Other than being noticeably shorter, there’s little to say about the latest version of the “Conan” show on TBS, two nights into its return from a three-month reinvention hiatus.
So where’s the reinvention? Judging from Tuesday and Wednesday’s shows, it looks like tidying expert Marie Kondo blew through for a heavy dose of the less-is-more treatment. It’s a wobbly excuse for a fresh start, and so far, “Conan” makes the case that less is truly less.
The show — which exuberantly emigrated to an 11 p.m. ET slot on TBS in late 2010 after host Conan O’Brien’s bizarre experience with NBC as the ill-fated host-apparent of “The Tonight Show” — is now a 30-minute sprint instead of the leisurely, low-pressure hour it had become over the past eight years. The house band is gone. The ubiquitous talk-show desk arrangement has vanished; interviews are now conducted around a cocktail table or in a semicircle of high chairs, on a much smaller set that strongly resembles a members-only airline lounge squirreled away in Terminal F.
Everything about “Conan” now attempts to be more intimate in scope and size. The host, who used to wear tailored suits like the rest of his late-night brethren, bounded out on Tuesday’s premiere in a closefitting denim jacket, tight pants, a gray dress shirt and a skinny necktie — a casual but slightly awkward makeover that visually referenced both Lyle Lovett and Mr. Green Jeans. In this lithe silhouette, the 6-foot-4-inch O’Brien loomed right above his smaller studio audience (close enough to touch) while he delivered an underwhelming mini-monologue.
There’s almost no time for O’Brien and his loyal life partner, Andy Richter, to do anything of length or depth. Tuesday’s episode featured a dinner sketch with a cameo from “This Is Us” star Milo Ventimiglia, and concluded with an uncharacteristically jangled interview with actor Tom Hanks.
Wednesday night’s interview segment, with five of the stars of another NBC series, “The Good Place,” proved even more unwieldy — too many people trying to say anything funny in the scant time allowed. That’s a pity, because even an infrequent “Conan” viewer knows that O’Brien can be a wickedly funny interviewer of celebrities, often better at it than any of his current competitors. But not when he’s rushed.
The good news is that the amiably self-deprecating, wryly peevish, can’t-do spirit of “Conan” appears to have survived the makeover intact. But it feels as if neither O’Brien nor Richter have their hearts entirely in the endeavor — and who can blame them? Most of their jokes Tuesday were about their reduced circumstances, a playful grousing that continued on Wednesday’s show, which featured a half-funny segment in which O’Brien takes Jordan Schlansky, one of his longtime producers, to the Olive Garden for lunch. (To fully get the joke, one would have had to have already seen clips from O’Brien and Schlansky’s eating tour of Italy.)
In one way or another, the 55-year-old O’Brien has hosted the same kind of talk show in the same kind of format since he first took over David Letterman’s “Late Night” slot on NBC in 1993; he’s now the de-facto Yoda of the late-night array. There’s something about that fact that makes him both a remarkable survivor and a deeply vulnerable candidate for obsolescence. The ratings for “Conan” have slowly declined since his bitter departure from NBC and triumphant landing at TBS — from a million viewers a night in 2011 to a small but stalwart average of a few hundred thousand, at last count. (The ratings for Tuesday’s “Conan” premiere were strong; some 685,000 viewers tuned in to see the new format, more than double the show’s usual ratings.)
When O’Brien and company announced last year that “Conan” would shift to a half-hour time slot and go on hiatus to think about what a late-night show should look like in 2019, viewers assumed the result would be something far more original that what we saw Tuesday and Wednesday. The old-school format works fine if you’re at the top of the pack (where CBS’ Stephen Colbert currently sits). Away from the fumes of success, it’s tempting to try a total makeover. The last person who seemed to make any real progress in flipping the script was Craig Ferguson, the former host of CBS’ “Late Late Show.” Why, after all, must our late-night shows look the same as they have for decades?
There had been optimistic talk that the old-but-new “Conan” would feature more stand-up comedians, more prerecorded segments and stuff that works in easily shared viral-video chunks online. That still sounds like a plan, and it’s worth mentioning that O’Brien has worked through shaky starts and bad reviews before, eventually finding his way.
Until then, this “Conan” is clinging to what remains of the usual ways. Truncated like this, it’s a show that feels over as soon as it starts.
