I’ve always been a Conan O’Brien fan, but I don’t watch the show much since he moved to the wilderness–I mean, “plum channel” that is TBS. I’m no snob when it comes to basic cable—AMC’s “Better Call Saul” gets better every week and FX just might be the best network on TV right now—but Conan is literally the only thing I would watch on TBS, home of moldy sitcom reruns and even moldier new sitcoms complete with laugh track.
All of which is another way of saying that I don’t see many promos for his show and I stumbled on his trip to Cuba episode nearly by accident but I’m glad I did. For those that don’t know, Conan is the first American talk show host to film a show there in nearly 50 years and even though the jokes were pretty good (Conan at a cigar factory, Conan learning salsa, Conan drinking rum out of a glorified juice box) it was the episode’s information that really stood out. I know “information” isn’t really the vibe Conan is going for—with Jimmy Fallon over there doing stupid human tricks every night, Conan now looks like an elder statesman of late night—but this episode felt closer to Anthony Bourdain’s excellent “No Reservations” travelogue and was all the better for it. [Which is ironic since this episode’s best crack came at the expense of CNN as Conan slyly “reported” on a dog’s barking.]
I’d like to see Conan be our “Inside Man” (yep, shameless plug for CNN’s other good show, the Morgan Spurlock series) to more isolated-but-exotic locales. I’d recommend North Korea but Kim Jong Un might be a little paranoid about American talk show hosts after seeing “The Interview.” Grade for Episode: A-