Really? Making jokes about losing his job and evil television executives completely destroyed Conan’s message to live without cynicism. Because the old Conan, the one that may apparently be gone for good, made a good deal of these jokes every night up until the end of his Tonight Show. Cutting away to “NBC executives” and then showing a slack jawed yokel, “getting back” at NBC by wasting all their money on caviar smeared Picassos, all that was fine but a cackling Conan in a bald cap is completely cynical? Doesn’t work.

It might not be funny for you, ok. But it’s well tread material. It’s not a different Conan. This is self deprecating Conan. Coming out on stage, singing a bluesy song about how he grew up in a mansion eating sushi in the 70′s when no one ate sushi in the 70′s, and then playing the angry, almost bratty “everyone has their own show but me!” role is part of the fun.

Maybe it seems like he should be moving on, and that’s ok too. But the show I went to (Ohio) was, for the most part, not about him losing his show. The intro, the monologue, I Will Survive were more or less the only parts focused on it. Hopefully by the time the TBS show comes on it will be out of his system. This is his first public forum to complain, so a bit of that is fine. Either way, a comedian playing the pitiful part for the sake of laughs doesn’t make it a pity party. Those last shows, when he was already mocking NBC, he would take his nightly break to say he was fine, and would be fine, and that people should donate to Haiti.