I thought the first 20 minutes or so of Conan O'Brien's first show — up until about when he brought out his first guest — were better than anything I saw him do on his Tonight Show, up until about the point when it started being all about being cancelled. Then again, Conan is usually at the top of his game when the topic is self-deprecating humor about himself. I like the new set a lot better than the old set, too.
My guess is the show will do fine insofar as TBS is concerned. They bought it with some expectation of where its ratings will settle-in once the initial interest dies down; that while it may not top Jay or Dave (or even Jon and Stephen), it will improve enough on the numbers they were getting with Seinfeld reruns in that slot. It probably will…and it'll give them something to build on to try and add more original programming to their evening lineup. So they made a smart move buying it and Conan, one assumes, landed the best job that was available to him. Win/win there.
I lost interest when the guest segments started and I got the feeling Conan did, too. Suddenly, when he began chatting with Seth Rogen, it became a pretty standard talk show…and that's where all these programs are starting to lose me. There was nothing wrong with Rogen's spot except that it could have been on Jay's show or Dave's show or either Jimmy's show or Ellen's or even George Lopez's. All those shows — every one of them — is down in the ratings because, I suspect, America is just weary of the same old talk show banter. Craig Ferguson is the only one who seems to spark his guests into a kind of conversation they can't or don't have on auto-pilot. (The other exception I guess would be Stephen Colbert but that's because he doesn't converse with his guests so much as he drags them into an improvised sketch with his screen character.) So while I have my TiVo set to grab Conan every night, I'm not sure he's going to grab my attention much past the phrase, "My first guest…" We'll see.
In the meantime, in case you missed it, here's the cold open they did. You'll probably have to watch a 30 second ad for something to get to it but it's worth it…
[UPDATE: Something about the embed of the Conan video was creating problems for some browsers accessing this site so I've deleted it. You can find it over on this page.]