I await the return of my beloved (and sorely missed) Jon Stewart with excitement and anxiety. How can “The Daily Show,” so smartly and tightly scripted, function without  its writers? I have suffered through “Dance Wars” (unwatchable) and loaded the dishwasher during the return of “Medium.” Finally it’s 10 p.m.

Oh, Jon. You don’t even look rested. And is there something on your face? A big pimple between your  eyebrows? No, it’s the “writers strike solidarity unibrow” he says he’s grown during the strike, comparable to Letterman’s beard. This isn’t “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” he explains, because he  can’t do that during the strike. The new title is “A” Daily Show With Jon Stewart.  

“Imagine having a show. Go ahead. You’re just like me right now. You don’t have writers either. So please.” Not being able to make fun of the political campaigns was clearly tough. He was tortured, he says,  watching Mike Huckabee win Iowa “with Chuck Norris in the background!” (Big laugh at the picture.) “Cold white people have had their say. Tomorrow night is New Hampshire where colder, whiter people will have their say.”

Almost every other bit addresses the strike. On screen, where the funny captions go: “Space reserved for clever pun.”"The writers want to be paid for Internet content. They’re already paid for content on television. Why is the Internet any different?… You may say to yourself, Jon, I’ve been on the Internet, and I’ve been on the  iTunes, and your show costs $1.99. Per episode. Why shouldn’t the writers get a piece of that? Well, that’s not a content charge. That’s a shipping and handling charge.” He explains the residuals formula: “The distance to the screen divided by the size of the screen squared times 2 1/2 equals shut the bleep up.”

Some of the bits are awkward, one involving AIDS ribbons and another suggesting that the strike, because it kept the late-night shows off longer, is now 9 1/2 times worse than 9/11. Bits on “The Daily Show” always fall flat from time to time, but there’s usually a better filter than this to keep the more cringe-worthy ones off.

Perfect (if boring) first guest: a labor relations expert from Cornell University. Some people, the guy  says,  thought even he shouldn’t appear on the show because it would do harm to the Writers Guild’s cause. Did they think if he did appear, that would open the door to other professors? Jon wonders. Of all the hosts on TV, there’s no problem with Jon Stewart doing an interview without writers. He’s smart and quick; I once watched him eat a plate of hors d’oeuvres while bantering with five or six reporters and he was completely spontaneous and  hilarious.  

The guest, though, is adding little to my knowledge of this strike in particular or labor relations in general. Jon manages a dig at the Guild for not making an interim deal with his show and others “that would willingly do it.” (I also wonder why the union wouldn’t agree to this. I understand making an example of NBC Universal, but not these little shows.) This guy wouldn’t have gotten two segments if the writers were there — but on the other hand, the pretaped bits with the reporters they have these days are often pretty lame, so I’m not seeing that big a loss. It will be interesting to see whether (a.) Stewart is censured by the union for writing too much, as Leno was, and (b.) how his monologue holds up on nights two, three and four.

Now, at 10:26, I’m worrying about Stephen Colbert. How will his elaborate spoof manage writerless? In his preview, he has a huge, fake, rabbinical  beard and is “shredding some documents.” Not a script, he insists, before warning Jon that he was alarmed by  ”how prepared you seemed. I will be making a call to the Writers Guild People’s Council for the Preservation of the Written Word. This will not go unnoted, sir.” He also gets a big laugh by accidentally shredding his beard.

The Moment of Zen is a silent picture of writers picketing outside  ”The Daily Show.”

Colbert welcomes us to “The Cole-bert Report,” suggesting that his writers had scripted the pronunciation of his name incorrectly. He is getting a huge, screaming ovation, much louder than Stewart got. I suspect this is a set-up time-killer, as is his Leno-like circuit of the front rows. It has taken up close to three minutes.

“We have had a little bit of a technical snafu here tonight,” he says, complaining to director Jimmy that “there are no words in that damn prompter there.” He knows there’s a strike, “I’m not a complete idiot, but how does that affect me?”

The last night the show was on was the night he was rejected by South Carolina for the presidential ballot, he recalls, claiming he just “took a little time off to have a good cry.” There are boos when he points out that Mike Huckabee won Iowa, showing clips in which Huckabee offered him the vice presidency in return for  the “Colbert bump.” “Huc-olberry 08″ — a campaign slogan and a Ben & Jerry’s flavor. He shows the same picture from a Huckabee rally that Stewart used (a goofy, hick-looking guy) and takes Obama’s challenge to eat grits.

He gets to the strike after 14 minutes. “I have always been anti-labor. I have always been anti-union. This is completely consistent.” Clips showing him attacking organized labor are amusing (and as Jimmy Kimmel has pointed out, repeating bits gives the writers residual payments that they can use for baby formula).

“You know what, people? I don’t need my writers. Which brings me to tonight’s Word…. Which brings me to tonight’s Word…. (Silence, nothing on screen). And that’s the Word.”

Colbert’s guest is a writer who profiled Obama in Atlantic Monthly. I wonder if a writer, even a  freelance  one, had any concern about crossing a writers’ picket line? This guy seems very odd in voice and mannerisms.  Maybe he’s a fake, like Colbert’s character himself. Speaking of which — I think the “Colbert Report” interviews are always the weak link, requiring Colbert to stay in character as the blowhard right-winger while also sneaking in ironic questions. This one isn’t an exception. And there’s a second interview, about unions, just as the show should be ending.

In the end, I’d give both shows a solid B or even B-plus — nowhere near as good as when either is really ON, but with some funny stuff, and nice to see back. “A” Daily Show and half a Colbert are better than none. And the best part? No on-screen weather warnings or meteorological interruptions!