Clueless Gamer let Conan master his favorite game: Dunking on dorks
For a guy who doesn't like video games, Conan O'Brien had a lot of fun playing/mocking them on his TBS series
TV Features Conan
Conan O’Brien doesn’t like video games. We know this because he declares it, with a certain edge of perverse pride, at the start of nearly every installment of his long-running Conan segment Clueless Gamer. Which might raise the question of why the recurring bit, in which O’Brien, producer Aaron Bleyaert, and a rotating band of celebrity guests play haplessly through the hottest video games of the day, has recurred more than 40 times over the course of the soon-to-conclude TBS series. The answer is easy to land on for anyone who’s spent much time with Conan, though: Few people make having a bad time look more fun than modern-era Conan O’Brien.
Take it, maybe, as an evolution of the straight-man persona that saw O’Brien spend years feeding set-up lines to a menagerie of masturbating bears, angry little sisters, and racist ghosts on Late Night, a comic exasperation that only got more exasperated during the swift rise and fall (and final, Pyrrhic rise) of his run on NBC’s Tonight Show. Somewhere along the line, O’Brien got a lot more comfortable channeling his apparently limitless reserves of annoyance into comedy, whether in the form of the many pieces built around his irritations/interactions with employee (and ostensible friend) Jordan Schlansky, or in his confrontations with the medium of video gaming as a whole.
Every segment of Clueless Gamer starts off roughly the same way: O’Brien introduces the game—usually culled from brand new titles proffered up by publishers operating on a probable “no such thing as bad publicity” mindset—with apparent enthusiasm, an illusion that persists until roughly the first time Bleyaert opens his mouth to begin talking about backstory or character creation or some other unfortunate distraction. O’Brien’s bored, mildly hateful looks toward camera begin early and often, followed by a little light verbal sniping, typically abetted by the celebrity guest. (Bill Hader, for instance, fell into the role of gleeful co-bully with abandon in the installment set around 2018 GOTY God Of War.)
From there, we soon get O’Brien at his most joyfully withering, firing his TV-honed wit at anything and everything in range, from the writing, to the ludicrous violence on display, to—in what’s probably the funniest Clueless Gamer moment ever—his deep amusement at Kumail Nanjiani’s extremely Kumail Nanjiani-sounding voice in 2017’s Middle-earth: Shadow Of War. (“What was that?! O’Brien yells, as happy as audiences have ever seen him. “Did you do that over the phone?!”) If O’Brien’s playing up his annoyance or frustrations with whatever poor digital avatar has been thrust into his hands at the moment, he’s a genius for making it clear that both his ire, and his amusement, are coming from a genuine place.
The fascinating thing about Clueless Gamer, which started with a one-off NFL/Mortal Kombat segment way back in 2013 and quickly became an arrow in the TBS show’s quiver, is that Conan O’Brien is actually a pretty good video game reviewer, when he feels like it. Sure, O’Brien (or, at least, the character he’s playing for these bits) has the attention span of a lemming when he’s got a controller in his hand, and a near-pathological need to bed any attractive female character that shows up on the screen. (God bless whoever set Conan up for success by putting its host into proximity with The Witcher 3's infamous “tub Geralt” and “stuffed unicorn” scenes.) But his profound disinterest in having his time wasted means that O’Brien has a laser focus on when games are engaging in padding or bad editing, to the point that the final installment of the segment—in which he and J.B. Smoove roast seven kinds of shit out of THQ Nordic’s Biomutant for its deeply irritating narrator and repetitive gameplay—serves as a genuinely trenchant analysis of the game’s flaws. At the same time, those moments when O’Brien gets legitimately swept up in the excitement, often after button-mashing his way through a fighting game victory over, say, poor Ron Funches, are genuinely infectious bursts of joy.
The core appeal of the bit is a little simpler, though: O’Brien is a funny man who usually only gets funnier when he’s got a worthy target in his sights. Sometimes that target is often just Bleyaert—who accepts every insult about his fashion sense, his social life, and his rambling monologues with awkward good cheer—but most especially it’s gaming itself. Video games are a however-many-billion-dollars-per-year industry these days, but they’re also still relentlessly goofy, full of assumptions and requirements that are frankly ludicrous to anyone who’s coming to them without a childhood filled with the appropriate indoctrination to grease the wheels. (It’s not for nothing that O’Brien was one of the first to mock Call Of Duty’s famously dumb “Press ___ To Pay Respects” prompt.) That’s to say nothing of O’Brien’s appeal as a stand-in for god knows how many people who’ve had a controller thrust into their hands by a well-meaning friend or partner over the years, expecting them, like Bleyaert, to maneuver through a Grand Theft Auto or its ilk without a moment’s training or hesitation. That’s the true draw of Clueless Gamer, maybe: Conan O’Brien might suck at playing video games, but he wrecks shop when it comes to mocking their nigh-infinite flaws.
28 Comments
One of the funniest parts of this segment is that for all his nerd bashing, Conan’s the one constantly perving on animated videogame women.
Are you implying that the nerds aren’t?
No, he’s pushing a “what a hypocrite” argument. I assume for laughs and not really calling out O’Brien.
The Tomb Raider one is perfection. Watching Lara die again and again is pure comedy gold.
‘Pyrrhic rise’
its ok to google stuff before using it in a sentence. nobody has to know
lol. I’ve also never seen such a short article that was so horny for parentheses.
‘Pyrrhic rise’ Whats wrong with it? I don’t follow Conan, but a ‘Pyrrhic rise’, after a rise and fall (as stated in the article) would be like a pyrrhic victory. A rise with no real benefit. I don’t know if Conan’s latest rise in popularity is actually pyrrhic, but I get the meaning of the sentence.
Not sure how that doesnt fit… They were talking about his extremely brief run on NBC’s Tonight Show – which was his dream job. It may not fit perfectly (since the victory was short-lived – and really the cost of the victory was the eventual loss of said job), but it makes sense.
Not sure what the issue is, Google shows the exact combination has been used before. “A rise that came at great cost” is both the intuitive read and its apparent intent in existing use. Was that not how you read it?
I love clueless gamer! And I am a total nerd and hardcore gamer. I find that gamer culture in general takes it self WAYYY to seriously. So I can watch him making fun of God of War, and bashing this or that. And you know what? It’s still funny even if I love that game, because I know he is doing a bit. and also a lot of what he says is pretty true. We gamers get used to certain things just kind of being “the way it’s done” in terms of character design and the weird language games use etc.. It’s refreshing for to see someone point out like, yea this stuff is kinda ridiculous. It also helps that he is just a pretty funny guy.
The good Clueless Gamers hit the same sweet spot for me as a great MST3K short. My favorite still has to be Hader/God of War.
It was hilarious seeing them both morph into middle school school bullies.
That one is the one I’ve watched BY FAR the most. Hader was absolutely in the zone in that one; it’s the only time I thought the guest actually overshadowed Conan with his jokes.
If not the best overall segment, then the funniest single moment for me was when they played a Lara Croft game, and react with horror when she is impaled through the throat while riding the rapids.Close second: Conan plays several scary games, and mocks Slenderman something fierce, asking “Is this game European?” before wondering if, when caught by the Slenderman, he will steal his chestnuts.
The rapids moment was by far the best thing in Clueless Gamer history. I was really surprised it didn’t make this article.
Oh man, this has to be my favorite segment in Conan’s shows. Seeing him playing badly and ribbing at tropes and gameplay quirks never cease to be entertaining as hell.Even so, it kind of sad that he never got his full due with his Tonight Show in which NBC chucked him away in favor of Jay Leno who refused to retire (to be fair, he’s also funny as hell.) I went along with him to TBS in early 2010 and he was everything I wanted to be: goofily funny with sincere and earned thoughtfulness. But for all of his great comedy, it didn’t translate well during the crazily frustrating period of 2016-2020. I switched over to Colbert for his biting satire of everything humans during that time. I can get why Conan didn’t want to do any of that as he want to do his own brand of comedy, but it didn’t works for me anymore. At least, that’s my impressions.I still wish Conan all the best, hope he can find further successes in whatever endeavor he takes because his goofy humor is great and enjoyable.
“Your wife has died.”“Oh, hilarious.”
My favorite is still Final Fantasy XV, with Elijah Wood, where Conan basically choke slams his poor producer against a wall when he reveals that a boss battle will take about 72 real time hours to finish. Then, he finds out that all the game devos have been watching his review on a live stream, so goes out and yells at them, calling them all “mass murderers of time.”
I never realized that Wood was that short, and that Conan was that tall until they’re both peering out the door and Conan looks like a giant, towering over Wood. Such a weird thing to see, and I know the camera angle played into it a bit, but it added to the hilarity of the entire situation.
Fun Fact: No special effects were required for Wood to be a hobbit in LOTR.
yes, this. came for this. a million stars, this.
ELIJAH: “Wait, they read about a dress?! C’mon guys, let’s go check out the dress!”
The original clip with Marshawn Lynch and Gronk is hard to beat (seriously Marshawn is hilarious), but for my favorite I have to go with Conan and Terry Crews playing Battlefield.CONAN: This is why I wanted you on here; you’re such a positive guy.
TERRY: We’re all going to die, Conan.
The Marshawn and Gronk segment has got to be one of the funniest talk show moments of all time. It never fails to put me in stitches.
“Lick the gun.”
“Lick the gun.”
“Lick the gun.”
Conan O’Brien doesn’t like video games. We know this because he declares
it, with a certain edge of perverse pride, at the start of nearly every
installment of his long-running Conan segment Clueless GamerRemember that he was the author of the 1993 “Homer Goes to College” Simpsons episode in which a reference was made to the classic Berserk video game (“Intruder Alert! The Humanoid Must Not Escape!”), so I doth think he protests too much.
The installment where he’s playing a WWE game, custom made himself as a wrestler, and was beating up the Rock through random button mashing had me laughing so hard I was crying the first time.
Ron Funches is always funny and lovable, but I don’t think I have ever enjoyed him more than when he was explaining Dragonball Z to Conan, “That’s Goku, he’s a great fighter and a terrible father…”