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“You want to do what?”
Bob likes to think he’s pretty good at predicting the future. He’s been in the news game a long time, and it’s important to know what’s going to happen tomorrow if you’re aiming to get it on TV before anyone else. He saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the GFC and the the Bennifer break-up coming from miles away. So he thought he had a reasonable idea of the consequences of making Phil Connors go to Punxsutawney for Groundhog Day. Maybe their mayor would write an angry Facebook post using words like 'travesty' and 'mockery' and Bob would have to get his PA to send a fruit basket to smooth things over. Maybe someone would punch him in the mouth and the station would need to pay for a dentist again. Or some fading rural siren would show up nine months later with a baby and - well, that one has never actually happened before, but Bob is sure he could solve it. He definitely thought Rita would try to quit, like most female employees who have had to stand near Phil for more than five minutes, and he'd have to give her that raise. Any of that he could have filed under the heading of 'Phil's usual bullshit.'
So it's not like he expected it to be plain sailing, he just thought he knew the likely outcomes. Which definitely didn't include his best ever weatherman walking into his office three days later, throwing himself at a chair, and trying to resign. He'd have been less surprised if Phil had announced that he was running for President. Of Mars.
"Bob, be honest - you have five guys who could do this job. It's not like you need me."
From a strictly technical point of view, that's true. Anyone who can read a teleprompter reliably can report on the weather. Except being a great weatherman has nothing to do with that. You have to be good-looking, charismatic and funny enough to make up for the fact that you go on television every day and lie to everybody. Because nobody really knows what the weather is going to do tomorrow, they're just making educated guesses. And if there's one thing Phil Connors is great at, it's lying with a straight face.
"You're not just a weatherman, Phil, you're a TV personality. I don't have one guy who grabs attention like you do, and you know it." Reading the map is one thing, but character can't be taught. It's not like he can just pull another decent weatherman out of his ass. If Phil goes they'll get stuck with Marty, who still can't remember to look down the barrel of the camera.
Phil barks a laugh. "Attention. Yeah, I guess I was always pretty good at that, wasn't I?"
Past tense, like the man he was on February 1st when he left the station was someone else. Maybe he was, at that. Since he got back, Phil's remembered everyone’s coffee orders, bought all the band candy Stuart has been trying to sell to the newsroom on behalf of his kid for six weeks and fixed Gina’s car when it broke down in the station parking lot without even asking for sexual favours. Half the staff think it's a bit and are betting on when he'll crack and the other half think he's had a stroke. He hasn't belittled or insulted a single person and gives every indication of being sincerely interested in what they have to say. This morning he actually quoted Pablo Neruda. It’s like he’s a whole new Phil who exists specifically to unsettle Bob.
At first he blamed Rita. He's seen her pull off miracles to get a story filed before, accidentally fixing everything wrong with Phil Connors seems like a thing she'd do. Except Bob's PA is friends with her and after grilling her thoroughly it sounds like the most bizarre love affair in the history of the station, if not all of Pittsburgh, is the result of whatever happened to Phil and not the cause. It's important to understand the order of events when you're chasing down a story, and Jennifer was very clear that Rita would not have touched original flavour Phil with a ten-foot poll. Larry says he was his usual self in the van on the way down. So whatever alien abduction or blow to the head or out of season Christmas ghosts caused this, it wasn't Rita Hanson. Which is a relief, honestly, because he'd hate to have to fire a good producer for ruining his weatherman.
“Why would you want to quit? Is it the paycheck? Because that can be negotiated.” Bob doesn’t really have more budget to devote to Phil, but he’s at least willing to consider throwing money if that will solve whatever this is.
“It’s not the paycheck. It’s not you, or the station, or even the job, really. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing the same thing over and over again when I could contribute more elsewhere.”
Bob almost asks straight out what amazing skills Phil thinks he has that aren't pointing at graphics of clouds and reading his lines even when he's had a few, but he's trying to be nice here. “I thought you liked being a weatherman.”
“I did! I mean - I do, I guess. But don’t you ever think about how little time we’ve all got? Like, it seems infinite and then you wake up one day and it’s February 3rd and you realise that you have, what, thirty or forty years left? Hardly any time at all.”
Bob's doctor keeps telling him he hasn't got thirty years if he doesn't cut down on the hamburgers and booze; his own midlife crisis is well and truly in the rear-view mirror. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what Phil's would look like, i.e. Phil but even more so and with a flashier car. Definitely not waking up and deciding he wants to save whales or become a nun or whatever the hell he's got planned.
“If I’d known that spending two days in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania would lead to you quitting your job on a whim -”
“It’s not a whim," he says, with a level of sincerity that is frankly terrifying coming from him. "I don’t know how to explain, Bob, but my life changed out there.”
The weirdest part is, Bob actually believes him. Old Phil had his whims, sure, but fundamentally he was as predictable as blizzards in February. Bob didn't always like him, but he always knew where he stood.
"Did you have some kind of religious experience or something?"
Phil starts to laugh, and then he just keeps going, long past the point where it's gotten uncomfortable, to where tears are streaming down his face and Bob is wondering if he should send Jennifer to get him a glass of water or Rita or an emergency psychiatrist.
"Yeah," he manages to choke out eventually, "I guess ‘or something’ about covers it."
Whatever this is, it’s not any midlife crisis Bob has ever seen. It’s probably too much to hope it will pass as soon as it arrived, but he’s not giving up yet.
"Don't quit," Bob says. "Take some time off instead. Full pay."
“I don’t think -”
“Six weeks.” It will be spring then, maybe whatever the fuck this is will go away when the sun rises before noon. "That's not much time, out of the rest of your life."
“No,” Phil says, “you’re right, that’s not any time at all. Comparatively speaking.”
“Rita has some days saved up," he says. "Take her somewhere nice." Maybe six weeks will be long enough for that to run its course, too. He certainly can’t remember any previous girlfriend of Phil’s lasting so long.
Phil holds out a hand. “Thank you for everything, Bob. If you hadn’t made me go - well, you changed my life. I really appreciate it.”
“Take my advice,” Bob says, “get whatever this is out of your system and come back sober.” Fingers crossed he’ll have the real Phil Connors back in time to say inane things about the summer heat that somehow don’t make everyone in the room want to kill him.
“You know, you should take some time off too - Punxsutawney really is lovely, Bob, you should try it.”
Bob watches Phil go and shudders internally. If Punxsutawney is what did this to Phil Connors, you could not pay him enough to go there, ever. Especially on Groundhog Day.