This Weekend, Every Night Brings Something Special: Conan Friday, "Taking Chance" Saturday, Oscars Sunday

Every night this weekend, there's a great reason to turn on your TV. Conan O'Brien presides over his final Late Night show on Friday, HBO presents the excellent Taking Chance telemovie on Saturday, and ABC presents the Oscars on Sunday...

FRIDAY: Late Night with Conan O'Brien (12:35 a.m. ET Friday/Saturday, NBC). Sixteen years after he started, O'Brien says goodbye to the East Coast, in peparation for his taking over the reins of the Tonight Show this fall.

His countdown to this farewell show has been quite good -- and, with its servings of lengthy clips and well-edited compilations from previous shows, quite generous. (Great to see the Triumph Star Wars piece again.) Earlier this week, Nathan Lane showed up to offer a musical farewell to O'Brien, just as Bette Midler had with Johnny Carson. Thursday night, Jerry Seinfeld came on to perform standup, then enjoy one last 30 Rock sitdown with the second host of NBC's Late Night.

The first, of course, was David Letterman, now in the 11:35 slot at CBS. In a few months, they'll go head to head. Results will be interesting, but one thing the two comedians have in common, indisputably, is a reverence for the deep history of The Tonight Show. Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson. But that's not the show O'Brien is inheriting, not in weight or substance, so all bets are off.

Still, 16 years at the helm is something to honor, especially with a tenure that began so tenuously, with NBC offering no firm support. I was a TV critic the whole time, and liked O'Brien from his introductory press conference. And I wouldn't be surprised, on tonight's show, if the host didn't put down his mask of ironic detachment, at least for a few minutes, and express some sincere nostalgia, wistfulness and thanks.

SATURDAY: Taking Chance (8 p.m. ET, HBO). As President Obama reopens the debate about allowing the media to record images of the caskets of soldiers being shipped back from war in Iraq and Afghanistan, this new telemovie recreates the actual journey of one Marine (Mike Strobl, who co-wrote the screenplay), escorting the body of another (19-year-old fellow Marine Chance Phelps) across the country to their mutual home town.

Strobl is played by Kevin Bacon, with a quiet stoicism and simmering empathy that mirrors the entire movie perfectly. First-time director Ross Katz does a great job here. He's all about the details, the images, and especially the silences. This movie may have the fewest lines of dialogue for any film since Wall-E, and the restraint, and the silence, builds like a symphony.

Taking Chance is by no means anti-war, or even remotely political. It's about the measure of loss, and the respect for sacrifice -- and as the lieutenant colonel proudly escorts his junior serviceman through airline checks and across America's roadways, the tiny but telling shows of gratitude and emotion for his fallen comrade eventually touch him deeply.

They'll do the same to you, too. It's a flawless, focused drama. There's not a frame in it that couldn't -- and shouldn't -- have been shown on broadcast TV, but the "major networks" aren't making movies like HBO's Taking Chance any more.

So which, I ask you, is the REAL major network these days?

SUNDAY -- 81st Annual Academy Awards (8:30 pm. ET, ABC). Hugh Jackman hosts, which might be interesting. This telecast is an annual rite of TV passage, though the red-carpet pre-show has gotten too painful and inept to watch. Start with The Barbara Walters Special at 7 ET, take a break, and return for the Oscars.