NEW YORK — Late-night TV hosts returned to the air Wednesday after a two-month hiatus, displaying support for striking writers, plenty of creative stretch marks — and at least two scruffy beards.
David Letterman walked onstage amid dancing girls holding picket signs. His writers are back on the job, but NBC’s Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel returned without theirs.
Leno, however, offered a monologue that included jokes he said he had crafted. Whether that violated rules of the striking Writers Guild of America — to which Leno belongs — was not immediately clear.
“We are not using outside guys,” Leno said in the monologue, according to a transcript provided by NBC. “We are following the guild thing. We can write for ourselves.”
The union said Wednesday it was withholding comment until it spoke to Leno about his show, which, like the other returning programs, was laden with references to the strike.
The walkout, Leno joked, “has already cost the town over half a billion dollars. Five hundred million dollars! Or as Paul McCartney calls that, ‘A divorce.’ ”
Guests on the shows included two presidential candidates — with Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton sticking to Letterman’s union-sanctioned “Late Show” and Republican Mike Huckabee venturing across picket lines at Leno’s “Tonight.”
The biggest celebrity guest, Robin Williams, appeared with Letterman, while Leno welcomed chef Emeril Lagasse and rapper Chingy.
Filler was immediately evident on the shows without writers.
O’Brien, sporting facial growth to match his red hair, showed off Christmas cards, danced on his table as his band played the Clash’s “The Magnificent Seven” and tried to see how long he could spin his wedding ring on his desk. Leno took questions from his audience.
There was also plenty of free on-air promotion for the guild’s cause.
“The writers are correct, by the way. I’m a writer. I’m on the side of the writers,” Leno said.
“I want to make this clear. I support their cause,” O’Brien said. “These are very talented, very creative people who work extremely hard. I believe what they’re asking for is fair.”
Letterman, who had grown a mostly white beard, brought writers on to recite a Top 10 list of their strike demands. They included “Complimentary tote bag with next insulting contract offer” and “Hazard pay for breaking up fights on ‘The View.’ ”
Williams teased Letterman unmercifully about his beard, alternately comparing him to Gen. Robert E. Lee, a rabbi and an Iraqi mullah.
On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, presidential politics intruded: Huckabee appeared on Leno despite his apparent confusion about the strike and a bid by picketers to keep him away, and Clinton taped a cameo introducing Letterman.
“Dave has been off the air for eight long weeks because of the writers strike,” she said. “Tonight, he’s back. Oh, well, all good things come to an end.”
