I feel a tad foolish today. Imagine my surprise last night when, after looking forward all day to Conan O'Brien's "Show Zero," I nestled up to my laptop at 11 p.m. only to find out that the "show" turned out to be just under five minutes in length -- barely longer than the videos of O'Brien answering Facebook questions. Sigh. Regardless of the brevity, though, did we learn anything about O'Brien's actual show, Conan, debuting next week? A little bit, actually.
Conan O'Brien's "Show Zero" was, for all intents and purposes, a miniature version of what we should all expect next week. Though, what we should expect shouldn't be too surprising: An Andy Richter intro, a monologue, a guest -- in this case, a brief appearance by The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons -- a musical performance, commercials and some credits. (Lots of credits.) So, yeah, it appears that Conan is not going to completely re-imagine the standard talk show format, which was probably already a given, but still.
Unfortunately, Conan hosted "Show Zero" from a conference room, so we didn't even get a chance to look at his new set. Which was fairly short-sighted on his part. Honestly, I can't believe I set aside my night to watch this. I fell for this tomfoolery! I feel like I was the only one not in on this joke. Well, Conan, you win. Now I have to have my guard up and assume that your actual show is a joke of some kind as well. Or maybe just a big Diet Coke commercial. Fool me once!
Anyway, if you missed it, here's Conan's "Show Zero" in its entirety.