No one does self-deprecation like Conan O’Brien. His inexhaustible capacity for cracking jokes at his own expense is what made him so delightful to watch in the messy early years of NBC’s Late Night With Conan O’Brien, when the show’s low ratings were his favorite running joke and an excuse to air some of the weirdest talk-show gags ever. And it’s why he proved to be such an appealing host of Sunday’s 97th Academy Awards. Whenever O’Brien was onstage, balancing impish humor with a palpable love for movies and compassion for an industry where so many recently lost so much to the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles, the ceremony felt light and loose. A host who doesn’t take himself too seriously gives every guest permission to relax and have fun.
The Oscars were a broadcast television homecoming of sorts for O’Brien, who hosted Late Night from 1993 through 2009, when Jay Leno kept a five-year-old promise to retire and give him The Tonight Show. But early viewership numbers were weak. As rumors of Leno’s return swirled, O’Brien fans united in a viral “I’m With Coco” campaign. Instead of giving the host time to grow into his new timeslot, as he had done with Late Night, NBC negotiated with the O’Brien camp for his departure. Leno did indeed un-retire, ultimately handing the show to its current host, Jimmy Fallon, in 2014. And although Conan’s $32 million exit deal came with the caveat that he had to stay off the air for six months, he found ways to make his bitterness known.
O’Brien re-emerged quickly, with a series of stand-up dates he dubbed “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,” which also yielded the documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop. Before the end of 2010, TBS had hired him for a new late-night show, Conan, which ran through 2021. For the past six years, he’s also hosted a hit podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. And last spring saw the release of an acclaimed Max travel series, Conan O’Brien Must Go. He’s had a more interesting and varied career since leaving NBC than he probably would’ve had if he’d kept his post at the desk where Johnny Carson once held court. Yet for those of us who have always found Coco’s underdog persona endearing, there was still a sense of old wrongs righted in seeing him back on a Big 5 network, however briefly, emceeing what he called in his opening monologue “Hollywood’s biggest night that starts at four in the afternoon.”
Conan O’Brien speaks to Adam Sandler during the opening monologue.Patrick T. Fallon—AFP/Getty Images
It was a solid monologue, memorable less for individual jokes than for the good-natured ease with which O’Brien delivered them. Every Best Picture nominee got its backhanded compliment. While shots at The Brutalist’s length and Wicked’s premise felt obvious, the Conclave one-liner was a winner: “Its logline is: A movie about the Catholic Church, but don’t worry.” O’Brien also effectively defused some tension by acknowledging the presence of scandal-stricken Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofia Gascón (“If you’re gonna tweet about the Oscars, remember: My name is Jimmy Kimmel”). And when the gentle roasting was over, he elegantly navigated a transition into an earnest message of support for members of the Hollywood community affected by the fires. “In moments such as this, any awards show can seem self-indulgent and superfluous,” O’Brien said. “The Oscars also shines a light on an incredible community of people you will never see.”
Too many skits, gags, and staged interactions with celebrities typically drag down awards ceremonies; this is among the most common complaints about the Oscars. But zany bits are Conan’s forte, and he nailed just about all of them. He closed the monologue by picking an amusing fight with a mock-indignant Adam Sandler over his casual attire, then wasted precisely the right amount of time with a production number promising not to waste time. An extremely late-night-style parody ad for “CinemaStreams,” a product that fuses hundreds of smartphone screens to make what sounds suspiciously like a movie theater, would’ve been funny even without the very on-brand Martin Scorsese cameo. (“His cut of that commercial was six hours long—and very violent,” O’Brien cracked.) Instead of just bringing LA firefighters onstage for solemn applause, as other awards shows this year have done, he gave them slightly edgy jokes to read (“Our hearts go out to all of those who have lost their homes—and I’m talking about the producers of Joker 2”), because who could possibly get angry at heroes? The evening’s safe-for-prime-time answer to Late Night’s immortal Masturbating Bear was a sandworm from Dune that played “Chopsticks” on the piano and then returned, a couple hours later, for a harp solo.
Still, the best moments of this hosting gig were just Conan being Conan, letting the winners enjoy their spotlight and laughing at himself to make everyone else feel comfortable. It didn’t matter when a joke bombed, because he was quick to make a funnier one about that failure (“Not gettin’ paid a lot!”). And when things got awkward, he broke into a goofy jig—a familiar quirk from his late-night heyday—that implied he was just a simple clown, making a fool of himself for our entertainment. Well, it takes a heck of a clown to make a four-hour ceremony feel like anything but a slog. “If you’re still enjoying the show, you have something called Stockholm syndrome,” O’Brien joked, deep into the evening. Maybe so. Or maybe it was just good hosting.
