Conan O’Brien has long delighted in tormenting his show’s associate producer Jordan Schlansky over his Star Wars obsession—most notably when he got Harrison Ford to break Schlansky’s Lego Millennium Falcon back in 2015—and in the rehearsal footage above, he was planning a similarly sadistic joke: forcing Schlansky to dress up as Spock to commemorate Star Trek’s 50th Anniversary. The gag was supposed to be that Conan would invite Schlansky to briefly explain why he preferred Star Wars to Star Trek, then get exasperated at his long answer and fire him. There was no need to write dialogue for Schlansky, who—as the video makes very, very, clear—can speak extemporaneously about Star Wars at the drop of a screen-accurate, full scale Darth Vader helmet. But it probably would have been a good idea to tell Conan he was supposed to interrupt Schlansky. And nobody did.
Instead, Schlansky got his revenge for the Spock costume and then some, launching into an impromptu six-minute lecture on Star Wars, Star Trek, Rocky, corporate stadium branding, and even less relevant topics while waiting for Conan to cut him off. Meanwhile, Conan sits behind the desk and experiences the slow death of his own soul, which visibly withers away as though it had been thrown into the mouth of the sarlacc in the Great Pit of Carkoon to be digested over thousands of years. At one point Schlansky asks, “How do you put a feeling on the screen?” As long as the feeling is “I no longer wish to live,” the answer is clear: aim the camera at Conan O’Brien and start telling him about the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek.
