Conan’s Smartly Stupid Max Travel Show

“Conan O’Brien Must Go”

Conaco/Max

Max‘s Conan O’Brien must go is a travel show with a twist.

“My mission is that you don’t know anything about the country,” O’Brien explained on a recent spectacular episode of the Hot web series, an appearance that I am convinced has done more to enhance the visibility of Conan O’Brien must go than the tens of dollars of marketing Warner Bros. definitely put in the series. “My job is that you know less about the country after I finish than when I started.”

While O’Brien’s performance continues Hot – especially after he claimed he had never met a species until his 50s – may have surprised some observers, few of the late night veteran’s devotees will be surprised that his assessment of Conan O’Brien must go it is false. Or at least it’s a disingenuous haircut. Conan O’Brien must go It’s not the kind of travel series that leaves viewers with “knowledge,” per se. But over four episodes, knowledge inevitably creeps in.

Conan O’Brien must go it’s a smartly dumb show – or a smartly dumb show – focused (loosely) on the travel essentials. It’s a series about arriving in a new place open to meeting new people, learning new languages, tasting new foods and experiencing new uncomfortable circumstances… and then making fun of them, when all the time you’re making fun of yourself and the fears that people have. to get out of their comfort zones.

Or maybe it’s just a show on Conan O’Brien making fun of travel shows. However expansive or limited your perspective, and however expansive or limited Conan O’Brien’s perspective, Conan O’Brien must go is a very silly and occasionally enlightening series that still finds its rhythms and its comedic voice by the end of the fourth episode. That leaves the show’s biggest takeaway as “Wait, is that it? I want more.”

Although O’Brien has done travel-centric material in the past — I’d argue that international trips were the highlight of his TBS show — Conan O’Brien must go it’s more of an extension of his podcast Conan O’Brien needs a fan.

Conan O’Brien must go find the host who heads abroad to meet and provide assistance to listeners/viewers/fans from around the world. That gives the impression of something more structured than what actually happens.

Yes, Conan goes to Thailand to help a young woman deal with her overbearing mother, tries to get radio play for a Finnish fan hip-hop band, submits to portraits by an artist in Argentina, and meets three pakistani Irish Brethren in Dublin. But these activities are more claims than premises.

The visits—considered “surprise visits” in some cases—really set a tone more than anything else, something along the lines of “playfully combative” in a vein that will be familiar to podcast listeners. O’Brien likes to dish out chops and admires people who are ready to fight back. One of the things that O’Brien is best at never seems to be punching down – which is not easy on a literal level, given that O’Brien towers over his guests, but it is not easy on any level since O.” Brien will always be a generally famous television personality, educated at Harvard and his new friends tend not to be. It takes an amazing calibration to go to a foreign country, find someone for whom English is not the first language, and prevents the joke from ever being as easy as, “Ah, ah, I’ve been making fun of you and you don’t understand.” Of course, this could be a trick of humor at times, but Conan he is careful to situate himself and his own discomfort as the true target of the joke.

When O’Brien wants someone to laugh at mercilessly, that’s where someone like longtime collaborator Jordan Schlansky steps in. Schlansky plays a key role in the Argentina episode, taking on the much more traditional role of the traveling host who has done his research and knows a little bit of trivia about just about everything, so Conan takes him on. merciless to do their jobs. Even then, the joke tends to be that Schlansky is right and Conan just doesn’t care.

Or as O’Brien says: “Every time I visit a new country, I like to learn the local customs, so I can ignore them.”

O’Brien is an appreciator of the genre, and Conan O’Brien must go is an appreciative tweaker of the genre, in some ways that the host used to handle the talk-show format when he was a Young Turk. The Finland episode is dominated by Conan and company’s overreliance on drone shots, until O’Brien runs around with the drone in Oslo, where flying such craft is apparently illegal . There are many occasions – the street food scene in Bangkok and a butcher shop in Dublin – where O’Brien makes sure to taste “extreme” foods, acknowledging that this is what traveling hosts do. I’ve seen more tour hosts than I can count navigating Thailand’s floating markets, but I’ve never seen a host wearing a squealing rubber chicken and an Angry Birds hat, clutching a carved dildo.

And then sometimes Conan just wants to be REALLY goofy! He performs a song in a popular Thai variety show, tries tango and Muay Thai boxing, and goes on a quest for Bono in a public park in Dublin. It’s a game for anything, as long as it can look ridiculous. Not everything works, exactly, but you can always hear O’Brien and his writers scanlessly scanning the horizon for the next fun thing to do on their journey.

One thing they don’t understand how to do, or understand if they want to do it, is to be completely honest. The episode in Ireland is framed in the idea that this is an opportunity for O’Brien to trace his roots on Max’s dime, but every time the proceedings get too close to real emotion, he beats a retreat rushing into the absurd. All episodes conclude with obligatory, humorless summaries of their experiences – again, a nod to the show’s convention of traveling in the midst of free invasion – and knowing Conan’s work, it’s easy to feel that he could , if he chose, keep 95 percent of the avid-of-pleasure madness and even weave in some authentic feelings.

Or maybe it’s just not something Conan O’Brien must go aspire to. In that same Hot segment, O’Brien described his goal, again disingenuously, as making viewers dumber after each 40-minute episode than they were when they started. He will have to settle for “more entertaining”. Bring on the second season.