There are several reasons why February is the worst month of the year.  Firstly, it’s one of the coldest months, which automatically makes it dreary and depressing (or seemingly so).  But, unlike the other cold months like December and January, February doesn’t have any happy holidays that put people in good spirits.  The only “holidays” of any “significance” are Presidents’ Day, which no one (except United States Presidents, or possibly the Presidents of the United States of America, I suppose) cares for, and something called “Valentine’s Day,” which (theoretically) only people “in love” care for.  While both of these holidays are wholly superfluous, “Valentine’s Day” is the one that is more unnecessary, but only by a little bit.  At the very least, Presidents’ Day is a federal holiday that gives us the day off from work.  We can stay at home and destroy our brains by watching MTV all day and not feel guilty about it.  On the other hand, “Valentine’s Day” isn’t a real holiday. In addition to going to work as usual, people are expected to go out of their ways to celebrate (or justify) their relationships.  I can certainly understand being in love, but I can’t understand being obligated by society to express it.  This seems to be more work than is necessary, especially for a non-holiday.  In the end, “Valentine’s Day” just pisses everyone off and ruins February.

In recent years the National Football League moved the Super Bowl from the last week of January to the first week of February, which effectively gave February at least one redeeming quality.  Super Bowl Sunday is a day when many people arbitrarily drink copious amounts of alcohol and gorge themselves with unhealthy food.   Sometimes people will also watch a football game on television, but not all the time.  This is a joyous occasion for everyone, but the downside to this is that it occurs on a Sunday, and this presents a national dilemma.  Going back to work immediately after a day of gluttony and decadence is generally difficult and dreadful, and this forces many people to ditch work.  I suppose one solution to this would be to move the Super Bowl to Saturday, but that would be utterly blasphemous.  The best solution to this quandary is to move Presidents’ Day to the day after the Super Bowl.  This way no one would have to skip work because they were bloated or hung over.  Furthermore, it would add some meaning to an otherwise meaningless holiday.  In the end, it would be good for the economy and boost national morale.  Presidents’ Day occurs on a random Monday in February, anyway, so there is absolutely no reason NOT to move it to after Super Bowl Sunday.

And then we should move “Valentine’s Day” to February 30.

Last week Conan O’Brien hosted his final Tonight Show, thereby ending perhaps the most bizarre melodrama to ever be played out in the history of the late-night talk show genre.  After only seven months, Conan O’Brien agreed to accept a buy-out of his contract from NBC, choosing to leave the network rather than move The Tonight Show from its traditional start time at 11:35pm to 12:05am.  Like most people watching his final show, I couldn’t help but feel awfully sad that he was leaving.  I grew up watching this guy.He kept me up on those nights when I had to stay up late to study in high school, college, and professional school.  His final show effectively marked the end of an era for me.  While I was sad for myself, I was not sad for Conan.  I did not feel sorry for him that he was leaving his dream job because I firmly felt that he got exactly what he deserved.

Now for the record, I like Conan O’Brien.  He cracks me up.  I think he is a comedic genius.  If you were to ask me who, between Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno, makes me laugh out loud more, I would say Conan.  He’s fucking hilarious!I think he is one of the funniest, if not the funniest, people on television.  And I know I’m not the only person who feels this way.  In fact, I don’t know a single person who does not like Conan O’Brien, and everyone I know considers Conan O’Brien to be astronomically funnier than Jay Leno.  I love Conan O’Brien.  They love Conan O’Brien.  WE ALL LOVE COCO.

Having said that, it’s understandable that a lot of people are disappointed about the current situation.  Conan fans have been very vocal about their displeasure.  There have been rallies across the nation, trending topics on Twitter, and Facebook groups in support of Conan  .Fans have lionized Conan’s image on posters as if they were counterculturists awaiting the second coming of Che Guevara.  However, there has also been a sense of negativity surrounding all this support, and this sense of negativity has been directed at NBC and, particularly, Jay Leno.  While waiting outside Universal Studios to get into the taping of Conan’s last show, Conan-enthusiast Juliet De Franco told an Associated Press reporter that Jay Leno “just seems like such a jerk for not retiring.”  On the internet, Conan-fundamentalists have been hijacking Jay Leno fan sites and terrorizing his fans with anti-Jay sentiment.  These are actions and attitudes I don’t quite understand.

Jay Leno has about as much to do with Conan O’Brien leaving The Tonight Show as Lady Gaga has to do with being attractive.  The two are mutually exclusive.  It’s probably easy to point the finger at Leno because NBC obviously favors him to be on at 11:35, and, if Leno did retire, NBC would probably have no choice but to keep Conan.  However, like everyone else in this country, Leno does have the right to pursue work and it’s not inappropriate of him to accept a job that’s offered to him.  The reason why NBC chose Leno over Conan is simple logic and mathematics.

If you look at the numbers, Conan’s show sucked in the ratings.The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien averaged 2.5 million viewers per night, which relinquished NBC’s 15-year-long hold of the late-night crown to David Letterman, who is averaging 4.5 million viewers per night.  On the other hand, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno averaged 5.2 million viewers per night and beat Late Show with David Letterman for nearly 15 years straight up until Leno left Tonight in May of 2009.

Who is to blame for this?  People have argued that Conan’s poor ratings were the result of shitty primetime programming by NBC, more specifically the flop that was The Jay Leno Show at 10:00pm.  They say that Leno’s paltry viewership at 10pm brought down the ratings for the late local newscasts and, consequently, Conan’s Tonight Show.  (As an aside, The Jay Leno Show averaged 6.2 million viewers a night, which is very good for a late night talk show but very bad for a primetime show.)  However, it seems that the people who say this don’t want to acknowledge that Conan’s ratings sucked before The Jay Leno Show even started.  The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien debuted in June of 2009 and suffered throughout the summer before The Jay Leno Show debuted in September.  You can’t blame Jay on that.

But how important is the lead-in primetime programming anyways?  People like to say that The Tonight Show with Jay Leno benefited from NBC’s industry leading primetime “Must See TV” lineup throughout the 1990s and early 2000s and that this gave him a boost over David Letterman.  But NBC’s primetime dominance died in 2004 with the series finale of Friends and the resurgence of ABC (due to the debuts of Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy). CBS became the primetime ratings champion but Jay Leno was still beating David Letterman (who is on CBS) on a nightly basis until he left last year.  Primetime programming might affect local newscasts, but people are going to watch who they want to watch at 11:35pm.

It’s not unreasonable to say that NBC didn’t give Conan O’Brien enough time to establish himself at 11:35.  Now that he is gone, we will never know if his ratings would have improved if he was given longer than seven months.  This is where NBC took a gamble.In this faltering economy where businesses need to make good economic decisions, all NBC knew was that 1) Conan O’Brien had a small niche audience while at 12:35am with Late Night with Conan O’Brien, 2) Conan was losing to the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (who is on CBS) during his final years at 12:35pm, 3) Conan was losing to Last Show with David Letterman at 11:35pm, and 4) Jay Leno attracts viewers at whatever time you put him in.  While Conan might be funnier, the bottom line is that Jay is a better talk show host.

So, why do I not feel sorry for Conan O’Brien?  One reason is that he wasn’t fired.  He chose to walk away from Tonight and I can’t feel sorry for someone who controls his own destiny.  The other reason is karma. Conan has made no secret that hosting The Tonight Show has been a lifelong dream of his.  Generally, people are sympathetic towards stuff like that.  It’s easy for us to think of NBC as the bad guy who is pushing Conan’s hand and squeezing him out of Tonight.  Conan O’Brien is easily perceived as the innocent victim in this entire mess who was forced to leave his dream job on a matter of principle, and Jay Leno is equally perceived as the crotchety old man who won’t go away.  It’s certainly honorable that Conan is sticking to his guns, but what everyone is seemingly forgetting are the circumstances by which Conan was offered the Tonight job in the first place…

In 2004, NBC didn’t offer Conan the Tonight Show with open arms.  At that time, Conan was getting offers from Fox and ABC to jump to their networks.  Knowing that NBC didn’t want to lose him to a competitor, Conan used this as leverage to negotiate a new deal.  In effect, Conan strong-armed his way into the Tonight Show desk and Jay Leno, who was leading in the ratings, accepted these terms and agreed to give up his dream job in 2009.  Who’s the victim now?  The kind thing for Conan would have been to tell NBC that he would take over Tonight whenever Jay chose to retire.  Instead, he chose to bully NBC around.

What goes around, comes around.

No one will miss Conan O’Brien more than me, and I found his final monologue to be one of the most heartfelt moments in TV history.  In his final monologue before signing off, Conan pleaded with his fans not to be cynical.  I suspect that this is because he knows something that his fans don’t know.  His fans will always blame the fall guy, but he knows that there is really no one to blame at all.

Good things will happen as long as you are kind.