Carson Daly shooting "Last Call" on the street. Photos by Chris Haston | NBC.

The most overlooked victim in NBC’s late-night imbroglio earlier this year was Carson Daly.

While people stewed over what would become of Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, Daly, the host of the 1:35 a.m. Last Call With Carson Daly, was getting thoughtless slams. David Letterman constantly acted as if he couldn’t remember Daly’s name, calling his show the Pluto of late-night TV, and NBC executives forgot to mention him among personalities they wanted to keep on the air.

In one scenario, Daly would have lost his show.

That would have been the scenario in which Leno, whose 10 p.m. Jay Leno Show was cancelled last month, would have taken over a half-hour show before The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. As night owls now know, O’Brien decided not to take the deal, Leno now hosts Tonight - again - and Fallon and Daly are right where they were.

Daly took the weeks of uncertainty in good humor, even mocking his plight on The Jimmy Kimmel Show on rival ABC and posing for new Last Call promotional photos with a pair of defibrillation paddles on his chest.

Most important, he came back with the most inventive and interesting late-night show on TV.

Last fall, when Leno moved to 10 p.m., Daly was smart. He realized that he would be at the tail end of four hours of people yakking at desks on NBC. So he got rid of the desk and the studio and permanently took his show on the road.

That was a great move for Daly.

In retrospect, you have to wonder if there was any reason he was stuck in what looked like a miniature version of The Tonight Show studio and format other than that it had always been done that way. Daly, who made his name as host of MTV’s Total Request Live (aka TRL), was never known as a comedian. He was at his best on the old Last Call when he’d bring out new music, putting acts such as Silversun Pickups and The Bird and the Bee on network TV for the first time. He once devoted a week to Silversun Pickups before anyone but the most ardent music fans knew who they were.

For the rest of the show, though, he looked like a surfer trying to fit into a gray cubicle world.

Now, he is surfing L.A., sitting down at a diner to interview Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels, visiting with David Arquette at the shop for his clothing line and having an insightful interview with Eli Roth.

In a way, Daly’s new Last Call is reminiscent of Bob Costas’ 1988-94 talk show in the same slot that featured in-depth interviews that revealed new things about the guests and showed off Costas’ interviewing chops. Like the new Last Call, it was a break from the well-worn late-night talker format.

Last Call also breaks the talk-show cycle in which it seems that many guests will end up on everyone’s couch after a couple weeks. Daly takes a curatorial approach to his show, bringing on people he finds talented and interesting.

“Why aren’t you one of Barbara Walters’ most intriguing people?” Daly asked hip-hop artist T-Pain on Tuesday night’s/Wednesday morning’s show.

And he had a point. The guy set off a major ripple in pop music with his use of Auto-Tune, and he created a successful iPhone app, a Cartoon Network show and an iconic hat collection. But Daly is the first show host that I’ve seen sit down for a chat with T-Pain.

It’s also the first place where I heard about the parkour-like sport of free running, through a profile of Lucy Steel, one of the sport’s few women, and it’s where musical acts are now shown in performance at L.A. clubs and theaters.

All of it is shot in a gritty, jerky, often color-washed style that’s sort of reflective of how the world looks at 1:35 a.m.

The show doesn’t always soar, and while he’s exploring, we might suggest trolling some cities besides L.A. Three words, Carson: Louisville, Derby Week.

Of course, most of us aren’t up when Last Call comes on. But in this TiVo, time-shifting world, Daly’s half-hour is well worth a season pass.