One of the key streaming highlights hitting the 2025 TV schedule during the second week of May is no doubt the Season 2 return of former late night fave Conan O’Brien’s Max travel show Conan O’Brien Must Go. But even before that anticipated arrival, the ginger-haired comedian’s fans can join in on celebrating his TV efforts by watching the new special Conan O’Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize For American Humor, available to stream with a Netflix subscription.
The special is undeniably hilarious from beginning to end thanks to a plethora of lighthearted roasts from some of the Oscar host’s funniest friends, longtime colleagues and mainstay late night guests. From John Mulaney and Andy Richter to Adam Sandler and David Letterman, everyone was on their A-game, and that was especially true for Kumail Nanjiani, whose “TWAINTalk” addressed the vital question of whether O’Brien actually deserves the award, with The Simpsons as a key component.
While talking about influence as a benchmark for a comedian’s impact on the world at large, Nanjiani addressed Conan O’Brien’s career highlight of working on The Simpsons, saying:
Now, Conan was part of the writing staff of one of the most legendary and successful TV shows of all time, The Simpsons. People love to talk about Conan’s contributions to The Simpsons. In fact, his name gets brought up 93% of the time when people on the Internet talk about Simpsons writers. Let’s compare that to his actual contribution. Well, there are 781 episodes of The Simpsons. Conan wrote three.
It's not immediately clear whether that "93%" stat was based on any kind of data, or if it was crafted out of thin air, but there's no questioning the credited nature of O'Brien's work on The Simpsons. While he was indeed part of the writing staff early on, and certainly contributed jokes and story ideas for other episodes, the rather limiting nature of TV writing credits means that only three episodes from that iconic era can serve as irrefutable proof of his time there.
To break that number down further is just asking for chuckle-worthy trouble, but Kumail Nanjiani showcased the surprisingly teensy percentage that sums up Conan's Simpsons efforts, and made a bonkers comparison in the process. As he put it:
That is a whopping 0.38%. By comparison, Charles Manson wrote 0.41% of the songs released by The Beach Boys. Charles Manson is a bigger part of The Beach Boys than Conan is of The Simpsons.
Both out of context and within the context of this special, that's one of the wildest sentences ever uttered for others to hear and react to. I'm trying to think of how many other ways Conan O'Brien and Charles Manson would be comparable, and all I can think of is that O'Brien and Bob Odenkirk wrote together on SNL and acted together, with Odenkirk having portrayed Manson on The Ben Stiller Show. But that's not even a proper 1:1 comparison.
In reminding the crowd which episodes Conan wrote, Kumail Nanjiani provoked quite the audible laugh from the honoree, saying:
By the way, the names of the Simpsons episodes that Conan wrote are 'Marge vs. the Monorail'... and two other episodes.
The rest of Nanjiani's segment was obivously also amusing as it poked fun at the longtime late-night staple, and the Silicon Valley vet talked about Masturbating Bear being his very first taste of not just Late Night but of American television altogether. And somehow he stuck around and didn't run screaming back to his Pakistani stomping grounds.
Conan O’Brien Must Go will arrive anew with Season 2 on Thursday, May 8, for fans with Max subscriptions. But his whopping three episodes of The Simpsons can be streamed in full with a Disney+ subscription.
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