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10. It proved that America's cynic laureate has a heart after all.

David Letterman has never been a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, which was great for his comedy -- nobody does crusty negativity as masterfully as Dave -- but maybe not so great for his emotional health. Letterman holds his audience at arm's length and jokily paints himself as a faintly pathetic recluse with no life outside work. In interviews, Letterman has explained that grouchiness and reserve both run in his family. His mother, he's fond of saying, is "the least demonstrative person on the planet," and it was her lack of humor and nonexistent boiling point that drove Letterman's father (who died at 57 of a heart attack) to make outrageously misanthropic jokes to try to get a rise out of her. Like father, like son.

Joyce Millman Joyce Millman's column appears every other Monday in Salon Arts & Entertainment. + Biography + Archives

On the Jan. 14 show, which had been taped the day before, 52-year-old Letterman made the surprising on-air announcement (to guest Regis Philbin, who seems to have replaced Johnny Carson as his father figure) that he was going into the hospital for an angiogram the next day; his doctors were concerned about his family history of heart disease. As Letterman revealed his health troubles, he couldn't resist a joke: His cholesterol level was 680, he told Philbin. It was typical Letterman, using humor as an avoidance mechanism. But this time, you could almost feel the terror behind his wisecracks.

9. No bypass, no comeback show.

On Feb. 21, a mere five weeks after undergoing an emergency quintuple -- ponder that a moment -- heart bypass operation to clear a blocked artery, Letterman returned to "Late Show" looking spectacularly fit and exclaiming, "Wait till you hear what happened to me!" Letterman delivered a killer monologue ("'Bypass surgery' is when doctors surgically create new blood flow to your heart; a 'bypass' is what happened to me when I didn't get 'The Tonight Show'"), then brought out his medical team and made a little thank-you speech to each member. ("Ladies and gentlemen, that woman at the end of the line gave me a bath!" he said, introducing one of his nurses.) Then, on the verge of tears, his voice cracking, he announced, "Five weeks ago today, these men and women right here saved my life." Even if he eventually regresses into Ol' Frosty, he'll never be able to take back that display of emotion. But then, he probably wouldn't want to.

Only slightly less revelatory: Dave introduced his handpicked musical guests, the Foo Fighters, as "my favorite band, playing my favorite song." The song was the titanically thrashing "Everlong." The old man has taste.

8. We got to show Dave how much we care.

I don't know about you, but I got kind of choked up myself during Letterman's comeback show when the camera panned to a nearby office building where somebody had written "Keep it pumping, Dave!" across a row of windows on an upper floor. And wasn't that sweet of the students at Letterman's alma mater, Indiana's Ball State University, to sign a gigantic get-well card for him made out of 100 poster boards fastened together accordion-style?

As a victim of creepy celebrity obsession (remember his stalker?), Letterman must have been immensely relieved that none of his fans had the bad taste to erect one of those eerily banal teddy bear, balloon and angel shrines outside the hospital in his honor. But even he looked genuinely grateful for, almost choked up about, the lengthy standing ovation the audience gave him when he returned to the show. And how about all those A-list pals (Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis and Robin Williams, to name a few) who rallied around Letterman in his hour of need, taping new segments for the "Late Show Backstage" reruns that aired during his recuperation? The last time celebrities stampeded like this to give a fellow star his props was when Carson retired. Somewhere in L.A., Jay Leno is contemplating elective surgery.

7. Tragedy + Time = Comedy

Heart surgery has given Letterman some primo new self-deprecating material. In his first week back, he joked about having to change his lifestyle, "and then it occurred to me -- I don't have a lifestyle." "Everywhere I go now, people refer to me as 'cardiac patient David Letterman,'" he complained. "I liked it better in the old days, when I was referred to as 'head case.'" Another comedic benefit of a heart bypass: Now when the audience greets a joke with silence, he clutches his chest with a worried look on his face and gets the sympathy laugh.

OK, the decaffeinated-coffee jingles are getting tired -- whenever he takes a reluctant sip from his mug of heart-healthy decaf, a peppy chorus sings, "De-caff-ein-ated coffee, it's useless, warm, brown water!" (It was funny the first 10 times.) But the Feb. 23 gag reel of TV coverage of Letterman's surgery was one of the two or three most hilarious bits in "Late Show" history. It started out with shots of actual newspaper headlines, progressed to mock ones ("Letterman has quintuplets!") and got progressively more insane, with star-studded segments filmed on the set of everything from "The X-Files" (David Duchovny as Mulder blames Letterman's heart trouble on a conspiracy orchestrated by "that overcaffeinated little monkey" Philbin) to "General Hospital" to "NYPD Blue" to "Jeopardy!" (Alex Trebek: "What David Letterman said as he was wheeled into emergency surgery." Contestant: "What is, 'Mommy, Mommy, I want my mommy, for the love of God, somebody please get my mommy'?")

6. You couldn't make up a better sweeps stunt.

Publicly, the suits at CBS were supportive of "Late Show" producer Rob Burnett's decision to not use guest hosts during Letterman's five weeks off. But in reality, Letterman's surgery and recuperation couldn't have come at a worse time for the show or the network. February sweeps were starting, and Letterman's ratings, buoyed by Hillary Rodham Clinton's appearance two nights before his surgery, had been steadily rising to within striking distance of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno." How could a Dave-less "Late Show" survive sweeps?

But a funny thing happened. Burnett's "Late Show Backstage" packages of reruns, juiced with newly shot reminiscences by guests like Seinfeld, Williams, Roberts, Dana Carvey and Sarah Jessica Parker, held their own against first-run "Leno" episodes. Letterman was on people's minds and his Feb. 21 comeback show scored a decisive ratings victory over "The Tonight Show," becoming the third-most-watched "Late Show" ever. There's only one problem: What will Letterman do for May sweeps?

Next page | Dave laughs in the face of death, Garofalo steals the show