The WGA Strikes: Season 1, Episode 150

The long-running smash hit comes to an end...

This morning, a collective sigh rose from the Los Angeles Basin, one so powerful that the sheer force of so many pairs of lungs exhaling at once was strong enough to register on the Richter scale, the sound audible from the surface of Mars, and the sense of relief palpable throughout the fabric of the noosphere, so much so that I felt it myself as I drove to work this morning. You may have felt it, too. That brief flicker of solace, as ephemeral as the beat of a gnat’s wing, was the collective psychic resonance of the disparate cogs in the Hollywood machine all feeling the weight of an obese and increasingly ill-tempered monkey being lifted off the shoulders of their industry as, finally, news broke that the historic Writer’s Guild of America strike may finally be coming to an end after a grueling 150 plus day campaign. Now, the terms of the agreement between the WGA and the Crowned Heads of the Studio System must be ratified in a formal treaty before the strike is officially declared over, but, failing some catastrophic break down in negotiations at the eleventh hour, it seems that both parties are finally coming to the table. Which it does. God, I really hope the whole thing falls to pieces at the last minute, because this season of the Writer’s Strike was just getting really good. It was also be objectively the funniest single thing that could happen.

Perhaps it may be a bit too early to for the scrappy rebels of the entertainment industry to celebrate, but celebrate, it seems, the denizens of Tinsel Town are, dancing around a night-time bonfire with fireworks burst and x-wings fly overhead while dwarfs in ewok costumes sing that god foresaken yub-yub song or whatever from Return of the Jedi, or whatever it was called. And if it’s not too early to celebrate, than it’s not too early for me to start kvetching, because if the WGA returning to work is good news for the entertainment industry, it’s bad news for anyone with a brain. After all, when I loaded up the morning news to peruse over my customary cup of Black Ivory coffee accompanied by a Gurkha Black Dragon in my private smoking lounge, served on a silver platter by my personal half-Japanese/half-Colombian supermodel-cum-maidservant, this was the second story that was presented to me in my feed:

Any lingering sense of contentment I might have felt from the resounding psychic impact of a hundred thousand relieved Hollywood-content serfs was overpowered by a crippling, physical pain that manifested in my gut, spawned by pure anguish and despair. Not even a deep-tissue massage from Kimiko and an intravenous injection of Laudanum could assuage the agony of knowing that the airwaves will soon again be clogged with the leering mugs of these vile and wicked… nay. I shan’t call them men, for they long ago abandoned any such pretense of humanity. I challenge you to gaze upon John Oliver’s hideous countenance and then dare tell me, in God’s honest truth, that… that flabby, oval-headed, soy-bleeding cretin is actually a man, fashioned in the image of the divine.

Because he isn’t. And neither is anyone who actually finds him entertaining in the slightest, for that matter.

You must forgive me. I’m afraid I’m still in quite a shaken state, after seeing this grim portent for the future. To put it in layman’s terms: this shit sucks, bro. Just take a quick glance at this page, which documents all the projects delayed by the strike. I can’t imagine what kind of gormless Reddit-creature would be upset or distraught rather than elated, reading this article.

“If we don’t get this strike resolved quick, we’re jeopardizing the productions of Avatar 3! The new season of the Mandalorian! New episodes of Rick and Morty! They might even cancel the next Scream movie and the Ocean’s Eleven Prequel? Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmell will never return to television, and they - oh, God… they might actually have to get real jobs!”

Seriously? Are you kidding me? Oh, God - we need this strike to last forever, then!

If there would have been any real loss, were this glorious promise of a better tomorrow be realized, it wouldn’t have been the cancellation of more man-child Disney slop or the seventh fucking Alien sequel (because that’s what we need). It would have been this.

The fact that Good Burger 2 will, indeed, be coming out, almost makes up for the fact that it also means Rick and Morty Season 7 will also, unfortunately, be allowed to broadcast into the cultural ether like the most heinous, toxic fart in the backseat of a hot, locked car you could imagine. Almost. But, alas - the first law of alchemy remains unchanged.

In all seriousness, though, I saw a lot of screen-caps posted by intrepid explorers that ventured into the dark bowels of Reddit to capture the reactions of the simple-minded natives, who dwell in crude huts fashioned from sticks, twine, and mortar composed of dung and wear naught but skirts of leaves, and you would not believe how many of them viewed that article of impacted projects like it was some sort of apocalyptic decree from on high. It really beggars belief that anyone would be upset by a single one of those projects being cancelled. To me, these threats of losing Avengers 5: Age of Alzheimer’s or Star Wars Episode 11: Glup Shitto’s Revenge is akin to saying, “By God, if you don’t help us, the diarrhea valve will never get turned back on!”

Like… is that a threat? Or a promise? Listen, man, don’t threaten me with a good time.

One of the funniest chapters of the saga was when artist Brad Troemel spoofed this sentiment of nerd rage by producing a series of images promoting #EndUnionGreed, replete with images of Spider-man in handcuffs, or Black Panther behind bars, locked away by the evil, striking unions holding the precious flow of ZOG-slop Marvel kino hostage with their demands.

And, if you have more than two brain cells bouncing around in your skull, you can probably guess that some corners of Reddit saw this, thought it was serious, and adopted it as a legitimate credo. Just as many smooth-brained redditors are unable to grasp the concept of parody or satire, and assumed Brad Troemel was sincere, and threw a hissy fit of equal measure, labelling him as a scab, because, y’know - you can totally be a scab in a strike you aren’t participating in.

Truly, the whole debacle was actually more entertaining than any of the recent Marvel offerings.

I was really banking on these guys striking until the whole Hollywood machine fell apart, but, of course, that wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. And not just because Team #NothingEverHappens apparently can’t stop chalking up W’s, but also, because pretty much everyone involved in this dust-up had a very vested interest in patching up and making nice again. Make no mistake - the people who were striking were not hardscrabble lumberjacks or steel-workers or coal miners that broke their bodies in the dark, grimy depths for chump change and ate nothing but raw oats dusted with gunpowder for breakfast. These were not the breed of strikers that shot at the feds, and, really, if the Pinkertons had ever showed up to the supposed picket lines in Burbank, these heroic strikers, like the rebels of Star Wars or Dumbledor’s army in Harry Potter, would have risen up to meet the challenge. And by that, I mean they most likely turned tail and waddled away in soaked trousers. ¹

This? This is a LARP. A miserable one, at that. I’ve seen men cosplaying Asuka from Evangelion that were more convincing than these guys pretending that they’re serious, striking laborers. Like, look at these slogans. Seriously.

Error 404? Aren’t you people supposed to be the best of the best? The cream of the crop of America’s creative ingenuity? And the best you can come up with is:

Pathetic. Amateur material. Not as bad as this one, though:

Real classy. Remember when we had standards for our comedy, and it wasn’t all crass, puerile sex and toilet humor?

I miss Frasier.

Listen - all work is work, as the saying goes. This is absolutely true. But there is a world of difference between the utility provided by the chodes who penned the script for She-Hulk for Disney and the guys who, oh, I dunno - transport 30% of all freight in the country.

Or the guys who go miles underground to hammer out raw materials that both power and build everything we need to maintain civilization.

Never heard about these guys, did you? Funny, that. Also funny that Biden basically told the striking railway workers to eat shit and die, but was pretty lackadaisical on the writer’s strike.

Probably because, even though some girlies out there might get pretty salty about not getting to see the resolution to Yellowjackets, I think even more people might get just a little teensy bit more than angry if the supermarket shelves are bare.

Even as I type, the United Auto Workers union strike is expanding, as employees at Ford - which had previously not been a target of the strikes - walk out today.

Now, Biden has pledged his support to the UAW and has even committed to going to visit the picket lines to show his unwavering dedication to the working man, which is a comment that’s damn near funnier than anything a single member of the WGA has written in the past twenty years. It’s certainly more comedic than the verbal diarrhea that has gracelessly slopped out of John Oliver or Jimmy Fallon pie-holes.

This is all to say - I don’t actually dislike strikes. I’m not a particularly anti-union individual, either, though I do think they do have a nasty tendency to be co-opted by nefarious interests. In a vacuum, I think they’re somewhat necessary. When I worked at Amazon, they had positions in HR solely dedicated to rooting out union sympathies. We had to watch hours - yes, hours - of videos from corporate, explaining why unions were bad and that we should snitch on anyone who even breaths the word union or collective bargaining. Just watch some of this video made for Wal-Mart employees, warning them of the dangers of unionizing:

Again - funnier than just about anything Hollywood has put out in recent memory. They couldn’t pen something this comedic if they tried. The point is that these companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create anti-union propaganda - and that’s what videos like the above specimen are - to try and inoculate their employees against pro-union sentiments. In my opinion, they wouldn’t bother to invest so much time, money, and effort into these endeavors if they didn’t know one crucial detail - collective bargaining works.

I know this sentiment isn’t all that popular on the right, but, trust me - work a day in one of Amazon’s dystopian fulfillment hives, or pull some long-haul trucking outside of the teamster union, and you might think a bit differently. Not even a week into pulling twelve hour shifts packing boxes in an Amazon warehouse passed before the words mandatory overtime were uttered, and the moment I heard that, I went from Yeah, I’m not really big on collectivist talk to -

And, if you think I’m serious… I invite you to click this link to educate yourself.

So, yeah. I’m not anti-strike, not by any measure. Just - and you can call me crazy, if you want - I’m more pro-strike for the unions representing people who do the work that actually keeps this country and civilization as a whole functioning, versus the unions representing the guys who’s best efforts to explain the Star Wars sequels was this:

Masterful weavers of fabulous tales, aren’t they? Somehow, he came back. Joyce. Shakespeare. Tolstoy. Weep for them - they could never match this quality.

All in all, I’m sad to see the strike end. Just a little bit longer, and the whole production pipeline might have gotten so gummed up that gaskets would have started to burst. They still well might - though the writers have brokered a deal, SAG-AFTRA is still striking. There’s a chance that, with the WGA returning to work, their position may soften some, and I’m very curious to see how long this spin-off lasts, and if the WGA doesn’t perform a heel-turn and turn on their erstwhile allies and join the big bad Empire of Iger.

But, until the spin-off SAG-AFTRA Strikes Back drops on Hulu, to support less fortunate actors, bigger names with more clout and less on the line have begun to support the cause by auctioning off various services on eBay, the proceeds of which will go to supporting out-of-work actors who don’t have millions of dollars in residuals and profits rolling in month by month. Honestly? That’s admirable. Funny, too.

I think this should also be the new normal for actors. Like, instead of starring in mediocre television, they should absolutely be begging for table-scraps and the opportunity to dance like a trained monkey and offer the public real entertainment, for once. Like, I’d absolutely pay Lena Dunham a handsome sum. Not to adorn the wall of my smoking lounge with a mural of myself, standing valiantly above a slain minotaur, dressed in a flowing toga while a dark-haired Adriatic beauty leans sultry and sublime against my side (which, given her talent, would most likely be a desecration rather than decoration), but I’d definitely toss her a couple bands to, like, wrangle a chincilla I let loose in my house, or maybe play IRL Frogger and see if she can make it from one side of I-5 Express in Seattle to the other. That would have really elevated the conclusion, which seems to be fizzling out into disappointing mediocrity, at the moment.

Better hustle those buns, sister!

Unfortunately, this trend may prove to be short lived, and perhaps too-little-too-late to save this flagging season, as fake celebrity auctions are beginning to populate eBay, and people are, of course, falling for the bait, which has brought a premature stop to the best goofs Season 1 of the Strike had to offer.

Though, to be fair, I would absolutely whip Cillian Murphy’s ass back to Dublin in a staring contest, and I would sooner pay $500 bucks to smoke a little green with Dennis Reynolds Glenn Howerton before I paid for literally any other auction I’ve seen. Not in my luxurious smoking lounge, though - here in Casa de Yaqub, we smoke our hashish the way it was meant to be done, and huff it out of a punctured can of Natty Light behind the Denny’s in Bremerton with the fry cook and the assistant manager.

Now that, is entertainment. This whole saga has been nothing but pure entertainment - a real laugh-a-minute tour-de-force, the likes of which they just don’t make in Hollywood anymore. I really do mean it when I say that the WGA strikes were more entertaining than anything else on offer from Netflix, Disney, and Amazon Prime at the moment, and it’s a real shame to see it go. Though, I’m hoping it’ll get picked up for a second season in the near future. Hey - with enough fan demand, anything’s possible.

And, uh - well, my birthday is coming up, y’see, and if anyone wants to buy their favorite Substack author a little early gift, well…

I’ve got ideas.

1. Though, to be completely, totally, and perfectly fair and honest… I must commend them on not breaking rank this whole time and sticking to their guns. Even without union-busters strolling in to crack skulls, it’s still no mean feat to keep such a united front for so long.