A view of the stage that doesn’t show anything
I’m guessing that, if you’ve been paying attention, you probably know why I didn’t have a blog entry yesterday: WE ARE BACK TO WORK!
Now that I’ve gotten that enthusiasm out of the way, I will attempt to describe what it was like.
You may recall that I have been extremely nervous about coming back, knowing that there are plenty of hard feelings flying around from all sides. And even though most of the writers brought the message that we are grateful to the staff for going above and beyond the strict call of duty, I think a lot of grumpy assumptions remain.
It wasn’t as bad as the staff wearing black in mourning over our return, but if you buy into Freud’s train car theory of group dynamics, you can understand a little bit of what’s going on. That theory explains how, if someone has a train compartment to themselves and another passenger enters and sits down, the first immediately feels resentment toward the second. If another person enters, the first two share an unspoken camaraderie, based their shared hatred for the new guy. And so on.
If anyone leaves the car, no matter where they might find themselves in the pecking order, the remaining passengers feel hatred afresh upon his return.
And so we returned.
The territoriality was minimal in my view, it was mostly deserved. After all, hadn’t they taken the writers’ place in Jay’s circle? That’s hard enough when you’re hired to do it, let alone being shanghaied in a panic. A lot of these guys turned out to be really good at it, too: last night’s main piece was produced by a non-writer.
Look, the strike threw a grenade into the workings of a well-oiled machine, and these guys had to put it back together without all the parts. Necessity breaks iron, and in this case it broke a lot more than that. But it also reinvigorated the show and the ratings are the best they’ve been in a while, and you can’t argue with that kind of success.
In every negotiation, something is gained and something is lost. The Writers Guild gained internet residuals for the next generation. The Tonight Show writers — well, it remains to be see the full extent of what we’ve lost.
Until then, I’m going to go write some jokes.
