Blame him or NBC, but this isn't the farewell Leno deserves

• USA TODAY%27s television critic says farewell to Jay Leno
• Host of %27The Tonight Show%27 says goodbye for second time

Tonight can't be what anyone wanted.

Surely, to the extent he ever thought about it, Jay Leno wanted to exit The Tonight Show on his own schedule and on his own terms. And certainly his bosses at NBC, to the extent they thought at all, only wanted him to exit once — say, in 2009, when they pushed him out for Conan O'Brien. Pushing him out again Thursday, this time for Jimmy Fallon, represents the kind of extra effort corporate America is loath to extend.

Yet here we are, with a second ejection that seems to have left all involved a bit embarrassed — like family members who are called yet again to the deathbed of a lingering relative and can no longer think of anything to say. Even the timing of Leno's presumably final departure, shoehorned between the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, seems designed to cut short any valedictory celebration. No wonder Tonight has taken to recycling celebrants: Billy Crystal, who was on Leno's first show and is scheduled to return Thursday for his last, was a guest on the penultimate show the first/last time around.

Look: No one is owed a permanent job, in or out of TV. But Leno has been a good, loyal and very successful soldier for NBC, and he deserved a better farewell than the one he's been given. And it seems clear he agrees. It can't be by accident that one of his funniest jokes this week had the bitter ring of truth: "I read today that NBC said they would like me to be just like Bob Hope. Dead."

Yet if Leno is not being mourned in the way he'd like, that is ultimately more his fault than his network's. Handed one of the most powerful cultural platforms in America, he squandered it, more concerned with staying on the show than using it for any good purpose, either to project his voice or promote new talent.

In some ways, of course, Leno's Tonight Show was never going to match the impact of Johnny Carson's. Increased competition and splintering audiences were bound to decimate his ratings. But if ratings declines were inevitable, irrelevance was not.

Trapped in a long goodbye, Leno's only legacy is longevity; he has no other influence, even on his own show. Where Leno had to wear Carson's format like a straitjacket, Fallon is free to take the show his own way, safe in the assumption that his young fans are unlikely to say, "That's not how Jay did it."

So on Thursday night, Leno says goodbye — and let's hope it's for good, at least as host of The Tonight Show. He did not choose to leave. But should NBC come calling again, he can choose not to return.

Eventually, the time comes for all of us to let go, whether we want to or not.