All the turmoil and all those Twitter frenzies... for that?

Given a chance to reinvent himself on basic cable, Conan O'Brien offered up a standard-issue late-night show on Monday's 'Conan' debut.

He kept his post-'Tonight Show' beard, and he has a fancy new (and very blue) set. But despite the nervous energy of the host, much of 'Conan' felt very predictable. There was little of the surreal, weird or goofy humor that so endeared Conan to his loyal audience.

Let's face it, there are a lot of people out there who can interview nervous starlets. Conan O'Brien doesn't need to be one of them.

Perhaps Conan and his team just need some time to work out the kinks, and Conan certainly needs to lay off all caffeine products for the foreseeable future. Every show needs its shakedown cruise, and once Conan finds a rhythm for his TBS show, perhaps the silly, anarchic, improvisational Conan will emerge. Let's hope so.

What's deflating, though, is realizing that this is not his first time around the block. He's done this sort of thing before. Before the paint was dry on the set, why not just toss out or cut back on the elements of the late-night format that didn't necessarily work for him? Why slavishly recreate a set of rules that previous sets of talk-show hosts perfected?

Why, given the chance for reinvention, do the same damn thing again?



Maybe TBS executives were nervous about taking on another late-night show, and demanded something conventional from Coco. Maybe Conan himself was just so obsessed for so long about grabbing the 'Tonight Show' brass ring that he can't quite give up the dream of doing that kind of mainstream, recognizable show. But who thinks that a lower-budget 'Tonight Show' is what the Twitterati were hoping for? Surely we all were hoping for something more creative than that.

Of course, nobody thinks Conan should be out there doing a full hour of his weirdest bits, especially not on his first night on a new network. but it was disappointing that everything about 'Conan' was pretty predictable. Conan, didn't you read this list of Dos and Don'ts? Why didn't you tap into your weird side, just a little?

Well, at least we got the Masturbating Bear -- that's something. Let us all hope and pray that NBC files suit over the use of the bear (whose name, it should be noted, was never uttered by either Conan or co-host Andy Richter). Those legal papers might be more surreally amusing than anything that transpired on Conan's show on Monday.

Sure, there were some good bits in there. It wasn't that Conan put on a bad or unprofessional show, just a very conventional one. (In any event, he needs to lose the jokes about making "much less" at TBS and he really needs to stop taking potshots about losing his old job. The statute of limitations has officially expired on Conan-vs- NBC jokes.)

Still, Conan's interview with Don Draper was terrific, and the footage of him as a birthday party clown, trying out some monologue material in front of a bunch of kids, was funny. Richter's crack about the inside of the Conan mask smelling "like tears" was inspired. The new set is nice, though could they turn down the blue ocean just a few notches? And that moon. That moon is very, very large. It scares me a little.

The least successful part of the evening was Conan's old weak spot -- the interviews with actors. Seth Rogen seemed game enough, but with both Rogen and 'Glee' star Lea Michele, Conan appeared to be trying to set some kind of speed record for interviewing celebrities. There were too many manic interjections, too much nervous velocity. Conan, Red Bull is not your friend.

Ah well, tomorrow night Conan plays host to Tom Hanks, a.k.a. Old Reliable, the gold standard for talk-show guests. Hanks knows how to riff with Conan, as he demonstrated near the end of Conan's 'Tonight Show' run.

Remember how loose and funny Conan was during his final weeks at 'The Tonight Show'? With nothing left to lose, Conan relaxed and just hung out and had fun. Clearly Conan wants to please his TBS masters, hence the excess of energy on display Monday night. But he needs to dial it down, and or he risks losing some of the good will he gained during his months of Twitter exile.

Now that Conan has convinced America that he's going to do a conventional talk show, perhaps he can begin to subvert that model. There's a lot of creativity lurking in that bearded noggin. Now's the time to start deploying it for real.


Follow @MoRyan on Twitter.