Since the ghost of a writer's room presence from Ellen DeGeneres's past has come back to haunt the picket-line-circumnavigating chant-target—and in doing so, reopened the age-old debate about how much writer-abuse is too much writer-abuse when your name's in the title—the first new episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show has aired.

In it, the comedian wastes no time in addressing the strike, explaining that she refused to stand at her monologue mark as a gesture of solidarity with the staff of writers she "misses like crazy." Wisely, she failed to add, "So let's all do an Internet Residuals Rain Dance so they might start thinking about coming back to work and writing some crap better than the 'viewer mail' b.s. they've been phoning in since the season started," an impolitic outburst that would have instantly revealed her true feelings about the caliber of material her tireless staff of bit-writers have been churning out until now.

• The Ellen DeGeneres Show

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