Conan O'Brien's Hot Ones episode is a truly unhinged work of comedic brilliance

Conan O'Brien begins his Hot Ones interview clear-eyed and sober, letting host Sean Evans know that he and hot sauce, let alone flavor, are not even distant acquaintances, let alone friends.

"I grew up in an Irish house," O'Brien says. "An Irish Catholic home in Boston. I never saw a spice till I was about 52 years old. So I'm terrible with hot food. I grew up on tasteless food. So this is a whole new experience for me."

For those unfamiliar with the show, the experience is O'Brien eating increasingly spicy hot sauces while answering thoughtful questions from Evans. And what follows is 25 minutes of controlled chaos that has to rank among the craziest — and best — Hot Ones interviews to date.

On the show's season finale, O'Brien injects little bits of his trademark wackiness while plugging his new travelogue show, Conan O'Brien Must Go, on Max — and also kneeing the streamer in the jollies for its confusing, HBO-less name change. ("I can't get used to it," he says. "It's not a better name.")

Then there's his alleged doctor, Dr. Arroyo, a man with seemingly no medical qualifications who pops in and out with one-liners. And, as part of an ongoing bit, O'Brien keeps sticking half-eaten wings into his pocket.

Surprisingly, though, O'Brien is eating the hot sauce like a champ, and he gets more candid the hotter the wings get. Displaying an uncomfortable (for him, or for us) amount of seriousness, O'Brien discusses the worst thing a guest can do on a talk show — turning to the audience and remarking how bad it's going. Because it's just plain unprofessional.

"I would look out at the audience, maybe 200 people sitting there, and I'd see 200 souls leave 200 bodies and float up through the ceiling," O'Brian says. "Because they were just told they were not getting a good show. No, that's not show business. Show business is, 'You're getting the greatest show in the world.'"

And that is Conan O'Brien's comedic ethos. It's a commitment not to a bit, but to the audience, a promise and a guarantee that we'll enjoy ourselves. A promise O'Brien delivers with unhinged enthusiasm.

O'Brien not only gets candid, but also cocky. Real cocky. "I don't think there's a wing here that I can't eat like it's ice cream," the former late-night host boasts. "Seriously, I don't think there's a wing on this table that I cannot devour like it's cool whipped cream!"

He then shares a harrowing tale involving a misunderstanding with a water buffalo and recalls writing Saturday Night Live sketches at David Letterman's desk in the '90s — only to take over for Letterman as host of Late Night. By this point the spice level has gone up several notches, so O'Brien matches — then exceeds — that energy.

Slathering his latest wing in an atomic-like hot sauce and then garishly licking it off, O'Brien screams at Evans, "Come on, man, are we doing this or not?! Are we doing this or not?! What's the point of even being alive if we can't do this?!" His lavish pompadour shakes vigorously with each exclamation.

Evans begins to struggle (and hiccup) with the heat and, finally, his guest is forced to admit, "This one, I'm not gonna lie, I'm feeling it a little bit… it's just starting to peek through." Minutes later, O'Brian realizes he might have made a terrible mistake.

"I don't have a lot of regrets in my career," he says, holding up the sauce he had been so cavalier with earlier, "[but] pouring this onto the wing and then licking it off… in retrospect… I'm starting to feel some sensations."

Doubling down on his past mistakes, O'Brien takes the next sauce, bathes his wing with it, then rubs it on his hands, onto his mouth, and on his nipples all over his button-up shirt, exclaiming, "I've never felt so alive! I'm erect for the first time in 15 years!"

At the hottest of the hot sauces, O'Brien takes a swig from the bottle and wonders what's wrong with him and why he can't feel… Then the horror slowly creeps over his watery eyes as the sauce builds on his tongue. His eyes red, his mouth caked in drool, O'Brien yells affirmatively at Evans, "I'm fine! I'm perfectly f---ing fine!"

Still, even in the midst of a capsaicin delirium, O'Brien is able to answer Evans' final question on what students of comedy ought to read. They could just watch this interview and get all the lessons they need.

O'Brien's commitment to "the bit" is daring and even dangerous. That water buffalo story? O'Brien was in a rehearsal and someone told him to get on top of the animal, and without thinking, he did. And he was almost seriously injured because of it.

"I just kept thinking, why?" he says of the incident. "It's because you do a show every day. You get into the 'Let's go, let's get this thing going.' And I'm there and I'm just thinking about the next thing. A voice just said, 'Hop on,' and I did."

Because that's show business. And we just got the greatest Hot Ones in the world.

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