Nearly a year ago, Conan O’Brien got tons of old-school fans excited when Team Coco announced that it had plans to create one handy (and legal) place on the internet to watch the entire NBC catalogue of old Late Night With Conan O’Brien clips. In September they revealed that the plan was to launch the website in January 2019, but January has come and gone, and fans are still left with no vintage Masturbating Bear clips to enjoy.
Well, it appears that Team Coco has retooled its release plan, which has apparently been optimized to torture Conan fans as much as possible. Instead of dumping everything online at once, the clips will roll out in phases on a special section of the Team Coco website, with phase one, titled Conan 25: The Remotes, launching next Monday, March 25. This will include over 350 remote segments from both Late Night and Conan featuring O’Brien, Andy Richter, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. This is great news for fans of O’Brien’s always-excellent remote work (personally, I’m a fan of his trip to Ireland), but bad news for fans who want Preparation H Raymond, the Interrupter, Andy’s little sister, Artie Kendall, or the “Tea Copywriter Cage Match†on a legit and reliable platform.
While the wait continues for the full archive, Team Coco has already revealed what we can expect in phase two: “a collection of the best comedy sketches, featuring fan-favorites like ‘In the Year 2000’ and ‘Staring Contests’ and a quarter century of characters like Masturbating Bear, Pimpbot 5000 and more.†Team Coco is being a real tease here, but perhaps having a dependable place to watch Conan play old-timey baseball will help make the waiting a little easier.