Man Crush of January 2010: Conan O’Brien

Runners-up: Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes), James Cameron (Avatar)

In the month where Avatar was king of the box office and Robert Downey won a Golden Globe for his wicked awesome portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, one man was able to body slam the army of blue aliens, give an atomic wedgie to the super sleuth, and brazenly insert a catheter into a gasping network… that man is Conan O’Brien.

Coco has done well for himself. Sure it’s depressing that NBC is making a bad situation worse, but Conan O’Brien was able to leave with America on his side and his pockets filled with cash. His stint on the Tonight Show was lagging in the ratings but that’s more to blame because of the poor lead-in he got from the Jay Leno Show. You can hope to have your star player come into the game and turn things around, but NBC was expecting Conan to give them the victory when they’re down by 50 points with ten seconds left on the clock. Michael Jordan would balk at that and then give you the finger.

But with NBC favoring Jay Leno over Conan, there wasn’t much he could do except have them buyout his contract (I heard he got around 60 million) and promise to stay away from late night television for a little while. Not a bad deal. It’s kind of like getting paid a crazy amount of money to do nothing and promise to do nothing for half a year. While suckers like us have to actually work to get paid.

I watched his last episode on the Tonight Show (thanks to the magic of DVR) and liked how he seems to have Tom Hanks and Will Ferrell on his side. Not so much impressed with Will Ferrell as I am that he’s got Tom Hanks. That’s power. The rest of the show wasn’t the greatest, but like the series finale of Seinfeld, it got the job done. I’m going to miss his Tweet of the Week segments and his self-deprecating humor.

The exclamation point to the month was that I heard rumors that he’s already in talks with Fox to have his own late night show on their network (a la David Letterman to CBS). They just need to wait a couple months for the NBC blockade to be removed and then they are ready to move forward. I haven’t been an avid follower of Fox since I don’t really watch Glee and I prefer to watch Family Guy on DVD so that I don’t have those pesky commercials get in the way, but I’d definitely try out the Conan show if they bring back Max Weinberg and Andy Richter.

Oh yeah, and there’s word that NBC might pick up a sitcom that Conan is producing. Way to kick a dying network while it’s down, man. I applaud that because I’m imagining Conon kicking a dying peacock with a little Hitler mustache while it’s saying that America prefers to have more Jay Walking and Kevin Eubanks. Nobody wants that.

Conan, you have pried the title away from the deadly grip of Andrew Dice Clay and have become the new badass of comedy. I bow to you, sir.