Conan O’Brien’s Forgotten Web Series Shows the Comedy Legend at His Raw, Hysterical Best (2024)

Over the weekend, in the wake of Conan O'Brien's internet-shattering Hot Ones appearance—in which he guzzled hot sauce directly out of the bottle and left the normally unflappable host Sean Evans stunned speechless for long stretches—the late-night legend was at the center of a well-deserved social media love-in. On X, fans eagerly posted dozens and dozens of O'Brien’s greatest hits: the Walker, Texas Ranger lever; the ever-psychotic WikiBear; the shootout sketch from his final days at NBC; and, of course, his decades-long Mac and Me bit with Paul Rudd.

But there was, in the opinion of this lifelong Conan obsessive, at least one major subset of his oeuvre that went un-resurfaced in all the hullabaloo: Scraps, a series of behind-the-scenes clips from O’Brien’s 11-year run on TBS.

As funny as Conan always was behind the desk, his real genius was unleashed anytime he was allowed to roam freely and riff extemporaneously. That energy is what made his classic remotes—like his visit to an old-timey baseball team on Long Island—so electric. It kept him afloat during the 2007 writers’ strike, when he filled entire segments just bopping around the office and annoying his staff. And he’s harnessed it to bravura effect in recent years on his hit podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and his new Max travel show Conan O’Brien Must Go, which premieres on Wednesday. But nowhere will you see that side of Conan more gleefully or nakedly expressed than on Scraps.

Here’s the prototypical Scraps clip: Conan and Andy Richter wasting time during rehearsal, shooting the sh*t about ’60s-era MLB fight songs, which eventually spirals into a deranged bit about calling up Elon Musk to have beef stew pour out of his exhaust pipe.

Or here’s Conan filling Andy in on his Thanksgiving break, which he spent “on Celebrity Island, just north of Nova Scotia“ with the starry likes of “Maude Adams, Diedrich Bader’s brother Hans, Justine Bateman, and Shaquille O’Neal’s lawyer.”

Sometimes Conan will offer a peek into his actual personal life, like this wee-hours text exchange he had with his neighbor Adam Sandler.

But mostly, he uses his rehearsal time to lovingly and relentlessly roast his writers for turning in undercooked material, like this sketch about building a glass dome over Dodger Stadium…

…or this canned Photoshop segment that drives Conan, between fits of tear-inducing laughter, to beg, “Please don’t make me do this bit…I have children.”

Conan’s long-suffering head writer, Matt O’Brien, becomes a recurring Scraps foil, getting chided for taking paternity leave…

…and falling victim to one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Taken as a whole—or, at least, when you binge a bunch of ‘em for hours on end, as I’ve done on countless occasions—Scraps starts to play a little like a real-life version of The Office, with Conan presiding over his staff like an absurdist, whip-smart, at-wits’-end David Brent. It’s an ode to life at work—to the long stretches of mindless tedium you wade through, even in a supposedly glamorous industry like television; to showing up every day and trying to put something half-decent out into the world.

More than anything, though, the clips offer a glimpse into the Conan you always hear about from other comedians, the guy who was so tirelessly riotous in the Simpsons and SNL writing rooms that Lorne Michaels saw fit to pluck him out of behind-the-camera obscurity to replace David Letterman in 1993. The 2011 documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, which followed him in the wake of losing The Tonight Show, also showcases Conan’s incessant need to get laughs from everyone he encounters—but the version of it you see on Scraps is sweeter and freer, less burdened by the network shenanigans that defined a pivotal moment in his career.

Much like his Hot Ones interview and his recent guest spot on Curb, Scraps is yet another reminder that Conan O’Brien remains one of the single funniest people on the face of the planet—and it feels damn good to finally have him back on TV.