Conan rules!

From the C-J, Mary McNamara on the impact of the writer's strike on the late-night TV shows.

Notably, she commends Conan O'Brien-- both for fully honoring the strike and for being the funniest during the strike. (I hadn't thought about it, but Leno, Letterman and Stewart are all considered "liberal"-- and yet, they didn't honor the labor union's efforts. Of course, there are different kinds of liberals, but it's still an odd/ironic outcome.)

The writers are back on late night and here's what we now know: Jon Stewart is much funnier with a script written by someone other than himself; Jay Leno may still have the chops to write amusing opening monologues on his own, but if he wants to reference events from, say, this decade, he needs a team; and Conan O'Brien should win a special strike-year medal of honor for actually obeying the Writers Guild strike rules and still remaining pretty darn funny.

In fact, watching him glue his eyes to the teleprompter for the first time in so many weeks during Wednesday night's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," one couldn't help feel a twinge of regret. Yes, there was an air of calm and security as he made all the expected jokes about how much he missed his writers ("and they wrote that for me"), but gone was that endearing nervous bounce, the almost kinetic energy of sheer panic that drove O'Brien to new heights of ring-twirling, rocket-racing and home-movie making.

He alone of the late-night hosts respected the call for "pencils down." He not only surrendered to the strike, he embraced the moment, used it to engage in McGyver television. Like the geeky, self-conscious rebel all late-night hosts were at some point in their lives, O'Brien created an entire new sub-genre of late night -- the reality talk show.

As O'Brien ran through a brief montage of the strike-weeks' greatest hits Wednesday night, one could already imagine the special DVD package just out in time for Christmas. (Which may make it bit less rebellious and cool, but still I would buy it.)

If at times these skits resembled something your younger brother and his high school buddies might throw together in the paneled portion of the basement, well, at least our man Conan did not capitulate, refused to collaborate by attempting to produce a show that was still the same as before only not as good....