Late-night yuk fests return with end of writer's strike

Was that a tinge of desperation in Jon Stewart’s voice last Tuesday, informing his Daily Show audience that members of the Writers Guild of America were voting to end their strike? “If they vote ‘Yes,’ they’ll be back for tomorrow’s show,” said the exhausted host. “If they vote ‘No,’ I will kill them.”

Of course, the WGA did vote to resolve the bitter three-month-long fracas between its film and television scribes and their benefactor, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, with approval by 92.5 percent of the WGA’s voting members. The decision, 100 days in, came not a moment too soon, as early public support for the work stoppage had eroded into resentment in the last weeks, not only for the AMPTP but for the writers’ union itself, which Hollywood types saw as disorganized and vindictive.

The strike angered viewers by forcing suspension of production on countless network series and sitcoms, many of which will not air again for months. But a far more instructive development came when the politically-oriented yuk fests on Comedy Central — Stewart’s The Daily Show and its chaser, The Colbert Report, hosted by Stephen Colbert — returned to air in early January, sans writers. Barred from producing formal written material, armed with whatever they could carry in their heads, Stewart and Colbert cornered themselves into performing the barest version of their shtick one could imagine, giving viewers a unique opportunity to see them sweat a little. The results were mixed, and fascinating.

Stewart, for example, scaled back the silliness during his guest interviews, asking more direct questions than usual to his cautious visitors — hardly a welcoming gesture. The reportage of the day’s main news story — normally entirely scripted — became fodder for every ’80s pop culture reference Stewart could muster, in an effort to fill the requisite eight minutes before the commercial break. He found himself chuckling almost as much as his studio audience.

Colbert, trained in improvisation and sketch comedy at Chicago’s Second City, took more naturally to conditions ripe for improv. Particularly skilled at interaction with his guests, he seemed to perpetually overbook them: no less than three graced the Colbert stage each night, leaving the remaining time mostly to pre-recorded segments.

In a moment of collaborate creativity/desperation (take your pick), the two men joined with NBC’s Conan O’Brien to feud over which host “created” the success of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who had “pledged” to make Colbert his running-mate months earlier. With details too convoluted to reproduce, the faux spat culminated in a backstage brawl that worked its way through all three studios over the course of an evening.

These men, vital to the public discourse in this most trying of presidential elections, thanked the union gods last week to finally regain the lifeblood of their craft, and so should we.

--- Dan Seliber, Muse Contributing Writer