Conan: Less Beard, More Writing
By fred | January 31, 2008
I haven’t followed every late night show since they came back on the air, but I will admit to watching a few of them, some more frequently than others. And to be completely honest, none of them had writers. I’m sure Ferguson is actually doing some great & funny shows, and every time I watched the show I liked it, but somehow I never became a regular viewers.
Among the late-night shows I’ve watched more than a few times are The A Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and of course Late Night with Conan O’Brien. And in the past I’ve already commented on how overall Conan managed to do a nice job at his writerless show. And then lately I tuned in, and I’ve was shocked to see a “new” Conan, a Conan like I used to see him months ago, a Conan with writers without his beard.
Yeah, what I almost wrote there was without his strike bread, because that’s actually what it was, as he himself admitted. And sure, Letterman did shave it off very early on, but guess what ? He’s got writers !
And in a way, Conan’s beard had become a sign, an undeniable sign that things were different. It was a sign of the strike, a sign that writers were missing, were missed, and that something was wrong. So I was really “shocked” and, yes, even disappointed to see him like that. My first reaction when I saw that what to think, “oh, things are back to normal here”.
Only they are not. Yes the DGA signed a deal with the AMPTP, and yes finally! both sides are now talking as the studios agreed to informal meetings with the writers, and there has been rumors of positive talks and things heading in the right direction, many people seem to think that the strike will be settle before the Oscars because, well, there’s way too much money at risk here for the studios to let another fiasco take place, much like what happened for the Golden Globes.
Still, right now there’s a strike going on, right now things are not back to normal, yet more and more I find that Conan’s show doesn’t have that feeling of “insecurity” of an “unprepared”, unscripted, live show. Whether it is his own war with Colbert, or the whole bit when he took control of things while his director had a sandwich, now quite a lot of things have a strong taste of written material.
Don’t tell me that when he’s doing a “monologue” about American Idol and as a nice clip prepared showing the Presidential candidates singing, that doesn’t fall right into the written material category. More and more it seems that signs of the ongoing strike, or even mention of it, are getting rarer every day.
Conan is not alone there. Colbert and Stewart have both showed signs of support to their writers, of course, but also seem to rely on written pieces more and more. In a recent Daily Show there was an interview, only it wasn’t an interview, it was a full-on sketch that was obviously written.
I’ve talked about this in the past already, I know, but to see Conan without his beard was like the last sign that although they still don’t have writers, they really don’t want people to notice it, to even know about it.
In fact, while I thought that, at first, Conan was the one handling the whole situation the best, I think over time it’s because obvious that the one who’s doing the better job of all has to be the one and only Stephen Colbert. I mean, when Conan and others are now not making any mention of things such as “strike” or “writers”, the guy is spreading rumors that his writers are murderers, only so they that can write their answer to such allegations, write them with humor and pauses for commercial breaks, he begs them to do so, promising that he will read them on the show, because he wants nothing more than to read his writers’ words on the show.
So who knows, he might be the “greatest American alive” after all!
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