Ferguson is on CBS, following Letterman.
Which is both Conan’s appeal and downfall. A lot of the stuff he does seems like a brilliant idea at the time, but just doesn’t come off as funny.
My favorite unfunny Conan bit is the New Year’s Eve show when he starts in a small Indiana town in the Eastern Time Zone, then shifts to a town just across the county line, so they can celebrate again in the Central Time Zone. I think it’s a great idea, but it’s never actually funny.
When Letterman hosted Late Night he had a lot of the same problems, although his off-the-wall stuff tended to work more often than it failed.
Ah, good. I get decent reception on that channel! Monday night I will plan on staying up late just to check the show out.
And don’t forget that Conan O’Brien will assume the chair of The Tonight Show in 2009 when Leno retires.
I defy you to tell me that Triumph at the Star Wars: Episode II opening is unfunny. It takes a certain sense of humor to like Conan, but I’ve never run into anyone who hasn’t thought that the linked bit is hilarious. If you are that person, then there’s simply no hope for you. 
Ya know, 2009 is a ways off…a lot can happen between now and then. I could even possibly get cable or satellite by then.
I’ve tried to like Conan, because I’ve heard his comedy’s so brilliant. And if he was principally responsible for the masterpieces of comedy that were the golden era Simpsons episodes, I’ll heartily agree.
But, as soon as he appears onstage, walking the walk of a man desperately trying to control a sudden attack of explosive diarrhea, and mugging at the camera like a 5-year-old sucking a lemon, I get overwhelmed by a visceral sense of repulsion, like Cool Hand Luke after an egg-eating binge. And don’t get me started about his voice - it’s like he’s an oversized ventriloquist dummy being operated by an English-speaking duck.
I’ll say this for him: whatever appeal he does have, he’s certainly maximized it’s marketability.
I used to be a big Conan fan, but lately my appreciation of him has waned considerably. (Perhaps not coincidentally, my waning interest roughly coincided with the time I left college – it may be that Conan is just the quintessential frat boy comedian, and doesn’t appeal to people who have moved beyond that phase.) Anyways, my biggest gripe is exactly what TheShroud says above – some of these bits have become incredibly old and predictable. Granted, I think any late night show is best if you only tune in every once in a while – these guys have to turn out so much material every week, that they inevitably have to recycle bits and beat punchlines to death. But still, there are whole sketches I’ve seen on Conan that are repeated several times, almost word for word. This is especially bad for the mini-sketches they do between the first two guests – at least half the time, if not more, these are repeats.
Another gripe: I’ve never seen anyone monopolize interviews as much as Conan does. Granted, what he says usually ends up being more entertaining than the dull story the celebrity is planning to tell (if you want to see what happens when the interviewer just lets the celebrity prattle on, watch Leno). But still, Conan can come across as incredibly self-absorbed. In a typical interview, half the time will be taken up with Conan talking solely about himself (in the typical self-deprecating way, of course :rolleyes: ) while the guest sits there and laughs and can barely get a word in edgewise. It’s painful.
And yet, on the plus side, Conan can be very innovative with his comedy. I’ve read interviews with him where he says he aims to make the show entertaining to look at – so that even if you’re watching TV with the sound off, there’s something entertaining and funny on screen. He does a good job of this. Sometimes it falls flat, but he always tries.
He also has a great sense of where the audience is. He can read the mood of a crowd and comment on it with amazing accuracy, which, for whatever reason, can be funny. I think this is where the creepiness of Max Weinberg comes in. Max isn’t really “playing” a creepy guy; he just has NO charisma on TV, whatsoever. So instead of doing everything possible to cover up this seeming liability, Conan comments on it and plays with it. If the opening banter between Conan and Max comes across weirdly, Conan jumps on it immediately.
So, I dunno. I wonder if Conan’s show didn’t face budget cuts and have to lay off a couple of its writers. (NBCs drop in the ratings also coincided with my departure from college, which might be a more significant factor in my lessening enjoyment of the show, rather than the age thing.) If so, I sure hope they hire some new people and pump some fresh blood into the thing. At his peak, Conan can be great – I hope he is again by the time he takes over The Tonight Show.
As a side note, my impression is that Conan’s contributions to The Simpsons have been somewhat exaggerated by his fame since he left the show. I did a google search, and as far as I can tell, Conan only had full writing credit on four Simpsons episodes (“New Kid on the Block,” “Marge vs. the Monorail,” “Homer Goes to College,” and
“Treehouse of Horror IV” wraparound). Of those, “Marge vs. the Monorail” is an admitted classic, but I’ve always hated “Homer Goes to College.” Of course, Conan made smaller contributions to many other episodes, but he wasn’t there at all in the very earliest years, and he doesn’t come up all that often in the Simpsons DVD commentaries.
I remember when Conan took the show to Canada for an entire week. That was some of the best, most hilarious television I’ve ever seen.
Heh, I remember when he went to Ireland to seek out his family.
“Hi, I’m looking for any family I might have here in Ireland, maybe you might know them. They go by the name of O’Brien? Pale skin, red hair, maybe freckles? Prone to drinking? Is this narrowing it down at all?”