining a start as you could hope for.

More review on Modern Family imdb? Click here

Pee Wee Herman

Ever hear a joke that you're not sure you heard a punchline to yet? I'm not even sure tonight's Jay Leno Show had a setup.

Pee Wee Herman's triumphant return to Jay's show was an insufferable bore, beyond an opening joke about mistaking a wedding ring for an abstinence ring. It ended, and I literally said the words, "Why the hell did I just watch that?" Then I realized I'm being paid to watch TV for a living, and I quit bitching.

The comic character was there to promote his revival of The Pee Wee Herman Show stage play, but the whole interview had very few laughs and felt more like an introspective look at the man's childhood and aspirations to go into show business. The only problem is he's a fictional character and the stories didn't have much of a punchline, so it's hard to know if they were about Pee Wee Herman or the man playing Pee Wee Herman. Should I be laughing? Should I be interested? Should I care?

Then just before I'm about to be sucked down into a swirling gray vortex of dull, the two move into that weird salad bar and deep fryer bit. I was waiting for them to get into a food fight or for Cowboy Curtis, aka Lawrence Fishburne, to poke his head out of the cucumber bin and give them a big ol' "Howdy."

Nothing like that happened. The thing didn't even feel like the setup to a joke. It just felt like a joke and not the good kind. The only funny part was the metal set piece that fell to the floor and broke the dullness of the salad bar bit. Either one of Jay's crew has the butterfingers or God is a better interview prepper than Jay's staff.

The upside was tonight's "Ten@Ten", this time with Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler. The segment seems to work loads better when a comedian is being interviewed, since the questions aren't always meant to be serious. It reminded me, for the first time, of Craig Kilborn's famous "5 Questions" from the original Daily Show and The Late Late Show. Her answers were very witty and funny and brought a great sense of spontaneity to the show, something that's been suspiciously absent since the primetime talk show hit the air.

Marina Franklin's correspondent set also brought some much needed comedy to the show. It had a great sense of honest comedy without going over the top from some very genuine people as she toured Harlem in search of signs of the city's slow gentrification. Any one of the people Marina interviewed would have made a much funnier guest than Pee Wee Herman.

More on Pee Wee Herman click here!