Conan O'Brien: Masturbating Bear (Video)

Conan O'Brien is not going quietly as he finishes up his final episodes of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on NBC.

He's spending his last hours as the host getting under the skin of the NBC network executives.

For example, a popular character from Late Night with Conan O'Brien made an appearance on Wednesday's show, the "Masturbating Bear."



To accommodate the earlier time slot, the character was retired when O'Brien took the reins of The Tonight Show. But, the bear came out of retirement. He was back doing what he loves to do.

Video here.



The monologue and the comedy bits continue to be overwhelmingly devoted to the late night shake-up.

I suppose that makes sense. O'Brien is giving his new followers what they're tuning in to see.

He said his ratings are up by 50 percent. That's not because people around the country have just discovered that they like his show. If O'Brien wasn't exiting the network, it's safe to say he would not have seen that sort of jump in his ratings.

O'Brien has been doing a couple of jokes unrelated to his situation at NBC. For instance, Massachusetts native and liberal O'Brien mentioned Scott Brown being elected to the Senate.

CONAN O'BRIEN: Believe it or not, there are other news stories out there. There was, of course, a big Senate race in Massachusetts yesterday. The winner, Scott Brown, made a victory speech where he mentioned his two daughters were 'available.' Did you hear about that? Yeah, at least this explains his campaign slogan: 'Scott Brown -- Creepy for Massachusetts, Creepy for America.'

Very lame. I guess it is better for him to dwell on the NBC fiasco.

This bit bugged me. O'Brien mocked something that Jay Leno did when he finished his run as host of The Tonight Show in May 2009.

From the Associated Press:

After reminiscing briefly about his time as host, Leno said he had an answer to those who asked him about his "Tonight" legacy.

He invited the audience to "take a look" at the children born to show staffers during his tenure—all 68 of them, babies to teenagers, who filled the studio stage.

"That's what I'd like my legacy to be," Leno said, his voice thickened by emotion. "When these kids grow up and they go, `Hey, mom and dad, where did you guys meet?', they're going to say they met on the stage of `The Tonight Show.'"

It was a self-effacing, homespun ending that suited Leno, who's often said he wants to appeal to the American mainstream and doesn't fret about his appeal to critics or other arbiters of what's cool.

It was really very touching when all those kids were on the stage and Leno signed off.

Here's O'Brien's version of his own Tonight Show legacy:

O'BRIEN: As we wind things up here, we wanted to highlight -- 'cause this is something that shows do sometimes -- we wanted to highlight all the babies that were born to the staff during our stint on The Tonight Show. Yeah. Unfortunately, we were only on the air 7 months. It's not really long enough to have kids, but one of our cameramen got a pair of hamsters back in June. Those two went buck wild. Here they are, all the hamsters born to the staff during The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.



O'BRIEN: Wow, a legacy I can be proud of! They'll be coming up to me the rest of my life: 'I was born during the run of your show.'

Since Leno was the only host I'm aware of that assembled the kids together on the final show, the hamster bit seems mean instead of funny.

Video here.