The Oscars Reminded Us Why Conan O’Brien Should Be on TV Every Day

O’Brien was an unexpected but inspired choice. Normally when ABC goes with a talk show host for this gig they stay in-house and call on Jimmy Kimmel, who has hosted it four times since 2017, including the last two shows in a row. When Kimmel hasn’t done the duty in the last decade, ABC has been just as likely to have no host than somebody else; since Chris Rock hosted in 2016, the only installment that had a host that wasn’t Kimmel was 2022’s weird ceremony, where they went with the tag team of Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. Three straight Oscars passed without an official host, and only one of those—the last of the three, in 2021—was because of Covid. 

Conan O’Brien has no connection to the network that airs the Oscars. He’s not really an actor, with only a handful of movie roles on his IMDB page, almost all of them playing himself. He hasn’t had a network TV show in over 15 years, and he hasn’t had a talk show on TV at all since 2021. His primary gig at this point is a podcast—although Warner Bros. did drop four episodes of his travel show Conan O’Brien Must Go on Max last year, with more in the pipeline. After having The Tonight Show yanked out from underneath him in 2010, he settled into a cult career with a great but little-watched talk show on basic cable station TBS for 11 years. When the mainstream media made a lot of noise about late night’s reconfiguring in 2014 and 2015, with Fallon and Colbert and Kimmel all taking 11:30, Seth Meyers and James Carden ensconced at 12:30, and Trevor Noah succeeding Jon Steart at The Daily Show—basically, the last gasp of late night TV’s mainstream relevance—O’Brien and his show Conan were an afterthought. As great as O’Brien is, and as much as his fans continue to love him, he seems like a guy the business side of showbiz kind of wants to forget. So him hosting the Academy Awards was a legit surprise, even if everything about his history and his skillset made it clear that he would do an excellent job at this.

Starting with the risky but hilarious choice of crawling out of Demi Moore’s back, Substance-style, before having to dive back into the actress to retrieve a lost shoe, O’Brien did exactly what you’d expect him to: make silly, absurd fun of Hollywood and “The Movies” without being mean or smug about it. He mocked showbiz without the self-satisfied cruelty of a Ricky Gervais or the dismissive shrug of David Letterman (not a slight to Dave here; every possible slight to fuckin’ Gervais), turned an appeal for the theater experience into a clever and funny bit, reminded us of his longstanding love of ridiculous costumes by having the Dune sandworm play “Chopsticks” on a piano, and even got one legitimately good political jab in without even having to say Trump’s name (yes, it was the Anora “standing up to a powerful Russian” line). (And somehow none of this is up on the official Oscars YouTube channel yet.) Conan did what Conan has always done: be his goofy, entertaining, self-effacing self. If last night’s performance doesn’t get him a return invite, we’ll have to wonder if the Academy wants the Oscars telecast to fail. 

There’s a serious dearth of good TV hosts in America today—the kind of person who can lead and improve pretty much any kind of show. Today’s late night crop is barren when it comes to that type of talent. Fallon’s an embarrassment, Letterman devotee Kimmel is a little too prickly, Meyers is too arch and political, and Colbert is too earnest and desperate to please. Outside of late night, DeGeneres somehow became one of the most unlikable people in the biz overnight, Kelly Clarkson is too folksy, and Drew Barrymore too… well, Drew Barrymore. And very few other women, and almost nobody of color, have ever even gotten an opportunity to prove themselves at that level. It could have been so easy for the Oscars to just give up and toss the job to the ultimate in bland, inoffensive, soulless professionalism—the ever-present Ryan Seacrest—but to the Academy’s credit they still insist on actual talent with at least some amount of starpower. Thankfully they remembered Conan has a deep well of both.

Last night Conan O’Brien reaffirmed what has been obvious since he finally got the hang of being on air after his first couple of seasons of Late Night on NBC: he’s a born TV host. He’s a guy who should always be hosting something on television, on as big of a platform as TV can still offer. The fact that TV has barely wanted anything to do with him for so long is an embarrassment. Hopefully his bang-up job at the Oscars will remind the suits running TV that Conan makes everything better.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.