Our 2nd Favorite Take on Conan's Debut

'When Conan O’Brien takes the Tonight Show stage this month, he will be only the fifth host of the NBC staple. But for the clownish six-feet-four redhead, the move from Late Night means more than trading coasts. O’Brien’s Ivy League-meets-lowbrow humor—fueled by years in the Simpsons writers’ room and a hefty dose of self-deprecation—is a drastic switch from that of Leno and Carson (you’d never catch Carnac the Magnificent doing the “String Dance”). How will a foulmouthed pup or a masturbating bear fly in the late-night time slot? Well, a younger generation loyal to O’Brien has been choosing South Park over Leno for a decade. Now you don’t need cable for a good poop joke before midnight.'
--from L.A. Magazine. But we liked the Washington Post's resident grumpy aesthete Tom Shales's viewpoint even a tad better. "By now "The Tonight Show" is like the White House; it belongs not to its occupant of the moment but to the American people. So it was not encouraging to see Conan O'Brien devoting the entire first half of his first "Tonight Show" on Monday to himself," he wrote the morning after the debut.