After two months of reruns because of the Writers Guild of America’s strike, “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” returned to broadcast television on Jan. 2 with all-new episodes produced without the help of a writing staff. There’s no denying Conan’s boldness for appearing on the show without writers. Wrenched between his responsibilities as a business head in charge of the salaries of hundreds of below-the-line staff and crew members, and his devotion to the Writer’s Guild’s cause, the affable talk show host waltzed through his first two shows with the unglued attitude of the Wizard of Oz, making a sound out of what is essentially nothing – and causing quite a display of it. This way, he figures, his crew can make a living and his writers will not feel left out of the show. In line with TV talk show hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno, O’Brien has been paying his staff and crew out of his own pocket since NBC laid them off in November when the WGA went on strike. His new, writer-less show is a hash of mundane activities seasoned with aimless banter with office workers, Studio 6 tourists and guests Bob Saget and Megan Mullally. He passes time by commenting on the freshness of the water in his desk mug, and tries to beat his 46-second record for how long he can keep his wedding ring spinning on his talk-show desk. In effect, his show carries on the same leisurely spirit as it did in the past, however drained it may be is of its wittier strokes. In fact, it might now be a show that leaves the comedy aficionado in awe of its sophomoric scrawl, but it has something. To be specific, it has Conan O’Brien. Without his writers there is more of a helping of his unbridled personality than there has ever been, letting his charm, and the show with it, roam unchecked. As a WGA member, Conan is prohibited from performing any writing duties that would normally have been done by him and the remainder of his writing staff. For this reason he cannot produce a dense monologue or the scripted bits between his interviews which he has come to be known for. The interviews themselves have been also hit by the strike, due to their reliance on questions which Conan can no longer have written or write himself, but instead must come up with live on the spot. As he tries to extend his hip approach to the talk show genre beyond the reach of his writers and to his young-adult fan bracket with physical stunts like hiding behind cardboard boxes and climbing a rope ladder to an unexplored scaffolding on top of the stage and recording the audience with a small digital camera, one can’t help but notice a dispirited gleam lurking out from his eyes. He really wants his writers back. Physically, he plays the bruised chieftain well, as he sports a flinty beard in protest for writers’ rights, and repeats desperately his hopes that his friends and co-workers journey safely back to his show with “a fair deal.” He has made good on his promise to promote his unflinching support for his writers when he returned to the air without them. In a mid-December press release regarding the return of his show, he said, “I will make clear, on the program, my support for the writers. Of course, my show will not be as good. In fact, in moments it may very well be terrible. My sincerest hope is that all of my writers are back soon, working under a contract that provides them everything they deserve.” He trumpets this cause loudly and expressively, often imitating his studio heads who haven’t complied with the WGA’s requests as profit-hungry villains who pet imaginary cats and chant “more profits” as their laps meow. O’Brien got his start in show business as a comedy writer who dabbled in improvisation venues. It wasn’t long after he graduated from Harvard that he won his first Emmy for TV writing. After serving for years as a writer-producer for “The Simpsons,” then “Saturday Night Live,” he landed the job to replace David Letterman on “Late Night” upon Letterman’s move to CBS. The return of new episodes of NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” was preceded by the return “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on the same station, and of “The Late Show with David Letterman” on CBS, both of which continue with full support for the Writers Guild of America’s strike.