The striking writers are still picketing, the shows are actually on hiatus, but NBC decided to send a little good news to the cast and crew of their shows Chuck and Life: a full season order.

Variety reports that while NBC held off longer than normal to order the “back nine,” the two shows were given the green light to finish their seasons. The trick? The writers still aren’t picking up their pencils.

Chuck star Zachary Levi says that he’s not sure that this good news will actually pan out. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly he says:

You don’t know when you can go back to work. If they were to resolve the strike today, then they’d have to start writing, and the writing would take them through the rest of January, and we stop production in February. But I don’t know if they’re going to resolve the strike before the holidays.

While NBC still has two finished, un-aired episodes they’re holding back, Levi goes on to say that he wouldn’t be surprised if they call that a wrap for the first season, and hold off those nine episodes for season two.

Though he and co-star Joshua Gomez have done several interviews saying that they’re enjoying their time to play video games (Levi is apparently addicted to Rock Band), the fact is that the show was finally starting to enjoy ratings jumps. They actually won their time slot after Dancing with the Stars ended, and have been on a steady climb since late November’s “Chuck vs. the Nemesis.”

Even the promise of eleven new episodes can’t always keep the attention of fans. Most viewers haven’t really seen the strongest effects of the strike yet, and while everybody finally went back to the table to talk it out the fact is nobody knows when a solution is going to come forward.

If the show doesn’t come back soon, will anybody even care about those last nine episodes? Will they have already made new plans for their Monday nights?