Become an aging court jester trapped in a cyclical hell at the whims of a fickle audience in Conan Throwbrien

It's basically blackjack for jokes

Conan Throwbrien welcomes its host to the stage with discordant jazz and uncanny colour bars glitches. It feels eerie. Desperate. A crushing inevitability. Four joke topics appear at the bottom of the screen. Ridiculous celebrity kids names. Action figures for news anchors. Diet water sales boom. You cautiously slide that last one over to the microphone. Throwbrien emits a string of chirps, like a flame-crested lyre bird with a wounded voicebox trying to mimic human language. “Have you folks heard about this one…”

There is an implied terror in this seemingly friendly opener. What if they have heard this one? What will Throwbrien do then?

More cards appear. Where to take it now? Banter with the audience? Make a pop-culture reference? Self-deprecate? It’s a choice between how many of which type of dice to roll. Throwbrien tells the joke, then the audience react. Whoever scores closest to 13 wins. If the audience win, they’ll simply sit in silence and stare blankly into Thrownbrien’s soul.

The twist is that one of the audience’s dice is hidden. Throwbrien has some idea of how to work the crowd, but try as he might, he’s yet to fully map the inner workings of the human mind. If the audience don’t laugh, the ratings go down. If the ratings go down, tonight’s special guest might not even show up, and Throwbrien might have to replace them with a cheese grater.

“Next they’ll be introducing flavoured air that you can drink, like a breeze out of a can. Who needs solid food when you can just sip on some freshly harvested atmosphere?”

Scattered rimshots attempt to herald a punchline they can’t quite locate. Throwbrien hears stifled laughter and a few meager claps. He lets his lips contort into the ghost of a smile, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s forgotten what genuine mirth sounds like.

The discordant jazz rings in his ears sharply, but he knows he’ll hear it anyway, even when sitting alone in silence. It imprinted itself a long time a go. It's been part of him since....when? When did this all start? When does it end? When did this bit even start? Is it time to change topic? Have you folks heard about this one?

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