Conan O'Brien Finds A New Way To Stick It To Jay Leno

When it comes to Conan O'Brien, I've gone through so many phases. His time on Late Night coincided with my second year of university, so I was just the right age to use his show as a reward break while reading my way through the Great Books. (And while my parents were utterly confused by what made his kind of absurdist sketches funny -- perhaps my skill, or lack thereof, in describing them was partly to blame -- I felt the same way about Jimmy Fallon, at first, when he took over Late Night, which is to say, out of touch and old; I get it now! Really, I do!) (I am still old in general, though.) When NBC made its move to fuck him over and restore Jay Leno to The Tonight Show, my sense of justice was offended on his behalf, and felt that he handled the situation the only way he could have and acquitted himself well.

But then came the victory lap. I saw O'Brien's Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On TV tour when it stopped in Austin. The show opened with a filmed bit about how he'd been spending his time since leaving The Tonight Show, and the portrayal of his various pathetic pursuits addressed the obvious question of how O'Brien was dealing with everything, but in a way that was more funny than bitter and played well off his self-deprecating persona. If that had been the end of the NBC stuff, it would have been perfect, but it wasn't. If you've seen Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, you have some idea of how many bits were about his departure from The Tonight Show, each more acid than the last. And while obviously the whole Tonight Show thing was bullshit and O'Brien had and has every right to be righteously angry about it, he didn't have to play out that anger in public, where people could see and feel uncomfortable about it.

But then O'Brien got his TBS show and leveled out -- stopped being a cause and resumed being one of the many straight white guys with late-night talk shows. And, almost like he was trying to win me back after an acrimonious breakup, he started doing several right things in a row. He used his production company to bring the world the brilliant Adult Swim show Eagleheart. He gave a delightful interview to his old roommate Jeff Garlin on By The Way, Garlin's podcast. He kept having Paul Rudd on to do this.

So now, the announcement that he'll be hosting Carson On TCM is timed just right for me. Granted, O'Brien's having gotten the job probably has as much to do with Turner/Time Warner corporate synergy as anything else (and if Johnny Carson himself could make his wishes known, his pick would probably be David Letterman anyway). Nevertheless, the network could have given the job to Alec Baldwin, a total TCM fanboy and perennial talk-show host suggestion. Or it could have given it to Jay Leno, the current host of the show that Carson On TCM was culled from. But what could have, under other circumstances, been an unremarkable, inexpensive repackaging of archival Johnny Carson movie star interviews is, through the installment of O'Brien as its host, kind of a fuck-you to Leno, and frankly, I'm fine with it.

If Leno had gotten the CoTCM job, he'd have to change his line of bullshit to say he never spends his Tonight Show money or his TCM money. While introducing clips, he'd have to talk about Carson's still-unparalleled legacy, and keep a straight face while doing so. He'd have to act like the notion of conducting an extraordinary interview is something that's important to him, when every night he proves the precise opposite. It would have been a shitshow.

But O'Brien will approach this project with the reverence it demands -- if anything, with too much reverence for a show that will début with a seven-year-old Drew Barrymore, who I'm going to guess didn't have much to say of any consequence. He'll manage not to make it about himself, because TCM is not the place for that. But when we watch it, we'll know that, under the surface, O'Brien is boiling with schadenfreude and drawing as much attention as possible to the line of succession from Carson to himself that this show is pretending doesn't include Jay Leno. And it'll be great.

Conan O'Brien: go take your place beside your idol. Jay Leno: eat shit.