“All good things,” we are told, “must come to an end.” It’s as accurate as it is all-encompassing. Sunsets fade. Marzipan crumbles. Termite mounds collapse under the unbearable stress of having molten aluminum poured into them by people with YouTube channels where they pour molten aluminum into things.
And, after five grueling months, the WGA strike is dust in the wind. It was fun while it lasted, but here we are: back in a world where college graduates, with in-demand professional skill sets like knowing how to construct a classical monomythic narrative and understanding where commas belong, are forced to smile and say “thank you” when someone asks them to write season eight of Secret Invasion. Despite the heavy toll that it took on the industry, some beautiful creative blossoms managed to spring from the ashes – most notably, Strike Force Five, the podcast supergroup composed of late night hosts Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and Jimmies Kimmel and Fallon. The series, created as a way to financially support the hosts’ regular employees while they were out of work, has widely been viewed as one of the only bright spots in a long, dark period for American show business.
But with the writer’s strike ending at midnight on Sept. 27, there’s just no reason – or, realistically, enough time – to continue the podcast. It’s an unfortunate fact that was confirmed by the group in a tweet on the morning of the 27th.
And there you have it. With the promise that backlogged episodes will still hit the internet in the near future, Strike Force Five has disassembled, not with a bang, but with like, a dozen joke sentences in a row. It’s sad to think that it’ll probably take either a disaster relief benefit or another WGA strike to get a group like this to work together again. It’s sadder still to think that Fallon is going to be back on the air soon.