Although the troubling slump in ratings for Conan had many questioning the stability of Conan O’Brien’s relationship with TBS, TBS remains firm that whatever, whatever, y’all don’t know nothin’, that’s their man, and in fact, they plan to do even more shows with him, because shut up. Part of that doubling-down now includes picking up a new half-hour comedy pilot from O’Brien’s Conanco production company, which will be written by Still Standing’s Ben Wexler and the co-creators of the short-lived, short-on-most-things-really series Secret Girlfriend. According to the rather vague description, the show focuses on a “family man” who quits his job and returns to his old neighborhood, where he reconnects with his former best friend.
Details stop there, but we have visited the lab to consult with our genetically engineered pre-cogs, and they spoke in monotone chorus to concur that the family man will most likely learn that, while he may have matured and eventually became a responsible adult, his friend did not, and that his friend would encourage him to resume previous behavioral patterns from adolescence. They also say there is an 83 percent probability that this family man will then learn that you really can’t go home again, but that also sometimes you can, depending on the loose definition of that phrase and the complex vagaries of human relationships. Then they agreed that this premise is “acceptably funny.” (When we informed them that TBS maintains a standard of shows being “very funny,” the silence was deafening.)