I've been a Conan fan for a while now. Since like 2002, I enjoyed his humor and so did many others. The show was a perennial emmy threat, although Jon Stewart's show decimated it in a few recent years. Something I have always found puzzling. Anyway to the point, Conan's show was at it's peak up until 2005-2006 when I noticed the quality began to fall. The monologue was usually weak, the comedy segments were sometimes hit and miss, and the interviews were sometimes a bit to short. However the show was seemingly resurected during the 2008 writer's strike. Well guys like Leno, and Letterman seemingly struggled without their niche, Conan was on top of things, with a strike beard, doing weird stunts, creating a desk at the top of the stairs of his Late Night studio, etc....Not even Ferguson's level of spontaneity could compare to Conan.

However since Conan started the Tonight Show, I've noticed tat things aren't gelling that well, and the show at times seems to drag on a bit. Conan's a funny guy but he's completely taking away his frat-humor for more of, "I tell jokes that old folks like, and get guests young people like" type mantra. It's not him, and it shows. Since the show debut, I haven't seen the same Conan of Late Night during it's prime, instead I same him telling a few monologue jokes that just aren't funny. During Late Night, he would tell like a few jokes, usually Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith, George W Bush, etc but it was so limited that you really ignored this portion. Now in the Tonight Show he's telling one typical joke every night. You know where a Paris Hilton joke is going, and you can always tell where a Kirstie Alley joke is going. Come on it's almost obvious.

Not to mention with big name guests Conan tries to turn the conversation about him, like for example when Joaquin Phoenix went on Letterman, the segment was about the weirdness of Joaquin Phoenix, not about David Letterman. Conan on the otherhand seems to turn everything about him, like in a narcisstic level. It gets kind of irritating. Andy Richter isn't really working either, he tries to oversell the jokes and isn't as great Max Weinberg at the awkward deadpan humor of Conan.

I like Conan and his old spontaneity but the Tonight Show just doesn't fit in with his style of humor. When he was at his prime around 2003 and had to switch his contract he should have probably have gone to a different network, Fox or ABC or maybe even cable or something where he would be free to get away with the "Judd Apatow styled humor" we know inside him. Instead on the Tonight Show he's being kind of controlled to fit the "mold" of every tonight show host before him.

I watch him here and there, but it's beginning to become the same old schtick, Conan's show has become quite predictable and sometimes not funny, unlike Stephen Colbert's show which is almost always a riot to watch. I know there are a lot of Conatics (Conan Fanatics) who dig his show, no matter what he does. Heck Conan could do an entire show where he doesn't talk and people will say "This guy rules! He is always funny." However Conan needs to reinvent himself instead of the clean-faced comic making fun of himself, and become the bold, ballsy comedian we know that he can be.