O'Brien exits 'Tonight Show' with jokes and grace

[onehandle]

About his brief, seven-month tenure in the venerated 11:35 p.m. time slot, O'Brien joked that "like everything in life, the fun has to come to an end a decade too early. ... As I set off for exciting new career opportunities, I just want to make one thing clear to everyone listening out there: I will do nudity." (He also asked that, when the inevitable TV movie adaptation comes out about the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien/NBC showdown, Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton play the part of Coco.)

O'Brien is sure to be back in some way, even "if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-Eleven parking lot, we will find a way to make it fun. We really will," he said near the end of the broadcast.

snip...

So when it comes time to tell our children of the great late-night war of 2010, what will we tell them? Is there a takeaway lesson? Maybe it's this: Stay positive. In a longer and more heartfelt speech at the end of his show (before he joined Will Ferrell and others in a cheesy, jammin' rendition of Lynrd Skynrd's "Freebird") O'Brien cautioned against viewing his strange predicament as a story of resentment and cynicism:

"All I ask of you, especially young people ... is one thing. Please don't be cynical," O'Brien said. "I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you, amazing things will happen."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012200715.html

[msongs]

1. tell "our children" that OBrien's show lost audience share so they canned him nt

[onehandle]

3. ...because a talentless hack tanked the lead in for NBC's late night.

And NBC's useless suits panicked


Yeah, that's the dinosaur.

[LostInAnomie]

11. +1

Conan only had a couple of months to try to establish an almost entirely new audience for himself, and then NBC torpedoed him by giving him the shittiest lead in possible to save a few bucks.

[peacetalksforall]

2. Spoken like a good Irishman. Erin go bragh! May the wind be at your back, Conan. nt

[Jennicut]

4. I love Conan. Thanks alot Leno.

:(

[Subdivisions]

5. He has handled this whole thing just exactly the way he should have. And,

he has indeed shown great grace in the light of the corporate cronyism we've seen with NBC and Jay Leno. I've always been indifferent with Leno. Everybody watched Johnny and, even as a kid, I was no different. But since Carson left, I've only watched the tonight show a few times when someone was on I really wanted to hear from, be it a guest or musical appearance. But now I see Leno as an egotistical heel who is willing to steal another man's life away in order to return to a job he gave up. For a guy like Conan, hosting the Tonight Show is a dream that began back when I was still watching Johnny. He achieved that dream only to have it jerked from under him in a most cruel way. It may have been different if Conan's ratings justified it. But it was instead Leno's shitty ratings that Coco lost the gig, which is cruely unfair. Jay Leno should have just gotten into one of his classic cars and drove off to perform at a car show somewhere beyond the sunset of his TV career. Instead, he stole the legacy Conan could have enjoyed - a legacy Johnny Carson, and now even Leno, were not denied.

[Skip Intro]

6. Kudos to Co Co

[zonkers]

7. Conan O'Brien made me scratch my head a lot more often than he made me laugh. I

cringed at his shtick and am glad I will be seeing less of him. But.. don't get me wrong, he always seemed like a nice guy.

on edit -- as a host, I never liked the way he always dominated the conversation and always steered it toward his himslf -- often derailing a talking point to make an irrelevant joke. He never seemed consistently interested in guests. He often finished their sentences -- which i found rude.

[Zomby Woof]

8. They need spell check at the WaPo

Lynyrd Skynyrd. And Will Ferrell's parody of Ronnie Van Zant was hilarious (the pregnant girlfriend was obviously some kind of redneck spoofing, but anyone who knows about Ronnie knows he wasn't really a redneck, not like that - and his wife was no bimbo either). Too bad Will didn't go barefoot on stage the way Ronnie actually did, but the Neil Young "Tonight's The Night" t-shirt was a favorite of Ronnie's (he loved Neil Young), and when you consider Neil was the musical guest that night, it was a perfect coda to the show. All that and cowbell too!

I wish Conan well. He will bounce back, I am certain of it.

[dajoki]

9. If Conan O'Brien...

is Co Co, does that make his fans co co nuts?

[gauguin57]

10. Love Conan, and will miss him.

Loved what he said about cynicism, working hard and being kind.

Loved Neil Young singing, "Long May You Run" (and thanking Conan for "what you've done for new music.") Loved the jam session at the end with Will Ferrell (whom I often find annoying)... and Beck the Scientologist (sounds like a Conan character) showing up out of nowhere.

Love how people really think Conan spent millions on a bunch of fake bits for his last three shows (claiming to have bought a Ky. Derby winner just for the show ... throwing caviar on an "original Picasso" ... hee hee.) ... I saw people bitching about that on the NY Times comments ... "He could have spent that money on Haiti." Conan made it very clear those bits were fake. LOL.

[WinkyDink]

12. What PAP! "But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

Tell that to the good people of Haiti, or any other poverty-stricken hard-working and kind people.

[Sultana]

13. Get over yourself

[Selatius]

14. I stopped believing in that garbage propaganda a long time ago. George Bush taught me better.

You can fail and fail and fail and do hardly any work and still achieve great power and fortune. George W. Bush became president of the US of A. He knew the right people and was born into the right family. Lots of other people were harder working and more competent, yet quite a few of them never rose much beyond bare minimums as far as getting food and shelter goes. GWB was fine dining every night in the White House in contrast.