Since I've written a lot here about late night TV in the past, I have a few e-mails asking why I haven't written anything about the last Conan show with Conan O'Brien which aired this past week on TBS. I guess I don't have as much interest in late night as I once did.
Leaving aside John Oliver, the only show I regularly TiVo is Stephen Colbert's and more than half the time, I watch highlights from an episode on YouTube, then delete the show from the TiVo without watching the recording. I wonder how much of the decline in late night viewing is from folks like me who figure, "Why watch the whole hour when I can watch the best fifteen minutes online…and miss all those commercials?"
I watch YouTube videos from Seth Meyers — especially "A Closer Look" — and now and then clips from James Corden, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, Andy Cohen and Jimmy Kimmel. As much as I don't like Donald Trump, there are times when I'm just plain oversaturated with jokes or even criticisms about the man, especially late at night when I'm trying to calm my brain down before beddy-bye.
I've barely watched Conan O'Brien on TBS. I tried. Really, I did.
I thought he was wonderful for about the first half of Late Night on NBC. There was really sharp comedy writing on that series and as David Letterman noted when he famously guested there, they were doing a lot of it every night. And Conan, I thought, was terrific at playing straight in most of those sketches and bits. He was also really good at letting his guests talk and staying out of the way when they were en route to a great punchline.
At some point though, the show began doing less and less prepared material and more and more of the show, it seemed to me, was Conan trying to see how much he could talk about nothing in particular. I had the same problem with Letterman in his last decade.
I greatly admire what Conan did…coming from nowhere, getting a job few thought he deserved and then doing it so well that he came to seem like a natural for it. It's really one of the great stories of Show Business. I just thought he got too slick at it and his shows became too much about him trying to top his guests.
If you loved him, fine. Obviously, a lot of people did and I'm curious to see what he does next. And maybe part of my problem is that there are just too many talk shows out there and too few variations between them.