It didn't take long for late-night TV and politics to re-establish their symbiotic relationship.
On Wednesday, the first night back since the Hollywood writers' strike started Nov. 5, The Late Show With David Letterman opened with Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton, while Jay Leno's Tonight Show featured Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.
Great face time for the candidates on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. But not such great viewing for fans, especially those of The Tonight Show.
Clinton's appearance, which came at the start of Letterman's program, lasted only a few seconds and did manage to incorporate a bit of the host's trademark sense of irony and sarcasm.
"David has been off the air for eight long weeks," Clinton said. "Oh, well, all good things must come to an end."
On the other hand, Huckabee's visit to Tonight ran an outrageous 16 minutes and will surely be remembered as a low point in the storied history of the NBC show.
The all-important difference between the two hosts is that Letterman returned with writers thanks to an interim agreement between his production company, Worldwide Pants, and the Writers Guild of America. But while Letterman owns his show, Leno's is controlled by NBC Universal, and that media giant has no deal with the writers. As a member of the Guild, Leno is crossing his own union's picket line - as is Conan O'Brien, who also returned to the NBC airwaves without writers.
Those millions of TV fans who were wondering what Leno and O'Brien would do without writers got their answer: not much that was worthy of network television. In Leno's case, in addition to lobbing softball questions to a politician, the lantern-jawed comedian co-hosted a cooking segment (pepper steak) and answered questions from the audience ("When will you be coming to Branson, Mo.?").
Leno's return to the airwaves resembled a local morning talk show in a small TV market like Cedar Rapids, Iowa. All that was missing was a female co-host in a short leather skirt and high boots. It didn't much look like the legendary program once hosted by Johnny Carson and Jack Paar.
Huckabee's segment wasn't just deadly dull as entertainment, it was also deeply troubling in the way Leno and NBC allowed the airwaves to be used on the eve of such an important moment in the presidential race.
In one representative exchange, Leno asked Huckabee why he thinks he went from being in "last place" to being the "frontrunner."
