Conan O'Brien's First Night on the Tonight Show: LiveBlog

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com

Some people love Conan O'Brien, and others find him pompous and sophomoric, but I think most people agree that no one could have been selected for hosting the Tonight Show that reveres the job moreso than Conan. He has always professed to hold that job in the highest esteem possible and I don't think anyone could be possibly be more honored and humbled to take the job.

I'm eager to see how O'Brien who made his living catering to the younger, late-night quasi-Adult Swim crowd, will handle catering to his new audience that is more staid than the late night crowd.

I'll go ahead and get a few things over with: I'm a big Conan fan and have seen a LOT of his show. So I'll probably come off as rooting for him and pointing out things that lead you to believe that I've watched way too much of Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

10:35: So far so good. The opening bit involves Conan running from NYC to LA and shows him crossing Chicago's Michigan Avenue bridge in front of the Tribune Tower and also shows him running through Wrigley Field. So far he's won me over.

(Update: The Trib brought up a good point. Conan was running South on Michigan Avenue, which would mean he's running away from Wrigley. Oh well, here's the video of it.
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He ran through Vegas and his now in Hollywood. It's all setting up for him to run into the studio to start his show. Not a bad idea for an entrance, implying he just ran all the way from NYC.

10:38: Sounds like they're going with the same theme from Late Night, but just a little bit different. Conan's coming out. He didn't do his usual "jogging into his mark" from Late Night. I guess that was one way he decided to act more grown up. Oh, there goes a brief "string dance". I'm going to see if he still does tha,t "Let's hear it for The Max Weinberg 7, everybody! Max-" before he sends it to the band before heading to his desk.

He just introduced Andy Richter. Nice to see him back. He's standing at a podium. Huh.

10:42: First "Clippers suck" joke. The monologue is very "L.A.-centric" which is to be expected, I guess.

10:46: Conan shouts out the "Choco Taco". Friends of mine are snickering.

10:49: Conan's first sketch- he's gonna help out guiding the tour of Universal Studios (where his show is taped). This has potential. He does however, also have a tendency for overdoing it on these sketches. That's always a concern with these filmed-on-location bits. We'll see how it goes. For what it's worth- his hair is especially wonky during this bit.

So far there's some overdoing it. The tour is conducted on like 4 trolley cars that are all linked together. Conan decides to take them out on the street, which isn't a bad idea. Then he stopped in front of a $.99 store and bought everyone something. He emerged from the store with two shopping carts full of $.99 items. Not a bad ending.

10:55: He didn't do it. It was "we've got Max Weinberg and the Tonight Show Band. When we come back we've got a lot more show for you." then it was sent to commercial. Flipping to CBS just in time just to catch #5 on Letterman's Top 10 List.

11:00: Back from commercial and Conan is thanking Jay and the new staff members at Universal Studios. Now a bit is starting up about Conan and his green Ford Taurus prowling the streets of LA. Fabio makes a cameo. Oh sweet, there are some Esse's (sp?) hittin switches on their ghetto sled, and we see Conan's car appears to be equally hydraulically outfitted until the camera pans out to reveal all of the car. Then we notice that Conan's car was bouncing, not from hydraulics, but from fat guys at the rear of the car pushing down on the trunk. I'll take it.

11:08: Commercial for a new Eddie Murphy movie. It's too bad when people hear "Eddie Murphy" they think, "God awful movies" and not, "Maybe the best stand up comic of all-time". To this day he's the only comedian that's ever made me think, "Man that dude's a badass". Chappelle, Chris Rock, George Carlin and Bill Hicks are honorable mentions, but no where near the level of badass, they're just "Man he's funny. He seems pretty cool too." Murphy was just a rockstar. Now he makes movies that would make Matin Lawrence blush.

11:10: Will Ferrell had a good entrance. He was carried in on a float (I forget what those things are called) by Egyptian-like servants.

11:15. Ferrell was funny and will be back after the commericals. He casually mentioned to Conan how it's fun to "Dress up like a ninja, drink a bottle of Midori and do some Peeping Tom action." I found that pretty amusing/insightful.

I flipped back to Letterman again. I did so at the last break but didn't blog about it. Bill Cosby was on Letterman doing his "sit down comedy" and was funny. He wasn't wearing his sunglasses which I thought was surprisingly normal of him. Then I just flipped back again and he's Letterman's guest and wearing sunglasses. Though, now that I think about it, I bet the lights are bright as hell in a tv studio.

11:20: I also noticed that Will Ferrell still has his blazer jacket buttoned while seated. Guys on tv never seem to unbutton their blazers while seated. Although I guess Conan's is unbuttoned. I probably sound like I'm high right now. I'm not actually high though. Actually, that probably sounded like when on TV shows they zoom in on a character's forehead and you hear that character's thoughts. One character's is always predictable, yet funny, and there's always the one character whose thoughts shock you with how inane and stupid they are. The thoughts I just had would probably be the latter.

11:22: I'll be damned. Will Ferrell is singing on Conan's show again. He was singing "Never Can Say Goodbye", not sure if the Jackson 5 were the first to do that song, but theirs is the only version I know. He was singing that song since he felt that Conan's chances of success with this show aren't very good.

Going to commercial, when we come back: Pearl Jam. I hope they play that song Eddie Vedder wrote about the Cubs.

This little ditty


11:28: Oh good. America's Got Talent returns to NBC June 23rd. Well, Pearl Jam isn't playing Someday We'll Go All The Way. Their playing a new song that sounds a LOT like State of Love and Trust. I guess the decade and a half I spent away from Pearl Jam (with the exception of the aforementioned Cubs anthem) didn't result in me missing a whole lot. I'm the best.