The Return of Stewart and Colbert: A NowPublic Roundup

Rovzar: Ooh, the moment of Zen is just people silently picketing outside the studio.

Kois: That was nice.

Rovzar: Though also meta in its own way. It wasn't just any picket line, it was the people protesting the show that was going on at that moment. His show.

Kois: So that's the episode basically! An uncomfortable monologue and a near-endless interview about the strike.

Rovzar: I have no idea how many people would have sat through it.

Kois: I have to imagine that many, many, many people dozed off and are going to wake up in the middle of Futurama all like "Huh? What?"

Rovzar: It was a self-indictment, in a way.

Kois: It sort of was. He is obviously angry, but I guess in Jon Stewart that manifests itself in self-seriousness and discomfort.

Rovzar: His self-serious side is the one thing that makes him better than Craig Kilborn could ever have been, though.

Rovzar: I like to know he cares.

Kois: This interview works better than Stewart's because Colbert's shtick has always been to play the devil's advocate to an uncomfortable degree. So he can argue with this guy all day long.
Rovzar: Plus, his improv is much better.
Kois: Yeah. But he's also not trying to suddenly have a serious conversation about the strike. He's just doing his show.
Rovzar: Here's a funny response. The guest made some quote about 50 percent of America being involved with labor unions. Colbert shoots back: "You can get 50 percent of America to agree to anything." To the audience, he asks: "How many people here want to be a pirate?" Everyone goes bananas. "That's 100 percent of this random sampling of Americans," Colbert points out. Yeah, he's doing it right.
Kois: He closes with: "Well, that's it for the show. Writers, I'll see you in my dreams." That whole show was excellent.

Stewart maintained that his show’s title was now a misnomer; it’s not truly The Daily Show without his writing staff, he said, it’s “A Daily Show.” There were some bright flashes during Stewart’s half-hour—hearing him blithely refer to Mike Huckabee as “the guy who doesn’t believe in evolution” was a bracing tonic; it’s the kind of blunt phraseology I’d been yearning for some network-news anchor or pundit or even late-night network host to utter these past few weeks, but of course it’s the kind of thing only these Comedy Central guys have the nerve to deliver. And it warmed my heart when Stewart mourned a country that “has to settle for this fare”—and the screen showed a picture from NBC’s moronic American Gladiators.

Colbert did one punchy segment with liberal-turned-Republican-turned-contrarian pundit Andrew Sullivan (the priceless moment: when Sullivan said “we” are sick of red and blues states in this country, Colbert shot back, “’We?’ Do you have a mouse in your pocket?”). Colbert’s rhetoric—“I have always been anti-labor; I have always been anti-union”—was (and this a paradox he long ago brought to perfection) carefully calibrated over-the-top stuff.

On the one hand, they have to come back, because they don’t have the financial resources to keep paying their non-writing staffs through the strike the way Letterman or Leno could; and meanwhile, so much juicy stuff is going on in the world, and both of them are quick-witted enough to comment on them fairly extemporaneously.

But is that allowable under WGA guidelines? Right now Jay Leno’s in trouble for writing his own monologue. If Jon Stewart’s staff picks clips for him to comment on, and Jon pre-rehearses some comments—as he clearly did tonight—does that count as “writing?” And will that work against his image as a labor-supporting, writer-supporting populist?