Rushfield: When the Lights Go On Again

No, we won't be hugging it out after the strike

New Yorkers celebrate victory in Europe at the close of WWII. (Corbis Historical/Getty Images)

Although it feels right now like we're walking in place, we are advancing towards some invisible finish line, just over the horizon, and the entertainment business will get back to the business of entertaining.

Whatever the blockers now, the leadership of both sides should be mandated to spend all day, every day, sitting in a room looking at each other — devices checked at the door — until this is over.

But whether the end is a week or a year away — I’m hearing some of the studios in town are hopefully eyeing a mid-October re-start to production — we're going to get there, and everyone who can hold out until then will breathe a sigh of relief that this long nightmare is over.

But the big question is: Will the end wash over us like Times Square erupting at the end of World War II?

…Or with exhausted dread like the final moment of The Graduate?

Remains to be seen. But, when the strike is behind us, hard, maybe even harder questions will appear. 

For the writers and the actors, there will be some improvement in their circumstances. But whether it's an inch forward or a mile, they'll rejoin an industry where basic problems await, having festered and lingered, however things go for the writers’ and actors’ Minimum Basic Agreement.

So what will we be returning to, when the lights go on again? And how do they go back on?

Let's take a tour through post-strike land: