14 DAY TRIAL // After being more or less unceremoniously kicked off from The Tonight Show and replaced by Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien went into hiding. He wasn’t planning on staying out of sight for too long though and, in March, he announced The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour. Initial reviews, after the first date, say the show is certainly a winner, showing the former television star in his best, unhindered form, as both Rolling Stone and People magazine can confirm.
The show sees the same staff O’Brien had on NBC come together again for a unique blend of live bits and pre-taped sequences, which are more than enough to allow the funnyman to move on to his next skit. Though he never mentioned by name the network that double-crossed him, Coco constantly referred to NBC, but in a way that allowed him to stick to that fine line between comedy and simply using the stage as a venue to vent his own frustration.
“With no couch or desk in sight, Conan lorded over the proceedings from the front of the stage, flanked by longtime sidekick Andy Richter and backed by the very band that spent 17 years with him on TV – without leader Max Weinberg. […] The vibe was much more Late Night than Tonight Show, with Conan strolling on stage looking like a paler, redheaded Barry Gibb, complete with full beard, no tie, and the top two buttons undone on his shirt. The content of the show occasionally strayed to places he’s never gone on TV, with a smattering of profanities tossed in to give the show an edgier feel,” Rolling Stone writes in a review of the first live show.
“On the very day he announced the launch of his upcoming new TV show on Fox – oops, make that TBS – the famously deposed Tonight show host kicked off his 32-city North American live comedy tour at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts before an appreciative crowd of more than 2,500 people. As described by New York’s WNBC News on Tuesday morning, The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on TV presentation found O’Brien delivering ‘gentle’ jibes toward his onetime bosses at NBC,” People agrees.
Earlier reports had it that, while a project very close to his heart, the idea of the tour did not occur to Conan when thinking about maximizing his profit. Quite on the contrary, actually, for he reportedly came up with it when discussing with his staff about how they got fired from NBC and many of them got no sort of compensation for having their contracts annulled before they ended.