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It could also be that by the time the 11 o'clock news has rolled by, audiences are ready to put their minds up in curlers and just plain relax. They have followed the puerile plot lines of the regular adventure and comedy programs only to find themselves despairing once again in the land of déjà vu. "In all these series," says Johnny Carson, "the characters are predictable, the dialogue is predictable, the format is predictable. The audience is interested in something where they don't know what's going to happen next."
Performer & Critic. Carson's bag is unpredictability, not only in his offhand humor but in his visual performance. He is General Eclectic himself, a master of a thousand takes. He's got a Jack Paar smile, a Jack Benny stare, a Stan Laurel fluster. If a joke dies, he waits a second, and then yawns a fine Ed Sullivan "Ho-o-okay. . ." A sudden thought—either his or a guest's—will launch him into an imitation of Jona than Winters imitating an old granny. He can spread his eyes wide open into a wow. Semi-emancipated puritan that he is (he was reared a Methodist), he can, when a guest goes off-color, freeze his face into a blank that shows nothing but eyes and innocence. He is performer and critic, rapping out a whole percussion section of effects to suit a funny line—a wince that clacks like a rim shot, a wagging paradiddle indicating consternation, a flam of the head that says go, baby, go.
Frequently, he uses an expression that disassociates him from the proceedings: a visual sigh suggesting that this dame is boring the life out of him, too; or a shake of the head, wondering where the devil this geek got all that garbage. He is often at his best when his material is worst—a handy knack for a man who has to come up with 60 laughs a minute. When a gag clunks to the floor, he'll say: "Never buy jokes from people on streets. Give 'em a quarter but never buy a joke from 'em."
Nebraskan Politesse. Some of his seeming ad libs come from a computerlike retrieval system. He has apparently never forgotten a joke, constantly spins off variations on old ones. Once, when he and Exercise Expert Debbie Drake stretched out on mats for a demonstration, he asked: "Would you like to leave a call?" Last month, five years later, he was still using the same line when Singer Roger Miller was doping off during a discussion. Similarly, Carson's L.B.J. inaugural gag "As I was telling my bellboy, Dean Burch," was transformed a month later, during a CBS upheaval, into: "The television business is tough, as I was saying just the other day to my waiter, Jim Aubrey."
And that is about as tradey as Johnny ever lets himself get. None of the competition can match Carson's audience empathy. He never comes on too worldly or too show biz, shuns its phony language and, whenever possible, the greeting kisses from celebrities who brush cheeks and smack air. In sum, he plays the audience's ambassador to his own show. The idea is not to be too thick with the celebrities or too awed by them. His job is to set them up, to put them on gently, and to raise the questions that his viewers might ask, though