So long, Conan. See you soon.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You know what, this has been a really good last Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. Funny, touching, classy -- and a fitting conclusion to Conan's far-too-short run as host.

My late-night preferences are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but as I put it last week, Conan's a very funny, culturally and comedically relevant guy who belongs in the prime of late-night TV, not relegated to a post-Leno afterthought. He was put in an extremely difficult position by a network, NBC, that is an utter disaster, and he's done what he had to do.

And so Jay Leno heads back to The Tonight Show, where his awful, dumbed-down crap will likely pull in solid ratings again and where he'll again pale in embarrassing comparison to the vastly superior David Letterman, who remains the most potent comedic presence on late-night network TV. But Conan belongs in there, too, and I hope he succeeds.

What a captivating late-night saga this has been. (By the way, the San Francisco Chronicle's Tim Goodman, one of the finest TV critics around, has done some fabulous work addressing the whole mess at his blog The Bastard Machine. In addition to the link above, see here, here, and here.)

Good luck, Conan. See you on Fox, or wherever you end up.

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Here's the great opening to Conan's very first Tonight Show episode, the running across America sequence, just seven months ago: