Forget the residual deal points for a few minutes. Four weeks into the writers strike, The Insider has more (im)pertinent questions to kick around.
Like:

• Who’da thunk NBC’s Carson Daly would have been the first late-nighter to go back to work and take his small staff with him? Isn’t this like Urkel suddenly going Rambo? As Daly prepares “Last Call” for its return tonight, he might want to remember that when one is being run out of town, if he gets out in front, it’s going to look like he’s leading a parade … even if it is the middle of the night.
• How cute is it that college writing students have figured out that the picket lines are the new mailrooms and that if they walk that writers’ walk they can talk that networking talk and collect business cards and contacts that may pay off after the strike ends?
• Does anyone else wax nostalgic at the sight of picket lines whose diversity, or, more politically incorrectly, lack thereof, is a reminder of the good old days when men were the rule, women were the exceptions and minorities were mostly absent? Couldn’t (or shouldn’t) someone call Central Casting on days when there are 20 men, two women and no one of color signed up for a shift of picketing outside a studio?
• Can we get those writers a sunscreen endorsement deal, a group dermatology policy and a long-term cancer study to track residual sun damage? They’re out there on the picket lines during the hours when the sun’s rays are the most powerful. In New York, the demonstrations are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. In The Insider’s youth, when the beautiful people marinated themselves in baby oil and iodine, 10 to 2 was sunbather’s hours. And is a tanned writer a sympathetic figure?
• On the other hand, is a punch-lining, line-dancing striker a sympathetic figure? How long can the striking writers turn out funny videos for YouTube, or go dancing with picketing stars, before someone thinks it looks as if they regard putting a lot of non-guild people out of work as a bit too much of a lark?
• What’s next? A recipe for Inflatable Rat-atouille and recommendations for an appropriate wine?
• Can’t we all just get along?