Ginger, NO!
February 20th, 2009Sixteen years. Fuck.
I remember when it first started. I heard that Letterman was moving to CBS and that his show was going to be taken over by some stranger named Conan. It was that year, 1993, that I got a television for my birthday. I had been a Letterman fan since I was two (at least, I had been indoctrinated to be one at that early age). But one show struck me from the beginning. And now, Late Night with Conan O’Brien will air its final show on Friday. I’m still in disbelief.
Sixteen years! How many times have I watched a guy in a bear suit furiously rub his diaper-enclosed genitalia? How many staring contests have I witnessed? How many times have I been pleasantly surprised to see Abe Vigoda yet again? And now it’ll all come to an end.
I know what you’re thinking: “but Darrell, he’s taking over The Tonight Show, the crown jewel of talk shows!” First of all, Leno’s kinda clouded the luster of that jewel. Second of all, it won’t be the same. An hour earlier means the average viewer’s age is higher, which means fewer masturbating animals, fewer vomiting Muppets, fewer sex-addled Lincolns. Conan is getting a better job and a higher profile, but there’s little doubt in my mind that his brilliance will suffer for it.
The best, most absurd talk show of my lifetime will die the evening of February 20, 2009, and it needs its due reverence. After all, it probably shaped my sense of humor more than any other television program. South Park has its place, as do The Simpsons, The Kids in the Hall, and early ’90s standup comedy. But Conan’s still probably in the top spot. So in accordance with Conan’s recent decision to show old clips, allow me to haphazardly wander down memory lane.
I was happy to see Cleo Clemmons’s Inappropriate Response Channel on the best-of satellite TV bit. I was also hoping for Jar Barf and Stackenblochen, but you can’t get everything.
Quick aside: it seems that everyone I know, at some point, has seen the Clive Clemmons Inappropriate Response Channel on Conan at some point in his life. It was such a random bit to stick with me, so I was dumbfounded when I found that pretty much every dormmate of mine at the UofA had seen it at least once. And this was before YouTube.
One bit I loved that wasn’t repeated often enough: New Stamps. My favorite remains the series of Bert (the Muppet) reacting to the news of Dean Martin’s death. (I wish I could find a link to that one.) Recently, New Stamps has been sacrificed in favor of State Quarters, which is just lazy comedy that makes fun of states. Fuck the standard Arkansas-incest jokes — I’m convinced that a whole show could be made of the more ridiculous New Stamps and Patterns bits.
This paragraph break is dedicated to the memory of Carl “Oldy” Olson. Doff your caps.
Aw, remember the Law and Ordies? It was an awards show devoted entirely to the fifteen different incarnations of Law & Order. There were a lot of categories, like “best title card” or “best one-liner”. The big joke was that the only member of any cast to appear was SVU’s Christopher Meloni, but the other versions of Law & Order kept winning the prize. When SVU finally won for Best Cast Intro (or something like that), Christopher Meloni played it like he won an Oscar. Brilliant.
A seminal moment in my childhood was when Conan’s cast of characters reenacted the 1997 MLB All-Star Game. I can’t find any record of this, but I can promise you a few things: Dr. Ruth played Mike Piazza, who struck out multiple times that game. She swung and missed a baseball on a fishing pole. Then, Tomorry the Ostrich, playing Sandy Alomar, hit the game-winning homerun with its neck. The bit concluded with the “traditional” bench-clearing brawl, which at the time was the funniest thing a 13-year-old Darrell had ever seen.
I was glad to see the Walker, Texas Ranger Lever on Thursday’s show, but was disappointed that they showed only one clip. Just the “Haley Joel Osment has AIDS” one? Really? You gotta build up to that one. Besides, it doesn’t beat the flaming enemy kicked out of a third-story window into a pile of barrels marked “flammable”. Not even close.
And what about the contributing writers? Brian Stack was great as the traveling salesman, the Interrupter, Frankenstein, and the smooth 1940s radio crooner. That guy sang a racist limerick as well as anyone. How about Jon Glaser as “Pubes”, the guy who could ruin any conversation just by saying his name? He also played Bob Seeger singing the warm-up songs to Super Bowl XL (the best being “Against the Seahawks”). Let us not forget the inimitable Brian McCann as the FedEx Pope, Preparation H Raymond, “Where’s my kayak?”, and (my favorite) Mick Ferguson, the guy who’s awfully proud of his bulletproof legs. (To those unfamiliar: the bit always ends with Mick getting shot in the heart.)
Too much good stuff, and it’s all going away forever. I’ll miss you, Late Night. One of the biggest shames of all is that the show is being handed over to Jimmy fucking Fallon while a more capable Carson Daly languishes at 12:30 AM. (You can read my surprisingly heartfelt defense of Carson Daly another time. Suffice it to say that Daly’s a thoughtful, prepared interviewer who has actual talk-show experience and a better attitude and TV persona than Fallon will ever have.)
Sigh.
If you’re not doing anything tonight, come over to my house Friday at 11:30 to see television history. The show that got me through adolescence is coming to an end; you’ll laugh at the old bits, you’ll smile to see Andy Richter again, and you might just see me cry.
-Darrell