Conan O'Brien: The Last Host of The Tonight Show

Conan O’Brien is back.  He was gone for a while, but he’s back on the air with his revamped show on TBS.  In the interim the show was refashioned to meet Conan’s personal specifications; it was shortened to 30 minutes, the band was jettisoned, and there is no desk.  And his attire is far less formal.

After 25 years on late night television, he has earned the right to shape his show to suit his needs.  He is, after all, The Last Host of The Tonight Show.

Of course, that’s not true literally.  After he was forced out of his Tonight Show gig Jay Leno resumed hosting, eventually turning the job over to Jimmy Fallon.  But Jimmy Fallon is not the successor to Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson.  The Tonight Show became the most influential job in late night entertainment because its hosts were brilliant, creative innovators who pushed the boundaries of the medium.  Leno and Falllon are just seat-fillers.

It is hard to recall that when Conan O’Brien took on the Late Late Show it was controversial.  He was a little-known comedic entity, perhaps best known for writing an episode of The Simpsons that was pretty good (okay, Marge vs. the Monorail is one of the five best episodes of a show that has produced over 600 episodes).  There was a shaky start, a breaking-in period, but eventually O’Brien established himself as a master of offbeat, idiosyncratic humor very much in the vein of David Letterman.  He bided his time, and when Jay Leno relinquished his seat at the Tonight Show desk he took over, as it had been pre-ordained by an NBC desperate to avoid the embarrassing imbroglio that surrounded the Leno/Letterman battle to succeed Carson.

As detailed in the book The War for Late Night by Bill Carter, NBC had two overwhelming desires: they needed O’Brien to tap into the youth demographic that he appealed to more than Leno, but they also wanted the more conventional Leno to stay on.  They’d both been promised the Tonight Show at 11:30, but there was only one time slot and two of them.

They tried putting Leno on at ten PM, which was widely derided as the Worst Move In the History of Television.  After an embarrassingly prolonged battle, O’Brien was pushed out.  He refused to accept the lie of calling his show “The Tonight Show” but broadcasting it at 12:05, issuing a manifesto calling out the NBC brass, saying, “I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its [the Tonight Show’s] destruction.”  When NBC was focused on ratings and corporate profits, O’Brien’s concern was the reputation of a show that began nine years before he was born.

In the end NBC’s greed cost them Conan O’Brien and a large financial settlement.  Conan had to sign a non-compete clause, but he simply waited it out by going on a nationwide tour which boosted his profile, in the meantime lining up a new show on TBS and not one of the Big Four networks.

The mantle of “host of The Tonight Show” technically reverted to Jay Leno, but not in any real way.  The title actually died when Johnny Carson left, as he proved to be a singular talent incapable of being replaced.  Not even David Letterman would have managed the feat, and it is probably better for him that he was exiled to CBS. 

But Conan O’Brien was the last true successor to Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show, and if his TBS show doesn’t carry the name, it carries on the spirit. O’Brien’s giddy silliness reminds me of the vintage Steve Allen clip when he caught sight of himself wearing a silly hat in a monitor and started laughing uncontrollably (on live TV, I believe).  His travel specials, collected on Netflix under the title Conan Without Borders, capture the quintessence of his persona; he doesn’t take himself seriously, but he does treat others with respect.

I’m not sure what to make of the new format of Conan.  I missed the debut but saw the second episode with the cast of The Good Place.  In the new 30-minute format he had no time to talk with all five cast members, and having everyone lined up facing the audience did not promote conversation.  Not that I’m complaining, but it seemed to me that no one told Jameela Jamil that she’d be sitting on a tall barstool and she spent 10 seconds trying to pull down her short skirt to avoid offending the censors.

But it is a work in progress, and Conan, being a graduate of Harvard, will figure it out.  Somewhere, Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson are enjoying Conan O’Brien’s jokes.