The last pull of the Walker, Texas Ranger lever. Late Night with Conan O'Brien

Conan is so f****** funny. I just love everything about him.

Him getting trolled by Paul Rudd with mac and me clips is up there too, it just warms my heart so much to know that Conan wasnt the only one with such perfect timing and delivery, but his friends have it too and when they are together its just insane

i feel like i would have laughed pretty hard at this, unfortunately it was spoiled by the title of the youtube video because i made the mistake of having my mouse over it

The Walker Texas lever "Walker told me I have AIDS" was peak late night.

"Okay everyone, we had fun, but we have to move on, we have a lot of show here tonight to get to, so." *Manically pulls the lever again* I could watch that all day.

The meta context of him having been Forrest Gump Jr and his mom dying of HIV makes it even more hilarious

Indeed it was.

Oh, the kid with AIDS?

I don’t think it was the last one; just the most well-known one. I think the actual final one was where Norris actually showed up and “shot” at Conan’s hand to prevent him from pulling the level one more time.

I've watched compilation videos of these where I'm 100% certain there are numerous examples they don't have. I remember multiple psych-out variants where he emphasized being done with the lever and then something would cause it to get pulled. I remember one where a bird or something on a wire flew down to hit it.

It definitely wasn't the last one. It was one of the first that made the whole thing go viral.

There are a few Conan bits that have stuck with me for decades even after seeing them only once. Found a few, but I'm still looking for a specific Lewinsky scandal moment. they had Abe Lincoln come out to do his patented Crazy Legs Dance, to show Monica not all presidents were bad. Lincoln kept saying horrible things while doing his dance. I think he offered her a ride on his Lincoln log? Conan kept saying he wished someone would stop Lincoln. The bit ends with John Wilkes Booth shooting Lincoln, then doing his dance.

Oh my f****** god I had forgotten all about Pierre Bernard’s recliner of rage. I remember having tears in my eyes watching that.

Same, it was about junior and senior year of HS so I would just VHS record them and watch later in the morning or in the afternoon. Those were peak Conan days.

Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage was the first time I ever saw someone talking about the kind of things I cared about on tv. The Macross/Robotech segment is peak.

I had never seen Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage. Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole :)

The show he had right after he had his first child was my favorite; you could tell he was sleep deprived and gone through an emotional roller coaster so he was just cracked out for the entire episode.

The clip cutting back to Conan already out of his seat in absolute horror is hilarious.

This is the one that has always stuck with me. What the hell is the context of it? Why did the child need to jump off a ladder, in a library/study?

"JUMP!"

Which is nuts cos we all know in Texas they usually kill a lot more kids than that in a shooting. Always knew that show was fiction.

The fact that it’s the dad from the wonder years and the kid looks like a young Fred savage makes it so great.

The look Conan gave when he would go to pull the lever always killed me...😂

[here ya go!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B43t5L7GxEI) it’s at 7:19 in the video

Osmont was playing an orphan that was a witness to something in the drug trade, IIRC. Walker was acting as his foster father at the time.

The show (walker) was sort of comically bad but took itself very seriously, and every episode was about the same. That clip is just sort of how that show was. Conan had a long running bit of showing absurd clips from the show.

Becuse there are people born with this thing called a sense of humor. You wouldn’t get it.

The important thing is knowing that the joke isn't "haha, kid has AIDS". The kid is making very serious statement, but he's presenting it like it's a tidbit he just learned, like "Walker told me milk only comes from girl cows". The humor is a little bit in the shock value, but mostly in the delivery being so abrupt and clumsy with no emotional buildup or context.

Simplest explanation is that it's such a tonal shift that we go from a "cute/precocious kid" character moment to suddenly landing a blow that this kid has a disease that, in the 90s, was a certain death sentence. Why was it on Walker to tell him that? Why is he telling these people? Why was this on TV? It's a non sequitur, and that's funny. You could also interpret it as, the reason that Walker told him he had AIDS is because Walker *gave him* AIDS, presumably by sexually assaulting him. This isn't really funny on its own, sexual assault isn't funny. However it's obviously not what actually happened in the episode, and is counter to both the expectation of what would be on TV in the 90s as well as the specific character of Walker and Chuck Norris himself. Walker is a man in his 40s who has maintained a years-long seemingly-chaste courtship with Alex (the blond woman in this scene), his entire personality is so boring and squeaky-clean that the implication that they'd randomly have an episode where he rapes a child is just absurd, but the clumsiness of the "issue of the week" placement here makes the whole thing darkly, ironically, absurdly funny. Regardless of exactly how you interpret it, as a viewer you basically understand what they were aiming for: A touching moment where a child is forced to grow up too fast and accept that his life will be cut short. This was probably "A Very Special Walker: Texas Ranger" that was advertised with dreamy piano music and the production probably had hopes of winning an Emmy or some kind of special recognition for tackling THE TOUGH ISSUES. However, they fell INSANELY short of that goal. It's just so bad and weird that they'd fail SO HARD.