With a potential strike by the Writer’s Guild of America only days away, studios are scrambling to finish up their existing projects before they have to resort to desperate measures. As is often the case, a pro-labor standpoint isn’t easy to find in press coverage of the strike, and in the grand tradition of writers getting the shaft in Hollywood, far too many stories resort to old jokes ("TV shows have writers?"). Still, with the Da Vinci Code sequel being the first potential casualty of the strike, and NBC thinking about airing the original British version of The Office as a replacement program, it’s hard not to think of the strike as a possible blessing in disguise. . . — Leonard Pierce