Back to the Cone Zone

Conan and Hanks, prior to the meteor -- Picture courtesy of NBC

by blogSpotter
One of my very first blog entries in 2005 was a tribute to the comedy genius of Conan O’Brien. I made reference to his extreme over-the-top gags, and his extreme willingness to sacrifice personal dignity for a laugh. You can only imagine how glad I am to have him on an hour sooner, when I’m more awake and alert to the comedy antics.

I worried about how Conan would make this huge transition – he’s also taping in Los Angeles’ Universal Studios, no longer in New York. Trees can go into transplant shock, might that happen to our Conan? What I can say is there is huge relief – Conan brought along much of the greatness:

• Max Weinberg – His “Seven” have now been augmented with several more, and it’s the “Tonight Show Band”.
• Andy Richter – brought back from semi-retirement as side kick! Andy Richter is absolutely hilarious in his deadpan, sarcastic manner. It was a terrible loss on old Conan when Richter left circa the late 90’s.
• Theme song, writing quality – They brought back his theme song and the humor vein is much the same even if they shuffled some writers.

NBC must have great faith in it all – they built Conan a brand new, multi-million dollar studio to house the operations. I personally think that he’s worth it. Have opined to my Texas coworkers that Conan might be “too cerebral” for prime time audiences. This didn’t endear me or Conan to any of the coworkers. I don’t want to tell Conan to dumb it down – he’s still 30 minutes past prime time. But he might want to cut back on sacrilegious humor or “extreme” conceptual, comic irony. I’m not bothered by the image of Jesus shooting hoops but there are people who might take offense.

Leno is coming back this fall in a 9PM (CST) time slot. His will still be a one hour talk show, and he to will probably resurrect many of his routines. Leno went stale a while back (IMHO) with routines like Jay Walkers and Gilbert Gottfried fake interviews. The magic probably would fade for anyone over a long enough time; Johnny Carson was a revered comic icon, but also seen as a sort of cultural barometer. By the last decade of his run, it was getting old. “How hot was it?” became a mantra for staleness. Leno will be up against prime time shows which could be problematic. On the other hand, Oprah and Ellen have done very well with talk shows aired earlier.

What to say about Conan? He’s truly a funny man – if I could ask five living people to dinner he would be one of them. (Still deciding on the other four…). :-) His show is still very new in its first week. He’s still getting standing ovations and A List celebs (e.g., the meteor-smacked Tom Hanks). Lets see how it evolves over the weeks. He should bring back “If They Mated”, “Real Ads” and the Andy Richter staring contest. Am not sure how I feel about them changing “Year 2000” to “Year 3000” but I guess at some point the clock has to move forward. I’m glad we’re moving it forward with a Conan Tonight Show.

© 2009 blogSpotter