The return of Coco

So after a 9 month exile, Conan O'Brien finally made his long-awaited return to television with his new late night show, Conan, on TBS and the results were less than what I had hoped for. It seemed like Conan's vacation didn't do a whole lot to produce change. A lot of the problems that I saw with his version of the Tonight Show, still seem there in this new incarnation. I really hope Conan is not trying to be stubborn and prove that that show would work had NBC given him a chance. While I believe NBC gave Conan a raw deal, his show was not perfect and a far cry from his original Late Night, where he gained his reputation as being one of the funniest late night talk show hosts out there. One of his biggest mistake in my opinion was to stay in Los Angeles. The caliber of crowd out there is terrible and the quality of guests is subpar. New York, on the other hand, had a great energy that fed well off of Conan's humor and he had a great cadre of celebrities, both big names and local favorites who would make for entertaining chat sessions. It also didn't hurt having the SNL crew nearby to feed into the comedic energy his original 12:30 show had. Everything thus far feels pre-fabricated and over-produced. Gone is the level of absurdity that made his original show great.

Now it's certainly too early to write Conan off. It may take some time to get back into the swing of things. I certainly feel the NBC jokes will thankfully subside after a while. And it still remains to be seen how much of his old characters and bits he'll be allowed to reuse on this new show. Still, I can't shake the sense that Conan has been so blinded by NBC's ineptitude that he can't properly evaluate the quality of his own show. I certainly hope I'm wrong, because when Conan's on, he can be great. But if things don't improve, I may have to settle for watching old YouTube clips of classic starring contests, If They Mated and visits from friends like PimpBot and Triumph. Grade: B-