"Late Night with Conan O'Brien:" The Review
So long...for now.
Hey, kids, why wait for tomorrow's paper when you can get Uncle Verne's review of Friday's finale right now!
In a word, the show was boffo...
[Oh man, a smart and well informed reader has just told me that Conan will actually originate "TS" from Universal City; I guess I knew that but I just can't bring myself to say "Beautiful Downtown Universal City." So, I'll just leave this the way it is. Thanks anyway, Rick.]
"Warm, funny, gracious, emotional and even muted, "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" ended a very good and very long run Friday night. Next stop for the host: Beautiful Downtown Burbank.
As far as fans were concerned, the finale was all they could have hoped for while audience members even left with a memento - chunks of the set which was demolished by the host himself. As there have been all week, clips of classic bits were shown, including one described by O'Brien as his personal favorite - a day of old-time baseball at Old Bethpage Village. Special guests stopped by - they always do at these sorts of things - including Will Ferrell reprising a certain former commander-in-chief; longtime sidekick Andy Richter, who observed, "I TOLD you that you would never last without me;" and the White Stripes singing their old hit, "We’re Going to Be Friends."
You don’t get much more muted than that. David Letterman's last musical guest on "Late Night" was Bruce Springsteen.
Especially gratifying to fans, however, was this promise: "We're going on to this next gig and sometimes people have said, 'it's time [for me] to grow up, and I assure you, that's just not going to happen. This is who I am for better or worse."
What was best, however, about this finale was just how clearly it demonstrated to fans - and a few million doubting Thomases still out there as well - why a relative nobody and former TV scribe with about as much on-air experience as YOU was picked so long ago to replace a legend.
The whole last week of "special" shows also demonstrated how the once-implausible had somehow morphed into the once-unthinkable: On June 1, O'Brien becomes host of the most famous franchise on all of television. How in heaven's name did something like THIS happen? Simply put, he's a nice guy who just happens to be immensely talented and funny. The latter is a given in this job, but the former is not necessarily. On Friday O'Brien offered a long and gracious post-script to the many staffers, band members, on-air support, NBC execs - even his brother Neil - who made "Late Night" such a success over sixteen seasons. Such valedictories are common-place in TV farewells, but not ones that stretch for eight minutes and which thank everyone - up to and including the parents - for Making All This Possible.
Conan even teared up when thanking the brilliant if somewhat imperious TV legend Lorne Michaels for choosing him to replace Letterman, and it seems almost redundant to point out that few have ever choked up when thanking Lorne.
But Friday's finale served primarily a reminder, and a bittersweet one at that. New York television has just lost a unique and indelible talent. Let's hope Burbank appreciates the new guy as much as we did."
(Pix: AP)