Conan O'Brien Is 50

“Conan O’Brien. Remember him? Carrot-topped fellow with a persecution complex? Since his crucifixion by Judas Leno and NBC, his self-assisted martyrdom, and his resurrection performed by TBS, the decline in O’Brien’s quality has been quietly shocking. For all the anger and energy and fan fervor on display in the 2011 concert documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, the O’Brien brand no longer has much fizz, and certainly no buzz. You won’t hear his name on any list to replace Leno or Letterman now. Somewhat overrated in his heyday and yet underrated now (O’Brien and his truly invaluable sidekick, Andy Richter, continue to engage in exquisitely silly dialogue nightly), O’Brien simply hasn’t aged well. Conan is actually more like Cavett than any other earlier host model: sidelined, marginalized Ivy League boys (Cavett, Yale; Conan, Harvard) bitter around the edges, too clever for their own good (ratings- and humorwise) yet not as clever as they think everyone thinks they are. Also, they’ve aged in a similar manner, which is to say that rather than put on mastodon weight (Leno) or go silver skeletal (Letterman), their faces seem to have shriveled and shrunken, as though impaled by a voodoo god of talk shows.”
 — Okay, but the man wrote one of the greatest episodes in television history. So there’s that.