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" There was only one important question, really. Not whether to click over from Dave to catch Conan&amp;#039;s debut, but whether Conan&amp;#039;s modern, Manattanish, nutjob self-deprecation would work in Hollywood. And so I risked waking up my roommate and turned up the volume last night when \u2014 after the over-produced cold open that left just one good laugh (albeit a promisingly weird one in a Victorian doll museum) \u2014 Conan O&amp;#039;Brien stopped blushing for the first time in his first Tonight Show monologue and asked it to himself: &amp;quot;Will your show be any different now that you&amp;#039;ve moved to Los Angeles?&amp;quot; The unlikely heir&amp;#039;s answer? Something in Spanish. A self-aware nod to his new home. The old Conan would just have said yes \u2014 it&amp;#039;ll get worse. Ba-dum-bum-ksssh, etc. Conan will certainly improve as the jitters wear off (even Jimmy Fallon has gotten less God-awful). But I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s reading too much into his first performance behind The Big Desk to say that he&amp;#039;s already begun to change languages on us. This married father of two wore not one but two tight black short-sleeved shirts to interview L.A. babes on the street. He filmed not one but two nearly dialogue-free segments, one that seemed more ad for Ford than pugnacious rejoinder to Hollywood for cracking on his beat-up old Taurus. He repeatedly asked Will Ferrell to stop calling Liza Minnelli a commie. Come on! In L.A., Liza may be a goddess, but she&amp;#039;s a natural punchline to the rest of the country Conan so heroically stampeded across in his opener. If only for a night, Conan became the anti-Letterman \u2014 long his innovative equal, if not officially his idol. That&amp;#039;s too bad. Because the Conan of Late Night combined the best of Letterman (shrewd, knowing, a bit mean) with the best of Leno (goofy, welcoming, prone to throwing his hardest punches at himself). That&amp;#039;s the Conan I want on The Tonight Show. And I expect I&amp;#039;ll get him soon. Until then, though, I&amp;#039;ll take my nightcap Dave-style: ice-cold, with a twist of New York...      RELATED LINKS: VIDEO: Five Conan O&amp;#039;Brien Skits We&amp;#039;ll Miss the Most  FROM THE ARCHIVES: Johnny Carson, the Man Who Retired "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5967/conan-obrien-tonight-show-060209/>