Last night was an amazing night of television and here’s why…The major Late Night shows returned in full force – now, due to time constraints I only got a chance to watch Jay, Conan, and Letterman – and I have to say, I was really shocked by the whole thing. Each one approached the night completely different from the other, and I was blown away how bad ONE of them was…and you’ll never guess which one.

I’m only going to touch on these briefly, but I want to give you my initial impressions of each show.

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno – Jay decided to write his own material, which is acceptable under WGA rules, and there was lots of scripted stuff. Jay should write his material more often because I laughed out loud several times during the course of the show. I’m not a huge Leno fan (I picked Letterman back in the day, and I’ve stuck by that choice), but I was really impressed with his material on the show. I don’t think he’ll be able to keep it up 5 days a week, but last night’s show was good.

Late Night with Conan O’Brien – Conan came out sporting a strike beard, and did a lot of stalling to keep the show rolling for an hour. Of course, the constant stalls were funny, and the bit about what they’ve been doing during the strike made me laugh out loud at least twice. Very funny stuff. Conan was my favorite of the night, and a very funny show – again, not sure if they can keep it up, but tonight was great.

The Late Show with David Letterman – I am shocked and saddened to say that Letterman just plain sucked last night. The entire show was about the Writer’s strike – almost every joke was about the Strike and how much the big studios suck. It was almost funny at first, but as the show drug on with one bad punch line after another I ended up having to fast forward through it. It was just plain terrible.

It will be interesting to see how these shows look in a week or a month. We’ll be checking in on them, but so far, they don’t seem that different (except Letterman was not nearly as funny as it usually is).