Carson Daly may not have won over any friends at the Writers Guild of America, but he no doubt just got a bit tighter with his buddies at NBC.

Five weeks into the writers' strike, the Last Call host returned to the airwaves Monday night sans the cue card-worthy quips of his staff's union scribes, becoming the first late-night emcee to cross the picket line.

Daly taped the show last week—and was excoriated by the guild, especially for trying to solicit material via phone and email. But until the episode aired Monday, the 34-year-old had remained largely mum about his motivation.

"If I had not been back on the air tonight, 75 members of my loyal staff and crew were going to get laid off," he said at the show's open, adding that NBC execs told him, "You either come back, or they're laid off.

"I said, 'Let's turn the lights on, I'm gonna come back.' It's that simple."

Daly had no reason to doubt that NBC would make good on its cleaning-house threat, as the network effectively laid off the nonguild staffs of its other two late-night talk shows, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

However, the hosts of those two shows both stepped forward in the wake of the layoffs to pay the nonstriking staffs out of their own pockets. Staffers at CBS' Late Show with David Letterman and Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson have also been promised pay at least through the end of the year by Letterman's World Wide Pants, which produces the shows. ABC is also continuing to shell out for staffers at Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Since the strike began on Nov. 5, all six late-night shows have been airing repeats.

Unlike his peers, however, Daly is not a member of the Writers Guild, thus making him considerably easier prey for the network to pressure into crossing the picket line. He also had just four writers on his staff who were guild members, as opposed to the often double-digit WGA staffs of his competitors.

"I miss my writers," he said, adding, somewhat unnecessarily, that his entire opening gambit was ad-libbed. "None of this is written—clearly!

"I don't know what we're gonna do, moving forward the rest of the week. But I'll figure it out."

Daly wasn't all somberness in the half-hour show's open, though, and attempted to inject some humor into the comeback program, telling the audience another reason why he felt the need to resume his hosting duties was because "we ran out of repeats. A month is a long time."

He filled the minutes that would ordinarily be filled by a monologue with a few less writer-heavy bits, including a cutaway shot of a would-be cue card holder thumbing through a magazine and a showcase of staff vacation photos taken over their monthlong strike-dictated break.

Victoria's Secret model Karolina Kurkova and rockers Plain White T's were Daly's comeback guests, while Alicia Keys, Gym Class Heroes, Shannyn Sossaman, Chuck star Yvonne Stahovski and One Republic are on board later in the week.

When production on the show resumed last week, Daly issued a statement. "I feel I have supported my four guild writers and their strike for suspending production for a month," he said, making no mention of network pressure.

The WGA blasted Daly's decision to not only resume hosting duties but to call for nonunion writers to submit jokes for his show, expressing its "profound disappointment."

An email written by Daly made its way onto the Smoking Gun last week and was a call for submissions for jokes to fill his dead airtime.

"At some point during my first week back on air, I will be mentioning the devastating writers' strike and saying something to the effect of 'a TON of my friends and family have been calling me, leaving messages, offering their help with jokes because they know I don't have any writers working...

"I will then play some, most or all of your jokes on the air, in a string."

Daly didn't follow through on that for Monday's show. And the Writers Guild remained silent on Daly's return. For the most part.

In a video made by the writers of The Colbert Report and posted Monday afternoon to unitedhollywood.com, the WGA's official strike blog, footage shows famously cute Internet animals and pets—skateboarding dogs, including Law & Order: SVU star Richard Belzer's pooch, piano-playing cats and hand-holding otters among them—demonstrating their solidarity with the union by refusing to be cute online.

The video ends with David Cross dressed up in full cat-suit regalia, meowing his heart out in front of a piano, with a banner flashing "Scab." The video asks users to reply with footage of their own pets abstaining from cuteness in solidarity with the strike but cautions them to be careful who they send their videos to. The screen then shows a still shot of Daly back on set.