Hooray... I Guess.

Believe it or not, I am actually a little disappointed that the writers strike is over. I know! I can't believe it either. It all stems from the fact that on daily shows like, uh, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Late Night With Conan O'Brien, there was this sort of excitement about how the hell they were going to get through the show without any writer support. I made a point to tune in just about every night to see the fireworks and see if they would sink or swim when all they had was their own wit and ability to improv to get by on.

And swim they did in my humble opinion. They were forced to push themselves every night to come up with enough content and material to fill a show that had previously been totally mapped out for them when they had writers. They also had the added impediment of not being able to use any of the usual bits that had been created by writers before the strike. No "If They Mated" for Conan. No "The Word" for Colbert. None of the usual crutches they used to fill up another time slot with mediocre entertainment. It was genuinely fun to watch Steven Colbert bring the painting of himself to the Smithsonian in Washington to try and have them put it in their exhibit. Or Conan with all the ridiculous things he did to try and fill the first eight minutes of his show every night. Be it trying to beat his time record spinning his wedding ring or giving an audience member $300 to buy food for the whole audience.

But what it mostly comes down to for me is that these were THEIR ideas. You knew they came up with them and there is something kind of personal and cool about that. I like thinking of these guys in their offices all day thinking of ridiculous ways to burn a few minutes of air time. Or maybe its just about not knowing what you were going to get night to night. The excitement of uncertainty. In any event, I no longer feel the need to stay up and watch every night and might actually be able to get to sleep before 1 AM, so I guess I got that going for me.