Always End with Poopy-Head: Conan O'Brien's Kids' Night | MetaFilter
Last night, I listened to This American Life #80, Running After Antelope, which was mostly about whether and how human beings could hunt antelope without tools, by competing with them in a feat of endurance. However, what I want to mention here is the discussion at the end of the episode, with Andy Richter, regarding the August 8, 1997 episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, in which the entire audience for the show was eight-year-old kids.
The episode in five parts: one, two, three, four and five…
The show’s guests that night were comedian Dave Foley (talking about a trip to Africa), animal expert Clyde Peeling, and business journalist Myron Kandel. Throughout most of the episode’s traditional talk show content, it becomes apparent that the audience of children is increasingly bored. Among other tasks, the children were responsible throughout the episode for fighting the Boredom Monster, a Godzilla-like figure shown live on tape, by screaming and applauding at boring guests. As Richter recalls, the children eventually caught on and chanted “Boring, Boring!” in an attempt to bring the monster on stage.
People talk about kids being innocent, as in free from sin, but these kids were innocent, as in free from guile: they were straightforward about what they did or did not like about the show. On the This American Life episode, Ira Glass suggests that by having eight-year-olds as the audience, Late Night became a meta-critique of talk shows. I agree.
