Conan O'Brien used his final episode of NBC's The Tonight Show on January 22, 2010, to deliver a surprisingly hopeful message after leaving the job just seven months into his run. Instead of torching the network, O'Brien urged viewers to reject cynicism and keep working toward something better. O'Brien's television career had already taken several major turns before that exit. He wrote for NBC's Saturday Night Live beginning in 1988, joined The Simpsons in 1991, wrote the classic Season 4 episode “Marge vs. the Monorail,” and became the host of NBC's Late Night in 1993 after succeeding David Letterman. How Did Conan Turn a Career Blow Into a Life Lesson? NBC announced in 2004 that O'Brien would eventually replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show , but the handoff became a ratings and scheduling mess in 2009. NBC launched The Jay Leno Show at 10 p.m. that September, and the program weakened local news ratings while O'Brien's 11:35 p.m. audience lost ground to CBS's The Late Show . By January 2010, NBC planned to move Leno back to 11:35 p.m., which would have pushed O'Brien's show past midnight; O'Brien declined to continue under that arrangement and accepted a buyout. After seven months away from television, O'Brien returned with TBS's Conan , hosted the series for 11 years, and retired from late night in 2021 while continuing with Conan O'Brien Must Go , the podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend , and multiple Academy Awards hosting gigs. O'Brien's closing advice remains the real receipt from that chaotic chapter: “Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.” He also told viewers, “Please don't be cynical,” framing resilience as a choice rather than pretending the outcome had matched the dream.