Recalling Conan O’Brien’s Halloween shopping nightmare

Halloween is fast approaching and to help you find that perfect costume, let’s revisit Conan O’Brien’s trip to a Hollywood costume shop.

Halloween is one of those holidays that can really go in two directions. It can be terrifying when it focuses on what we fear. Plenty of movies exist that explore that idea. Halloween can make us confront those fears or allow us to lean into them for the thrills.

On the other hand, Halloween can be hilarious. There also are plenty of comedy-horror movies that come out this time of year. The fact that the entire holiday is built around dressing up and getting candy so absurd that it is only natural that comedy can come from Halloween.

This combination is perfect for someone like Conan O’Brien. The absurd and the uncomfortable are where he makes his best comedy. O’Brien is at his best when he is able to do this during his remote pieces rather than from behind the desk of Conan. For proof let’s look back to 2012:

There is a lot here in just six mintues and you can only imagine what got edited out. It is incredible how consistently funny O’Brien is with basically no help. He’s playing off objects and only barely has to pull comedy from other people. But let’s not dwell too long on what that mother and son were looking for in the back of the shop.

Conan does a tremendous job of higlighting the popular knockoff costume industry. These are found in every single store during Halloween and are almost always hilarious.

And since this is from 2012, we get a nice little reminder of all that Tonight Show drama that unfolded two years prior. You can tell that the wounds are still fresh. First, Conan makes a quick joke at the expense of Jay Leno. Then with the whole “ex-talk show host” label on the mask it’s almost like a therapy session come back to life for O’Brien.

We can expect to see more of O’Brien in his element when Conan returns from hiatus in 2019. The show will have a revamped format that will allow for more remote pieces like this one. In the meantime, you can check out Conan’s comedy tour and podcast.