The host left late night in a sincere, meandering, clip-heavy finale.
Conan O’Briennever looked comfortable.
After 28 years, he was the grand old man of late night.
Conan O’Brien says farewell to his TBS late-night show.TBS
So O’Brien’s manic sizzle was a clever defensive maneuver.
The last few decades were centuries of techno-cultural evolution.
Moving too slow meant stopping and wasn’t his documentary calledConan O’Brien Can’t Stop?
“When I started there were three late night hosts,” he said on Monday night’sConan.
Too harsh, and that number is way too low.
But anyone with vaguely humorous online persona shares a lineage with O’Brien.
Just take a look atthis amazing list of essentialConansketches.
O’Brien and his collaborators didn’t create that entire style of comedy.
“Bill Hader, the guest on Monday, spoke with generational longing about those earlyLate Nightepisodes.
“It was the first thing in comedy that was mine,” he said.
“It was the first thing in comedy that my parents didn’t understand.”
Just a few years later, cable networks were building followings off out-there comic weirdness.
ButLate Nightwas vanguarding all that on broadcast television, mere minutes away from limp Jay Leno schtick.
But this last week of shows made for an awkward event.
It was less a goodbye than an extended “Seeya Tomorrow.”
A blank mandate for a variety show plus paid world travel equals one swell non-retirement plan.
He’s got a podcast, and he’s got a companion podcast.
The jokes felt a bit limp because that’s so obviouslynotthe oncoming trajectory.
He’s a valued WarnerMedia property,on the billboardnext to Batman andFriends.
Will Ferrellcame closer to the mark in his Zoom appearance on Thursday.
“I will always be on television for all eternity!”
To clarify: Even if he didn’t look it, O’Brien certainlyfeltcomfortable at some point.
No man wears a denim jacket without believing in himself a little too much.
These final shows had a leisurely nothing-to-prove quality, old friends onstage chatting throughone actual marijuana haze.
(O’Brien kept telling the TV audience to check online for the uncut episodes.)
O’Brien wrapped the night by thanking everyone he possibly could.
This was an obviously sincere act of cosmic gratitude, and only a monster could protest.
Oddly, the most classically O’Brien-ish moment of the finale was medically unplanned.
Climactic guestJack Blackwalked onstage with a cane, having sprained his ankle rehearsing an elaborate musical number.
(It was fine.)
It’s a boldly unprovable compliment from one close friend to another they have the same therapist!
and the craziest thing is I sort of believe it.
O’Brien at his late-night peak was a sight to behold.
Long-timers probably recall his throw-it-at-the-wall ’90s heyday.
In 2004, NBC promised O’Brien he’d getThe Tonight Showin 2009.
For five years before the Betrayal Late Nightwas what the future looked like.
You tuned in to watch the inmates in the playground preparing to seize the asylum.
By my rough calculations, O’Brien spent around 2 percent of his late-night career hostingThe Tonight Show.
So it’s some kind of cruelty that I constantly think about how amazing his short stint was.
The specific details are too complicated, and memory promotes the macro-drama.
From the past: A boomer who refuses to leave.
From the future: A millennial-baiting smiler peddling clickbait nostalgia.
From 2021, it looks like a temporal pincer movement, and it ended O’Brien’s broadcast days.
O’Brien’s eightTonight Showmonths were the onlyTonight Showfor me.
But that tumultuous period made for mesmerizing television.
O’Brien’s lastTonight Showfelt like the end of an era, not least because it was funny as hell.
Is it unfair to O’Brien, too?
That was not an easy time for him, to put it mildly.
“Conandidn’t end with any kind of bang, but it ended on O’Brien’s terms.
