ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Snark fueled the arrows directed at his former bosses from NBC, and the show was retribution for his continued obligations to the network that kicked him to the curb. But O’Brien revisited the not-too-distant days of the self-deprecating host who ruled late night. In doing so, he orchestrated the world’s most extravagant love letter to his loyal devotees.
The show opened with a video parody of O’Brien’s foray into ‘rock-bottom,’ set to the depressing twang of Eric Carmen’s classic, “All By Myself.” O’Brien wallows on his linoleum floor, masked in a ginger-fied Robinson Crusoe gruff, while staring into the vacuous nothing that showed his imminent future. It isn’t until his daughter approaches him and says, “Daddy, you smell like pee,” that the TV star gains the momentum to shed his disarray and get back to work.
Of course, none of this is to be taken the least bit seriously, especially considering the host’s recent landing of a new gig on TBS that will take the current time slot of fellow comedian George Lopez’s “Lopez Tonight.”
Despite this recent good fortune, the evening lingered on the bitter taste not completely washed away by O’Brien’s new deal. Many jokes and jabs were made at the expense of NBC, whose brash decision of shifting O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” into a later time-slot launched a late night war that has seeped into nearly every inch of popular media, even surfacing as a plot point on NBC’s “30 Rock.”
Conan fans that came to see a cataclysmic type of send-off given the Universal landscape where his “Tonight Show” used to call home were forced to savor these comments as the only fuel to their vindictive fire. At the start of the show, O’Brien’s monologue revealed that he would only be making mild wisecracks at NBC’s expense because its “lawyers were listening.”
The title of the show, “The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour 2010,” is a reference to the lawfully binding contract that NBC holds over O’Brien, forbidding him to appear on the internet, radio or television until September.
The theme of the evening was unmistakable, and no scene transpired on stage without a gentle ribbing at O’Brien’s former network. In a slightly heartbreaking and hilarious turn, O’Brien admitted that one of his late night mascots was legally owned by his former bosses, and so he put his ingenuity to work and transformed the Masturbating Bear into the reconfigured Self-Pleasuring Panda.
The night soon shifted into a showcase of regulars and old pals of O’Brien’s late night universe.
Highlights include the embracing of the inflatable bat from Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell Tour,” Andy Richter’s high-spirited monologue “What I’ve Learned ...” set to an Old West horseshoe-clanking soundtrack, various taped segments featuring the beloved Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and a costumed O’Brien as a nameless TV exec who was part-Jeff Zucker, part-delirious Bond villain – let’s just say a monocle and various fake white cats were involved.
The strong ovation that resounded through the Gibson Amphitheater is the kind of psychological retribution O’Brien has been craving since his termination from his former televised home. It is also something that will be carried into this new TBS chapter in his life.
“This is the first time people have actually paid to see me,” O’Brien admitted with a heart-touching tonality.
Despite the show’s title, the event emerged as not a simple payback to the exec’s that “done him wrong,” but more of a thank you to those who got it right.
Contact this reporter: julia.prescott@thepantheronline.com
