Even in separate locations, Conan and Sona manage to have a hilarious time at the dick races

Listeners to Conan O’Brien’s enormously popular, thunder-stealing podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend have clued into the fact that Conan’s got a great new sidekick. Not that comedy life partner Andy Richter is going anywhere (except his own, very entertaining podcast Three Questions With Andy Richter), but Conan’s self-aggrandizing schtick always works best with an unimpressed underling to return volley. And Conan’s long-suffering, perpetually unimpressed Conan assistant Sona Movsesian has proven to be her boss’ match, much to listeners’ delight. So much so that viewers have been increasingly getting in on the action, as Movsesian has joined the long line of O’Brien staffers who’ve perhaps reluctantly graduated to on-air talent as foil to the host’s knowingly dickish big shot antics.

Speaking of dicks, Conan—as is everyone, stuck at home—still managed to get under Movsesian’s skin via the never-more-necessary medium of the video call on Wednesday’s show. With the newly married Sona breathing deep in preparation for her boss’ virtual home invasion, the unlikely comedy team fell right back into their podcast rhythms, with Movsesian answering Conan’s initial questions about whether she misses coming into the office just a little to quickly for Conan’s ego. From there, it was a Conan-and-Sona mess-around, as Conan called in the Conan HR guy (suspiciously resembling Conan with a hairbrush mustache) to adjudicate whether Conan’s caught-on-camera habit of slapping cookies out of his assistant’s hands constitutes workplace harassment. Sona took her inevitable loss with her signature aplomb, even acceding to her employer’s desperate wish for a parting virtual cookie-slapping.

Further catching up, Conan asked how Sona and her new husband were weathering the relationship-trying bliss of responsible pandemic curve-flattening, which led to an all-time Conan O’Brien reaction take (insert trademark symbol), once Sona brought in the four-legged evidence that, yes, her husband did home-cut their dog’s hair way, way too short. Post-production might be stuck at home, too, but the Conan team brought some comedy gold simply by inserting a slo-mo replay of just how Conan’s face turned even whiter once he saw the unfortunate pooch. (You knew Conan was gonna go big, but the shot of his actual horrified reaction to the poor little guy looked like someone just opened the Ark of the Covenant.) And, speaking of post-production value, here’s to the brave heroes of the Conan staff who turned an offhand riff about Conan being “back to the races” of being a dick into an animated graphic about, well, you should probably just experience it for yourself. Is the existence of this cartoon visualization of the pair’s comedy dynamic incontrovertible evidence that they (and the similarly stir-crazy Conan team) have gone around the bend? Eh, just sit back and enjoy the dick races.