The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Unplugged (lost “blackout” episode from American late-night talk show; 2001)

Photo of the episode with Arsenio Hall as a “special guest”

Status: Lost

This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its disturbing subject matter.

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The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is a American late-night talk show that aired from 1992-2009, hosted by Jay Leno. The show aired over 4,610 episodes, and while many episodes have been uploaded, there’s exist one notorious episode that went wrong during it’s taping.

Background

From 2000-2001, there was a rolling blackout problem in California, which resulted in a number of different problems exacerbated a flawed deregulation scheme. Anytime that there was a blackout during that time in California, millions of people were affected and dealt with no lights, air conditioning, and other necessities. However, Jay Leno decided in 2001 to have an episode while a blackout was happening.

Unplugged

Episode 2081, or simply known as ”Unplugged” was an episode where Jay Leno filmed the show while a blackout was happening in a NBC Studio in Burbank. While it’s believed that this happened while a blackout appeared, the real reason was Leno wanting to show solidarity with the crisis by hosting a show in a set only lit by candles scattered and handheld flashlights around the studio. During the episode, Jay had three nocturnal animals that joined him during a segment. Leno also talked about the blackout during the whole episode, having at least one joke during the late-night show for weeks, quote:

"God, this power crisis in California is still going on," Leno joked at the time. "Who would have thought the 21st century would be the dark ages? ... In fact, the only working lights we have now are from the Mir space thing burning up.”

Arsenio’s “magic trick” incident

While the episode is memorable for what Leno did, it’s mostly infamous for an incident that was forgotten during its taping. According to people who watched it, magician, Arsenio Hall was a guest during a segment of the episode. He was gonna perform the “cut-the-lady-in-half” trick. The woman participant was lying down in the box, and as Arsenio starts to cut the box, the woman screams out that she’s been cut by the katana before cutting to commercials.

Availability

People after watching the episode were pretty disturbed on what happened, but many dismissed the incident as some dark bit Leno planned. Others, on the other hand, believed that the incident was real since Leno’s comedy is extremely bland and never dark, making a conspiracy theory that the woman was either injured or killed, and NBC never re-aired the episode due to the incident.

As of today, no footage of the episode has resurfaced online, with only some archived photos existing to this day.

External Links

• The One Time Jay Leno Did A Show In The Dark
• r/lostmedia post on the episode