Late night TV returned to a new normal Monday, as the last two talk shows shuttered by the ongoing writers' strike resumed production.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert joined Jay Leno and other late-night hosts on a public-relations tightrope, showing solidarity with their own writers on the picket lines, yet also trying to give viewers what they'd been missing. The result: Two shows that seemed to be more than just making do without their scribes.
That is sure to muddle an already confusing situation for the Writers' Guild of America as it soldiers on in its third month of a bitter labor dispute with the conglomerates that control much of TV and movie entertainment.
Many audience members might fail a pop quiz about which late-night shows have writers and which don't after Monday night. David Letterman, who spent 10 minutes on his show Monday getting his “strike beard” shaved off? He had writers, though apparently not for that bit. (Tom Hanks, one of the A-list guests that Letterman has access to because they don't have to cross a picket line to appear on his show, made a joke to this effect later.)
Jay Leno, meanwhile, had no writers, yet that didn't stop him from doing his usual Monday routine of a monologue and “Headlines.”
Colbert, who riffed on video clips for 15 minutes on “The Colbert Report,” has no writers, either. Of course, he was the first to make this point, delivering a silent opening, then yelling at his director, “There are no words in my prompter!”
But that was Monday night. What about Tuesday and Wednesday nights? Will the absence of writers be just as conspicuously noted? Isn't that running a joke into the ground?
Worse yet for the union, the hosts of the writerless shows -- who didn't earn their jobs because they can read cue cards but because they can be funny in almost any circumstance -- seem to be in agreement that whatever laughs they can generate on their own are theirs to keep.
Guild leadership spent the weekend making noises that they may discipline Leno, a staunch supporter of labor whose writers have mostly avoided picketing outside his studio out of respect for him. Since returning with Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Jan. 2, Leno has continued to perform written jokes, which the union says is in violation of the strike.
Now add Stephen Colbert, or rather, “Stephen Colbert,” the alter ego of real-life Stephen Colbert and the world's longest-running impersonation of Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly. His character could be arguably said to comprise one continuously “written” monologue.
The situation was less muddled with Stewart, who sported a pasted-on monobrow Monday to satirize the facial hair worn by Letterman and O'Brien on their shows. Stewart seemed to be ad-libbing more, speaking much more slowly than he usually does, though he continued to rely on visual graphics prepared by his non-writing staff, which clearly meant that some preparation had gone into what was undeniably a monologue by the host.
Indeed, Colbert mock-scolded Stewart (who produces “Colbert” and “The Daily Show” for Comedy Central) during their nightly chat.
“I will be making a call to the Writers' Guild People's Council for the Preservation of the Written Word!” Colbert thundered.
At a couple of points, Stewart made clear his frustration with the union. The guild has granted a waiver for Letterman's production company to use writers on his “Late Show” and “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” as part of a strategy of finding small companies agreeable to their terms, mostly concerning the sharing of revenues from Internet streaming of writers' work. On Monday, the film studio United Artists reached a similar agreement with the guild.
But Stewart and Colbert were denied their requests because their shows are effectively owned by Viacom, one of the conglomerates that broke off talks with the guild Dec. 7.
Playing to one of his strengths, Stewart conducted a lengthy but lively interview with Ron Seeber, a labor relations professor at Cornell University, and used it to take potshots at the union. When Seeber said he'd taken flak for agreeing to appear on the show from people who said it “harms the cause of the writers' guild,” Stewart got a laugh from his strike-savvy audience by asking, ”Do they feel that by appearing this opens the door to all other professors?”
