Live! Conan O’Brien

What do you get when you have a two-hour long talk show setup without guests? That’s the central question for Conan O’Brien’s touring show, The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour. He’s doing exactly what he’s been doing for most of his entertainment career, but it’s really unlikely to have a guest-centric show on tour (he manages: New York had Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Boston had Ed Helms and The Dropkick Murphys). For the first time in his career, O’Brien’s truly the center of attention. Yeah, he hosted shows, but all the late-night network talk shows are billed as as “[Name of Show] with [host].” There is no “The David Letterman Show” or “The Jay Leno Show” (…until there was one), just “Late Night” and “The Tonight Show.” This means that O’Brien’s live tour is an incredibly odd, unique beast: it’s almost literally the first half hour of his Late Night or Tonight Show format, but stretched over two hours with no commercial breaks (except for one that’s a comedy bit, albiet for a real burger joint).

The late night talk show is strange, format-wise. Think about it: it almost entirely exists as a commercial for its guests’ projects. It barely masquerades as entertainment, compared to, say, a sitcom. For the audience, how much value is there, really in the guests?* Every show warms up the audience with a monologue, and only Craig Ferguson currently differentiates from this pattern: [Recent news topic] [Obvious joke about celebrity foible/outrageousness of the topic itself] [Comment on audience reaction to joke] [Start new joke]. As much as “Team Coco” wants to criticize Jay Leno’s show as being stale, obvious and mean-spirited (and they’re right), O’Brien’s talk shows have always been equally confined by the format trappings: 10-15 minute monologue to open and half an hour of guest interviews/performances in the back half. Each show, then, is truly defined in its tone and its host’s entertainment sensibility in the brief comedy bits that fills the time between those two obligations, and that is where O’Brien regularly shined. And that’s really the great realization of The Legally Prohibited… Tour: the opportunity to see Conan O’Brien’s brand of absurdism given more or less free-reign.

“More or less” because some of those talk show habits don’t break. There’s still a monologue, and with a two-hour show, it gets really long. O’Brien didn’t do the standard talk show monologue based on the latest news; instead, he talked at length about how he dealt with losing The Tonight Show gig. In doing so, he strained the limits of his own self-deprecation, but was also funny throughout, whether during the opening skit showing his sad home existence without show business or going through the “8 stages of mourning for talk show hosts” (spoiler: he does not spend a lot of time on the “blaming myself” stage). He’s very funny at it, but for an audience member, the feeling of “gee, you’re still going on about that?” creeps in several minutes into it. The thing is, O’Brien’s never been a stand up comedian; his best moments during monologues through the years have been his reactions to jokes that bomb. Some of the best comedians take their personal lives and transform them into something the audience can relate to, but that’s hard to do with “losing a talk show and getting a multi-million dollar payout” as the subject. Thankfully, the show quickly rights itself into glorious silliness.

Oddly, the most wonderful thing about the show is not necessarily O’Brien himself – hopefully his (arguably justified) victim complex runs its course when he starts up on TBS this fall – but the way the variety show format really gives his weirdness, his writerly tendencies and writers’ skills free reign, full of showbiz bullshit but far from the familiar showbiz bullshit context. Maybe the Walker Texas Ranger Lever “Chuck Norris Rural Policeman Handle” is a retread (down to the clips all being previously used on Late Night years ago), but having Andy there to comment and quip about them showed why he was so missed on Late Night after he left. It’s pretty much a fanboy’s dream come true for this fan to see O’Brien and his staff be given so much time to fill without stopping for lame interviews. It was filled with fan service: a video of Triumph the Insult Comic dog customized to every town, the “Chuck Norris Police Handle.” Regulars Andy Richter and Deion Cole got individual chances to shine. A famous Eddie Murphy outfit and Meat Loaf prop get resurrected to hilarious effect.

As much as the show might be directed for longtime fans, though, parts of the show – not a specific 30-minute block or anything, but strewn about – seems to simply be Conan-pleasing. Specifically, when he’s jamming out with the “Legally Prohibited Band” (basically, the Max Weinberg 7 with a conspicuously absent Max), it seems like he’s having a blast. It’s fun to see, but he’s neither a great comedy song writer nor a great musical performer. There’s some thrill in seeing him cover “On the Road Again” or “The Weight”, but, huh? More or less straight covers** were a strange choice. Most of the value seems to be (a) to keep Conan on stage, (b) segue between comedy bits and (c) to indulge his musical whims a bit. To be fair, his show band has always been a crack group of musicians, so they handle the music very well. The addition of the “Cocettes” on backup vocals add a, weird, near-parodic air to the musical performances (even if they are good in the role). It’s a strange thing to see O’Brien, clearly not completely comfortable playing music in front of an audience (compared to hosting comedy) backed by such a full band. It’s entertaining as a novelty.

The events that caused O’Brien to lose his Tonight Show position were transformative; for the first time in his career, a subsection of the public rallied behind him, almost out of nowhere. It’s unique to him; when Letterman got shafted for the Tonight Show gig, the world was not inter-connected via blogs, Twitter, 24×7 news cycles in such a way that what is a relatively small, devoted fanbase can make a personality a massve success. His personality has become the selling point, like Letterman before him. It explains how he can do a national tour while waiting out the moratorium on his TV presence (hence the tour title, natch). So, the stage show is excessive and more than a little narcissistic, but how could it not be? To not have this show be built from the perspective of “So What Have I Been Up To?” would be strange, and not in the strange-funny way that, say the masturbating bear is always a great fucking joke.

Finally, the show opened with Reggie Watts, who is probably one of the most inventive stand up comedians working today. Watts has a loop machine and improvises his way through his set hilariously. It’s absurd and strange and not at all “standard” to stand up comedy. In other words, Reggie Watts is the perfect opener for the Conan O’Brien tour. It’s kind of painful to have him in this paragraph, so close to the footnotes. C’est la vie.

*Does anyone care about any of the anecdotes actors and actresses have for their latest movie? How do you think filming this most recent work went? (Hint: celebrities split evenly between “So much fun! Everyone was so great to work with!” and “So difficult. Some real hard work went into this thing.” A good predictor on this is genre: comedy or drama. Action movies can go both ways. It can be a game, when you think about it too much).

**More or less: “Polk Salad Annie” becomes a nice joke on his upper-middle class roots; “On The Road Again” gets an extra verse about “My own show again,” as in: “I can’t wait to get.” That one kinda feels tiresome.

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Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!

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