Monday, October 2 marked the long-awaited return of late-night TV, and the hosts addressed it in their respective monologues.
Stephen Colbert applauded the new contract “that includes protections from A.I., cost of living increases, [and] better pay for streaming.”
“Plus, thanks to the picket lines, my writers got fresh air and sunshine — and they do not care for that,” he quipped. “Now they’re back safely in their joke holes, doing what they do best: Making my prompter word screen full of good and ha-ha!”
Over at The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon joked, “My dad called me up and said, ‘Finally I can watch [Jimmy] Kimmel again.'”
Fallon went on to express his joy over the writers “getting the fair deal they deserved,” and added, “You have to hand it to them, only writers would spend the whole summer fighting to go back to the office.”
Meanwhile, Kimmel opened his show laying down on a therapist’s couch. “And the thing is the strike has been going on for so long, I just don’t know if I’ll be back,” he wondered.
The camera panned out to show Monday’s guest, Arnold Schwarzenegger, telling Jimmy, “You’ll be back” and “Get to the chopper,” his classic Terminator lines.
Kimmel later joked during his monologue, “We’ve been gone so long, The Bachelor is now a grandfather.”
Seth Meyers took a more serious tone, saying, “I never take this show for granted, but being away from it for as long as I was away from it really hits home how much I love having this as a workplace.” He then thanked the WGA negotiating committee and the guild leadership “for all the time they put in … negotiating for the very fair deal that all the writers deserved.”
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