“We’re back, baby!” That was the message and the theme when the new show returned to the airwaves on Monday night after a five-month hiatus after the writers’ strike.
Stephen Colbert had a dolphin, Jimmy Fallon launched into a musical, and a distraught Jimmy Kimmel was in bed with his therapist (Arnold Schwarzenegger assured him, “You’ll be back”).
Without writers, late-night talk shows stopped airing new episodes after the strike began on May 2.
On Tuesday, a three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers was approved by the Writers Guild Negotiating Committee, the WGA West Board and the WGA East Council — meaning writers can go to work.
“It’s great to be back,” Colbert told a live audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.
“Check my math on this — I believe we’re off the air for 154 indictments,” he said, referring to former President Donald Trump’s legal troubles. “It’s been a crazy summer.”
Colbert began his show as a bearded captain on a boat at sea. When a screeching dolphin reveals what he missed – “Is she dating Travis Kelce?” – and then he rides it to sea spray and Broadway.
“We’re back!” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the website said, before Monday’s show on ABC, which featured Schwarzenegger and musical guest Jason Isbell and 400 Unit.
At the start of his show, Kimmel sat on a couch with Schwarzenegger and said, “This strike, it’s been going on for so long, I don’t know if I’m coming back.”
“You’ll be back,” Schwarzenegger replies, recalling his famous line from “The Terminator.” Asked when, Schwarzenegger looks at his watch and says, “Now.”
Fallon of “The Tonight Show” said everyone in her world is excited to see the late-night hosts return.
“My dad called me today and said, ‘I finally get to watch Kimmel again,'” Fallon joked.
(“The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and NBC News are NBCUniversal companies.)
Actors are on strike. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, went on strike on July 14, two months after the writers.
The union said the two sides plan to hold talks on Wednesday A statement Monday.
