Is it any surprise that Conan O’Brien is the best at doing Hot Ones? Not the best at eating hot wings, mind you; just the best at being on the show. He spent the season finale squirreling away chicken bones in his pocket, checking in with his “affordable” personal doctor Dr. Arroyo (whom he brought along to monitor his temperature). And despite admittedly not experiencing much spice in his very Irish Catholic upbringing, he spent much of the episode bragging about how well he was handling the heat, to the point of drinking some of the sauce straight out of the bottle.
He also had interesting things to say about being a longtime talk show host, extending his compliments to Hot Ones host Sean Evans for his technique (while also roasting him about welling up while “meeting your idol”). Asked about the chitchat with guests during commercials, he revealed, “In the old days back in the days when I was doing it and it was just a couple of us, oftentimes it wasn’t much chat. If you were talking to a Letterman he wouldn’t say too much. The other guy”—Jay Leno, presumably—“I don’t know where he was. But I always tried to make something happen. I tried to keep the rhythm going. And sometimes if I couldn’t get them interested, I’d try to say something provocative like ‘I bet you live 4 years tops’ and you can see them get a bit rattled.” O’Brien claims he actually used that line on Bea Arthur “and I was right. …I said ‘Four years tops.’ and it was three years, 11 months.”
The worst thing a talk show guest could do is “tell the audience it’s not going well,” O’Brien shared. “I‘ve seen it happen many times. It’s an amateur move because the host can do a lot to let people think it’s going great, even if it’s not. There are many things the host can do, the host can be enjoying, the host can act a little bit, the host can do things. Audiences want to see a good show, they want to see a good interview. And I was always amazed when someone would come out and they’d be doing okay, and they’d make a couple jokes, and it’s fine. And then they would just go [sigh], and they would look right out to camera and they would say, ‘This just isn’t going very well is it?’ And you could feel—I would look out at the audience, maybe 200 people sitting there, and I would see 200 souls leave 200 bodies and float up to the ceiling, because they were just told they were not getting a good show. That’s not show business. Show business is, you’re getting the greatest show in the world.”
Of course, O’Brien’s hubris caught up to him by the end of the episode, as guzzling hot sauce turned out to be a grave mistake. Covered in hot sauce, milk dripping down his chin, the revered comedian encouraged aspiring comics to “read widely and read well” and not lock in to comedy from the last ten years. “There’s funny everywhere. Don’t be a snob. Look high and look low,” he preached. “There’s no reason for us to try to exclude one category over another. These aren’t the rantings of someone who’s had some bad chemicals, and overdid it to be funny and relevant to people who are at least 50 years younger than him. This is a guy who’s just being on a show, and it’s legitimate!”