“Uh, the Succession table?” series creator Jesse Armstrong replied when asked to provide his seating number at Sunday night’s Writers Guild Awards. Unsurprisingly, the Emmy-winning scribe would be front and center at the East Coast ceremony, which marked the final awards show for his HBO drama after it wrapped a four-season run almost a year ago. “It has been a little while since some of the nominated work was released,” host Josh Gondelman, onetime writer on Last Week Tonight and Desus & Mero, said during his razor-sharp monologue. “The Succession finale was so long ago that since it aired, Tom Wambsgans has already run the Waystar Royco company fully into the ground.”

At the top of the show, Gondelman acknowledged that the awards had been delayed from their usual pre-Oscars slot. “This year, we are the final event of awards season,” he declared. “The Golden Globes? Ancient history. The Oscars were our opening act. The Writers Guild Awards are the headliner of all the awards shows.” The emcee didn’t shy away from acknowledging the reason for such a delay—2023’s monthslong writers’ strike. “The strikes ended in the fall, but some people are still getting back on their feet, of course—even celebrities,” Gondelman began. “For example, just to make ends meet, Jon Stewart was forced to take a part-time job working Monday nights.”

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The lasting impacts of the strikes have caused some industry insiders to advise that writers to “just survive ’til ’25,” said Gondelman. “It’s a little depressing that our industry mantra could double as the tagline for season two of The Last of Us, or the motto of Leonardo DiCaprio’s next girlfriends,” he continued, to groans from the audience. One of his biggest applause lines? “The real winners aren’t only the people you see onstage accepting trophies,” Gondelman advised. “They’re everyone in this room whose projects weren’t quietly shelved for the tax write-offs.” He continued: “The work writers do is so valuable—both in terms of the information and entertainment it provides for audiences, and the fact that it’s a specialized skill that should be compensated fairly.” 

The ensuing evening mimicked that punchy, freewheeling spirit. Many of the WGA winners, outside of David Hemingson’s The Holdovers for best original screenplay (Oscar winner Anatomy of a Fall was deemed ineligible by the WGA), had already collected trophies at the Emmys or Oscars—including Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction for best adapted screenplay, The Bear for best comedy series, Beef for best limited series, and Succession for best drama. Accepting the latter’s award for best episodic drama, writer Georgia Pritchett quipped, “I really don’t think this was better than the other episodes, so this is a nightmare,” adding, “I’m horrified to be part of this miscarriage of justice.”

Presenting best episodic comedy to Poker Face’s “Escape From Shit Mountain,” Problemista’s Julio Torres, who mingled with fellow attendees Ilana Glazer and Larry Owens during the event, joked, “I was wondering if it was funny for me to say La La Land.” Later, Somebody Somewhere star Bridget Everett invoked her singular comedy routine, explaining, “I would like to say that I do have a slight reading disability and it would take me some time to work my way through those names, so it might be faster if I just go around and motorboat all the nominees.” She was joined onstage by J. Smith-Cameron, who emulated her Succession character by saying she was there to “quietly monitor to make sure you don’t say anything inappropriate or libelous.”

Even some of the honorary awards—which went to Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tony Gilroy, writer and producer Ron Nyswaner, and the members and leadership of IATSE, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, SAG-AFTRA, and American Federation of Musicians for their solidarity during the WGA’s 148-day strike—felt lively. “To me, the most pivotal moments of the WGA strike of 2023 were each and every time we were joined by our sister unions,” WGAE president Lisa Takeuchi Cullen said while presenting the award. “Each and every time Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians showed up to play honky tonk on the sidewalks of New York City. Each and every time a Teamster truck driver refused to cross our line. Each and every time an IATSE crew member sacrificed their day’s pay for our cause. Each and every time a SAG-AFTRA actor grabbed a megaphone out of our hands and chanted chants that did not rhyme. Thank you for your solidarity. We are one union, and we stand by your side, forever.”

The high spirits continued late into awards season’s last gasp. When The Last of Us won for best new series, the presenters joked that the writers would be accepting on the West Coast because they “didn’t wanna be at the lit version of this show.” Accepting the award for best comedy/variety sketch series on behalf of I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson, writer Gary Richardson said, “I think everyone else is funny, but I think we’re funnier,” before gesturing to the cocktail he’d brought with him onstage: “I drink a lot.” As the night wound down, even Gondelman notified the crowd that he had long “switched from water to bourbon,” a fitting end to a strange, supersized awards season.