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Maureen Ryan – The Watcher: A Chicago Tribune Web log – March 12, 2006 No doubt many of you are still talking about the big TV event of the weekend. I'm talking, of course, about Conan O'Brien's trip to Finland. On Friday's edition of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," the talk-show host finally broadcast footage of his recent visit to the frosty Baltic nation, which he's been talking up ever since someone pointed out how much he resembles the country's female president, Tarja Halonen. The one-hour broadcast showing the highlights of O'Brien's trip to Finland was nothing short of hilarious. Personally, I've found it a little hard to warm to O'Brien: He always seemed like a guy doing a studied riff on classic talk shows, rather than just a guy trying to entertain with a talk show. Though undeniably funny at times, he's often been a little too supercilious for my taste. And let's face it, his celebrity interviews still can be really stilted and awkward. But the Finland special reinforced the idea that O'Brien is at his best -- and comes across the true heir to David Letterman -- when he leaves the studied riffs and celebrity stuff behind and acts as a wandering, self-deprecating host and improv comedian. O'Brien's visit to a traditional sauna left me in stitches (he found much humor in the idea of naked Finnish men finishing their sauna sessions with a hearty helping of sausage), as did his interview by two Finnish boys who didn't speak a word of English. "Do you have to be a funny-looking old man to get a talk show in America?" they asked through a translator. After a relentless grilling from the two boys, O'Brien pretended to crack: "Your show has all the charm of the Nuremberg trials," O'Brien muttered in reply one of their questions. His visit to a Finnish fan who'd written to him recalled the glorious, goofiest years of "Late Night with David Letterman." (Longtime Letterman fans might recall a similar stunt from long ago in which Letterman visited an unsuspecting fan who'd written to him.) O'Brien hung out in the girl's sloppy, student-y room, drank a soda and spent a while on the phone trying to smooth out a riff between the girl and one of her friends. He then staged a reconciliation between the girls -- a meeting that he revealed as fake within seconds of it happening. The final few minutes of the show depicted O'Brien's visit with President Halonen; if it was a bit anti-climactic, it didn't matter. Everything that aired prior to that meeting was good, old-fashioned, late-night comedy gold. It'll be interesting to see what happens in three years, when O'Brien is set to take over "The Tonight Show" from Jay Leno. O'Brien's really most comfortable in Letterman mode -- being a noodge, riffing off people's discomfort, mining awkward situations for comedy and viewing everything from a very dry, sarcastic point of view. What on earth will O'Brien do with "The Tonight Show," which Leno has turned into a sometimes repellent bastion of aggressively populist, even obnoxiously lowbrow, humor? Yikes. Though NBC sees O'Brien as its leading late-night hope (or appears to, anyway), it would make more sense for him to take over Letterman's "Late Show" slot on CBS. If O'Brien inherited Letterman's show, the NBC host probably wouldn't have to defang himself -- much. In any case, in the short term, there are three conclusions to be drawn from O'Brien's Finland special:
2. The Finns like their umlauts. Really, there ought to be a limit: No word should have more than two umlauts, but as on-screen translations during Conan's interview by the two boys revealed, words with three umlauts are not uncommon. Really, Finns, show some restraint! 3. NBC should put the entire Finland episode of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on iTunes (iTunes currently has a few downloads from O'Brien's show available, but as of Sunday, the Finland show wasn't among them). It's worth paying $2 for, really. |