GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT, ALREADY!
By Tom Shales

Chevy Chase has done the honorable thing. Now Conan O'Brien should follow him off the cliff. Let "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" become the late "Night," and the host resume his previous identity, Conan O'Blivion.

Hey, you, Conan O'Brien! Get the heck off TV.

On Sunday, Fox announced that after six weeks of torturous flailing, "The Chevy Chase Show" is kaput. It vanished from sight over the weekend, vapor unto vapor. The program was a disaster on opening night and never got much better, although the writing, and Chase's delivery of the nightly "news update" spoof, did improve.

But on poor old NBC, O'Brien remains moored and mired in his post-midnight "Late Night" slot, vacated in June by network expatriate, now CBS superstar, David Letterman. And it's just not fair that O'Brien hangs on whilst Chase folds. O'Brien's show is slicker and better produced than Chase's was, but O'Brien still has no business hosting it.

And while Chase's show became eerily fascinating to watch once the specter of Totally Lost Cause took over -- which happened by about the middle of the second week, or maybe by the middle of the second show -- O'Brien's show just lies there, as lifeless and messy as a road kill.

O'Brien has barely improved at all since his debut Sept. 13. He is still jittery, jiggly, giggly and wobbly, unable to conduct a conversation with a guest and not very adept at delivering the prepared comedy material that peppers the program, some of which is not half bad.

A recent show on which Steve Allen was a guest found O'Brien in particularly bad form, or maybe just his usual bad form. On this night Allen was in bad form too. He apparently now insists on being billed as not only the first host of "The Tonight Show" but also as the "creator" of the program, which happens to be a bit of a fib.

Although Allen hosted a local late-night show out of New York in 1953, the real creator of "Tonight" was Sylvester L. "Pat" Weaver, the NBC programming genius who also gave the world the "Today" show (and also helped give the world Sigourney Weaver, but that's another story). Not long ago, Weaver was asked how "Tonight" came to be. He said the point of the whole thing was getting big stars to appear on TV cheap -- for union scale.

On this mundane premise has a vast empire been erected.

Allen smilingly accepted credit for inventing late-night television (in his later years, Mel Blanc fell under the delusion that he had created Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the other cartoon characters whose voices he supplied) and grandly declared that O'Brien is "doing it the right way," whereas "some other folks ... are not doing it the right way."

Which other folks? O'Brien didn't have the o'brains to ask Allen for names. Maybe he was just trying to be gracious.

After Allen told O'Brien that he started in late-night TV in 1953, O'Brien said, "And now here it is 30 years later." He was only 10 years off. Then he proceeded to bemoan the fact that late-night talk shows have proliferated: "It's become this monster. Everyone has a talk show now."

Oh, look who's talking. Mr. Living Proof himself.

Having a TV talk show is still a privilege and not a right, and O'Brien does not deserve the privilege. He is a very smart, clever comedy writer, well liked in the industry, author of last week's funny "Simpsons" episode, but out of his league and in over his head with this hosting business. He's out of his head if he thinks the show is working.

O'Brien's questioning of Allen was in his typical succinct and hard-hitting style: "But, uhh, no, but you, um, uhh, many people don't realize, or I don't know if they realize, some of them may realize, that you invented a lot of the techniques that are used."

Instead of dismissing accolades laid at his feet, Allen, who now seems to view himself as the Dalai Lama of comedy, sat there soaking them up, clearly finding no hyperbole excessive when applied to him.

During the same show, O'Brien's nitwit sidekick Andy Richter made a snide reference to daytime talkster Regis Philbin, charging him with being severely unhip. It was irksome to hear Philbin, who is so utterly at home in front of a TV camera, being ridiculed by this pair of fumbling klutzes.

The two best words of advice that could probably be given O'Brien are these: Watch Regis. Letterman, among others, has marveled at Philbin's ability to make entertainment out of nothing, to bound onto the air day after day always personable and amusing. Of course, Philbin's partner, Kathie Lee Gifford, makes a valuable contribution, but it is easier imagining him without her than her without him.

NBC executives should cancel O'Brien now. Instead of mounting a similar talk show as a replacement, another case of sending in the clone, they should give the hour to Bob Costas for a longer version of his comparatively thoughtful "Later" program or revive the simple civilized format used by Tom Snyder on the old "Tomorrow" show (and on Snyder's current, compelling CNBC show): a host, a guest and good talk about real things, some of which actually matter.

We don't need another band, we don't need another sidekick, we don't need another monologue and, Lord, we don't need another Conan.

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