Always ready with a quip, a gag, or a goofy face, Richter has become what one journalist called the "post-modern Ed McMahon."

But sidekick was never a role to which Richter aspired.

"I did not want to be Ed MacMahon and… I absolutely no way mean that as an insult to Ed MacMahon. But I set out to be a comedic actor, not a broadcaster,"’ Richter said during an interview on WHYY’s Fresh Air in 2007. “… I wanted to be, you know, wear wigs and mustaches and talk with funny accents and do pratfalls.”

Things haven’t worked out exactly as he planned. When Richter surrendered his spot on Conan’s couch back in 2000, he subsequently starred in three sitcoms -- Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Quintuplets, and Andy Barker P.I. -- all of which were short-lived. And even though he has appeared in dozens of TV and film roles, nothing has ever taken off for him in quite the same way as “sidekick.”

So when Conan asked him back when he took over the coveted Late Night job, Richter signed up.

"At the time, it seemed a step backward, and you could make the argument that it was a step backward, but I don't care," Richter said last week. “I was happy that he asked me and I was happy to go back to work for a friend.”

All of which bring us to this existential moment in time when Richter once again faces the question of 'What’s next.'

The humorist Sarah Vowell wrote in 1999 that the “most reliably blissful seconds of national TV happens every weeknight… when the camera settles on Richter..

“Richter…broadcasts a huge and hilarious presence just by being. His job does not seem to hold him, does not seem quite right.’’

Now Richter gets a second release from the label ‘’sidekick,’’ another chance to make things fit.

Am I wrong to think that Richter seems made for the host's chair; that he's more "broadcaster" than he's ever dreamed?