Late Night with Conan O'Brien (12:35 a.m., weeknights, NBC) Late Night with Conan O'Brien Fifth Anniversary Special (10 p.m., Sept. 16, NBC) A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Whoopi's new "Hollywood Squares"; Roseanne invades Oprah's turf Y E S T E R D A Y Rounders Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek Some fine actors are dealt a bad hand (09/11/98) Courtney Love called me a retard By Lori Leibovich And other celebrity skinny from the press tent at MTV's Video Music Awards (09/11/98) Listen through this By Stephanie Zacharek Hole's defiant "Celebrity Skin" suggests Courtney Love's scars have calloused over (09/11/98) R E C E N T_. T E L E V I S I O N Women are from Venus, men are from Vegas By Joyce Millman ABC's girl-talk show "The View" and HBO's "Rat Pack" movie have more in common than you think (08/17/98) Queertoons By Joyce Millman Gay-positive messages and campy humor find a TV home in "South Park" and other animated upstarts (08/03/98) American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Fishers of men: Two offbeat TV talk shows reinvent the celebrity interview (06/29/98) Buffy By Joyce Millman Love bites: Buffy learns about life (06/08/98) When Garry met Larry By Joyce Millman "The Larry Sanders Show" signs off after six seasons, but creator Shandling and his alter ego remain inseparable (05/29/98) BROWSE THE TV ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES

[ J O Y C E_.M I L L M A N__O N_.T E L E V I S I O N ]__ WHAT'S A NICE BOY LIKE CONAN O'BRIEN ________DOING IN A PLACE LIKE LATE NIGHT TV? Daytime talk shows get all the attention for their (predictably) flamboyant displays of nuttiness. But if you're interested in truly intriguing head cases, then late night is the place to be. And it has been ever since volatile pre-Carson "Tonight Show" host Jack Paar threw his first tantrum on live TV. I mean, you'd have to be at least a little crazy to want to be a late-night talk-show host. Late night-hosting is like a triathlon of the most painfully difficult showbiz feats -- stand up comedy, celebrity interviewing, live theater -- performed for a studio audience of tourists and a home audience of insomniacs. Even a superbly conditioned athlete like Magic Johnson couldn't hack it in late night, where every show is the seventh game of the playoffs. Imagine being on TV night after night for years, and you're not playing a character, you're just you. And if you're not happy being you ... well, David Letterman has sure given us an eyeful lately acting out his midlife crisis in public. Not that it hasn't been fun; his Howard Stern-influenced annoyance gags, where Letterman wires up deli owner Rupert Jee with a hidden earpiece and orders him to pester innocent civilians, have gotten so pitiless of late, they're not for the faint of heart. And there was that poignant segment not long ago when Dave held Drew Barrymore's hand for a bit too long and said, in stunning seriousness, "You know how I feel about you," and it made you want to cry because suddenly you understood the effect that Drew's famous birthday boob-flashing had on this grumpy, self-loathing middle-aged man. My God! Could she really be the love of his life? As midnight psychodrama, Letterman's "Late Show" is without peer; not even Stern's embattled CBS Saturday late night show can touch it. However, "The Howard Stern Radio Show" (as the CBS mess is called) does reveal plenty of disturbing things about its viewers. The CBS show is basically the same videotaped Stern radio show that has been running for a couple of years on the cable network E! And like that show, Stern's CBS show is unwatchable. The Bible-thumpers who've been protesting the show are right -- Stern doesn't belong on TV, although not for the reasons they cite (strippers, lesbians, etc.). Stern on the radio, without pictures, is a giggle in the dark, a shared, furtive fetish. But when you watch Stern on TV, you see the women taking off their bras so Howard can critique their bodies. You see the guy down on all fours with a microphone up his ass as Stern counts the number of "audible expulsions" he can produce. You see the mentally retarded fellow playing the Dating Game. You see Howard on the receiving end of a lap dance. And then you see yourself, the viewer, reflected in the eager faces of Robin Quivers and the other members of Stern's studio crew as they crane their necks for a better view, like onlookers at a gang bang, and you are ashamed, deeply ashamed. This is voyeurism turned back on itself, and it's not pretty. Given all of this, you wonder how someone as seemingly sane as Conan O'Brien could have survived -- and thrived -- in late night. (Jay Leno sane? Mr. Love Me, Love Me, Love Me? The man obviously has big problems; unfortunately none of them are even remotely interesting.) But O'Brien, who was an unknown writer for "The Simpsons" when he was hired to fill Letterman's shoes, has made it to his fifth anniversary, despite the opening night pans of TV critics (not this one) who said the gawky neophyte would never last. (NBC is marking the event with a prime-time showcase -- O'Brien's first -- on Sept. 16.) Right now, O'Brien is sitting atop the best-written talk show in late night. The comedy skits are bright and loose. The musical guests are consistently ahead of the curve (Jewel, Sheryl Crow and Coolio all made their talk show debuts here, and oddballs like Ani DiFranco, Cornershop and Jonathan Richman are return guests). O'Brien's sidekick, buttoned down Andy Richter, has grown on me over the years; his clever second-banana persona is part pixilated Ed McMahon, part dense Fred Willard, without slipping into parody. And with his ever-improving interviewing skills -- he's not intimidated by anybody and seems genuinely interested in everybody -- O'Brien is proving to be Johnny Carson's heir in a way that testy Letterman and fawning Leno aren't. Carson skewed the world through a mischievous boy's perspective; he was the quiet kid who waited patiently for the lull in the action before moving in for the last word. And so is O'Brien. His face is all sharp angles, topped by a rooster's swoop of red hair; his freckled features suggest the altar boy next door -- if the altar boy next door was a holy terror. O'Brien has become expert at playing up the contrast between his self-described boring Irish-Catholic upbringing in suburban Boston and his brainy/absurdist/satirical comedy style honed during his stint at the Harvard Lampoon. O'Brien is self-deprecating and sly, winsome and sarcastic. He's the Teflon late night host; bits that would seem scummy on Stern's show -- the Gaseous Weiner (a flatulent guy in a hot dog costume), the Masturbating Bear, Robot on the Toilet -- seem merely silly on "Late Night"; the camera shifts back to O'Brien's mea culpa look of queasy contrition and all is forgiven. O'Brien's "Late Night" has never strayed far from Letterman's cheeky original vision. The show still has the feel of an inside joke between host and viewers; the attitude is, "How much damage can we do while the network is asleep?" O'Brien's writers try out ragged, hit-or-miss characters like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (the canine hand puppet equivalent of Don Rickles) and Destructo, the henpecked extraterrestrial; a wicked recurring feature demolishes the corporate lip service of NBC's "The More You Know" campaign, with O'Brien, Richter and bandleader Max Weinberg (yes, the E Street Band drummer) doing filmed bits advocating drinking, drugs, road rage and lying to small children. O'Brien didn't linger long in Letterman's shadow, though. Even in his raw early days, O'Brien's personality was warmer and more open than Letterman's. And he's more of a natural performer -- he'll sing, act, dance, whatever it takes to put a segment across (when O'Brien does one of his impromptu knee-knocking, hip swinging Elvis impersonations, the transformation from class clown to king of the hop is electrifying). So, what's a nice boy like O'Brien doing in a loony bin like late night? Don't be mistaken -- O'Brien's got his neuroses and little wrinkles of personality like the rest of them. It's just that his are so much more endearing. "Did you hear that the new trend for high school students is to go to their prom without a date?" he asked in a recent opening monologue. "Which once again proves that I'm a man ahead of my time." On "Late Night," O'Brien is forever putting himself down, casting himself as the unworldly dufus who strikes out with supermodels and has zero pull with the network bosses. For now, anyway, lacking Letterman's high profile, he can get away with it. In one taped bit, O'Brien goes back to the New York City hotel room he called home for the first three weeks of his show and plays the nostalgic rube getting misty-eyed over the "indelible memories" contained there: The TV is just where it was when he left, the room temperature was in the middle of the dial, just the way he used to like it. At the end of the piece, he's in bed, tears running down his face as he watches the adult movie channel. In twisted comic moments like that, the essence of O'Brien comes through. He may have that Harvard-smarty pedigree and his own TV show, but in his mind, O'Brien is still the unpopular geekboy next door. SALON | Sept. 14, 1998