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I thought I posted about this in its own thread, and it's mentioned in the West Wing thread, but I figured it deserved its own spot.
Studio 60 is the new Aaron Sorkin show, which looks like a combination of West Wing and Sports Night in some ways (though not in content), really it's a parody of SNL, behind the scenes at a sketch comedy show.
There was a short 30 second spot for it in the middle of West Wing. It looked pretty funny. But I still wonder/worry about being able to NOT look at Matt Perry and Brad Whitford as Chandler and Josh. But I've had the same questions for other established characters in other shows. It usually goes away.
quote:Originally posted by prolixshore: I love Aaron Sorkin. I am looking forward to this show more than I've ever looked forward to a TV show.
An almost sure recipe for disappointment. I'm looking forward to the show, but keeping my expectations low.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Yeah Puffy, the trailer was seriously a cliff notes version of the first episode. But I guess they are really trying to draw people into it.
I love the casting of Whitford and Perry as the 'producers' of the show in the show. I've always loved those two. I also like the guy who played Danny on West Wing. Everyone else is iffy at the moment, I'll give them a chance before I make judgement.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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The drawback being if someone didn't like what they saw in the preview, they now have no reason to sit down and watch the pilot.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Expectations are a problem for me too. At this point anything less than the third greatest show of all time will count as a letdown.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Feb 2000
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It looks interesting, but I agree that the trailer gave away too much. I feel like I don't really have to see the pilot to know what happens, so I have no incentive to watch the show.
That said, I'll probably just watch it anyway.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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I don't love Perry. I think that he was funny on Friends because the other guys couldn't deliver a line, but Whitford looks like a natural. It makes me wish that it were Lowe and Whitford. My biggest surprise is that Amanda Peet may actually work in the role, as well as Weber and Busfield. I don't know if Sorkin can write for D.L. Hughley. We'll see. Coordry is just a natural. He is like the quiet one in Pen and Teller. Again, Whitford feels awesome for this part. The lines sing from his mouth. The swagger, boyish rogue thing even works. This could be his MASH.
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I heard about this a few months ago, and I've freaking pumped. I love Sorkin. I hope this thing is a smash hit.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Perry has been great in a lot of other roles other than just Friends. And it wasn't because no one else in any of those movies couldn't deliver a line.
Regardless, I thought everyone in Friends was great. And not that it's really scientific information or anything, but they must have done something right to last for 10 seasons.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Well, I was right about the casting one on front: Bradley Whitford has been cast very, very poorly here. Bad choice. The rest of the cast is actually pretty good.
I'm not saying Whitford's a bad actor, I'm saying he couldn't be more wrong for this role. He plays it with such *earnestness*.... It's like he read the script, said to himself 'this could be an important show' and decided to deliver all of his lines with as much *importance* as he can muster up. He doesn't sound natural at all.
The other problem I have with this show is that it doesn't look like it's behind the scenes of anything. It looks very very polished and way too slick. It looks far too Hollywood.
I think they would have been far better off going with a more docu-drama type feel.
So... The actual show is far inferior to the script. (The script was phenomenal.)
However: It is still much better than most television.
That is my opinion.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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It was available by NetFlix I believe. I personally can't wait to watch it, Sorkin is awesome.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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I think they set some good stuff up, but the bangs weren't as big as Aaron Sorkin usually serves up. Not a bad beginning but I'm expecting more. But I'm a huge Sorkin fan so there you go.
I think the Christian angle is going to be fascinating. It's a ballsy move.
edit: I've never really liked Matt Perry or Amanda Peet. I thought Perry was very good. Peet, I could have taken or left.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I think that's the basis of the show. Doing the ballsy thing, calling a spade a spade, and such.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Really enjoyed it! Contrary to TL, I thought Whitford was the best of the bunch. He has extraordinary chemistry with Perry, especially considering we're just one episode in. Especially loved the shot in the "taxicab," panning over to reveal that he was just brooding in a set prop. I thought both Whitford and Perry did an excellent job of playing characters very different from the ones that made them famous.
I missed the classic Sorkin "pedeconferencing" style of shooting, and the episode as a whole didn't blow me out of the water the way the pilot for "The West Wing" did, but I dug how it merged the look and feel of "Sports Night" with the hour-long format of "The West Wing." If they keep Sorkin writing and Schlamme directing, I forsee great things out of this one.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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The good thing is that the show can keep it fresh the same way that the real shows keep it fresh, through changing the celebrity every week.
The intern asking if he is coming to save them was adorable. I still don't know what they are going to do with Courdry and Hughley. I hope they make Bradley the serious one of the two. He can keep the swagger, and the drug problem, I just want him to be the adult.
quote:How long do people think it's going to be before Josh Molina gets on the show?
Two months.
I saw the pilot last week from Netflix. I liked it - I like Witford and Perry. I like Sorkin's writing although the preachiness is heavy-handed and the critiques of those he doesn't agree with lacks nuance as always. Amanda Peet had exactly one expression the entire show (bemusement), but that could be okay if she shows some other emotions when they are called for.
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Saw this last night. It probably isn't going to be by new favorite show, but I liked it a lot.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Thought about it a bit and I'm seeing a problem with the characters they introduced. That is, they're not a coherent set.
In Sports Night, all the main and almost all the secondary characters were dedicated to the show.
West Wing, all in the White House.
Here, we've got Stephen Weber's and Amanda Peet's characters who, at least in the pilot, are treated as main characters, but they're not part of a unit with the rest of the cast. It's not like there's a good reason to show them interacting with everyone else each week. As I see it, they're either not going to be main characters, in which case why spend so much time on them in the pilot, or there's going to be reasons for them to always being hanging around Studio 60, or the two of them will have their own semi-separated stories going on.
I don't like the sound of the latter two.
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I'm not sure what preachiness there was except for the anti-TV execs, which is hardly news, and Pat Robertson, which was basically accurate and true, I felt, to the characters.
I'm betting they're going to hire a new writer pretty soon who's going to look a little nerdy but delivers the goods.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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The drugs, the state of art, the entire religious skit thing - self-righteous misunderstanding everywhere
Crazy Christians? That's the title for a brilliant skit for which a main character threw away his career? I don't believe it - I wish we could have seen the evidence that this was great. The title of it sounds like a cartoon from the knee-jerk section of the Dallas Observer. If that was the best Sorkin could come up with, it's a good thing he didn't try to write the sketch.
Also, if it was written by Perry four years before, I don't believe the relationship with the blonde woman. Even before there was Matt, I absolutely would not have dated anyone who treated something I loved with so little respect. Dating nonmembers didn't bother me, but dating someone who despised something important to me would. If Perry always thought that way and he and the girl were still dating, that implies that she's willing to be with someone who looks down on something she loves. She either doesn't really love it, or else she doesn't have a problem being looked down on. I can see a short-term relationship easily (it's easy to overlook things like that when it's still fun all the time), but not a long-term one - not something that lasted almost the entire four years. I believe the breakup, but it should have come four years earlier for it to ring true. Unless Sorkin wants us to think that women don't mind at all being looked down on.
I like Sorkin's style, but considering how women were occasionaly treated on the West Wing (not C.J., but then, she wasn't allowed to have a personal life either - the price she paid for self-respect), I suspect he believes the latter.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I don't think you've ever worked on a sketch comedy show. I have. All the titles for the sketches were very basic. They're there for identification for the performers and crew, not to be part of the presentation. Crazy Christians fits fine with me.
I think you're mistaking the group for the religion. If you don't think that a Christian can find other Christians, especially other separate groups of Christians, funny and/or objectionable, you live in a very small world.
Identifying the people who belong to the religion, even if it's the same sect of the religion you belong to, as the religion itself is idolatry.
Being a devout Christian doesn't mean that you love anyone anywhere who also bears the Christian label.
edit: Phrased that last badly, but I think you get my point.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Clearly you like it and want to defend him. That's fine. Sorkin has a history of writing witty, clever shows with good characters that occasionally sit and preach and have myopic vision and lack of understanding.
Oh my stars, that episode of Sports Night with the commentary about the confederate flag? I'm surprised Sorkin didn't sprain something he was patting his own back so hard. It stopped the show cold and made for an awful half hour of television, but I like that he takes a stand. I think it's too bad he's so often self-righteous and narrow about it, but I admire people trying to do their best to live up to principles.
The portrayal of women still bothers me.
He's not perfect, but he's a known quantity. I'll watch it.
Well, no, I won't, since I don't have a television and so cannot play along with this thread once it premiers, but I'll Netflix the DVDs when they come out.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Harriet doesn't know Matt wrote the sketch. Even if she did she wanted to be in it so presumably it's not offensive to her, and I don't remember anything else he's done yet that's shown little respect for Christians in general rather than Robertson and (maybe) the 700 Club audience in particular.
I was wishing the skit title was less lame as well. I fanboyed in the "that's just the show's naming style" explanation too, but the... lack of nuance... was jarring after all that build up.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I got the impression that while Harriet is Christian, she's not fanatically so. I got the impression that Matt is very much against the fanatical Christian type.
I even got the impression that Harriet is against the fanatical Christian type, though she was willing to use them to advance her career.
He found working with them even under that pretense horribly wrong, and thus the divide.
It's not so unbelievable to me, really.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Exactly - in order for the relationship to work, Harriet can't be as religious as she says she is.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I don't know if saying she's not fanatically Christian, although technically true, really captures it. She's established as a pretty devout Christian. I get the feeling the CD she was promoting was of Christian music (might have been just Country, but I'm pretty sure it was Christian).
She wasn't using them to advance her career, at least not consciously, as much as she went on the 700 club, despite her distate for Pat Robertson, in order to reach out to his audience, a large section of whom she doesn't think fit into the "Crazy Christian" label.
edit: I've got to wonder, for kat and those who think like her, if thinking the "Fundamentally Oral Bill" arc of Bloom County, where Bill the Cat becomes a televangelist, was really funny means that a person isn't a real Christian.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Exactly - in order for the relationship to work, Harriet can't be as religious as she says she is.
Why not? The impression she gave me was that of a committed, but fairly progressive Christian who takes her faith very seriously. That she doesn't burst into angry flames anytime someone maligns Christianity doesn't make her any "less" religious than Pat Robertson or any other Christian. Furthermore, I don't think we're given any indication that Matt is anti-religious (or even anti-Christian). He's very much anti-fundamentalist Christian conservative, but his opposition seems to be primarily political. In any case, Harriet is very much not that sort of Christian. At no point during the conversation does Matt belittle her beliefs- he pointedly only criticizes her implicit endorsement of Robertson's. And I think that is the real crux of the argument between them. It's not Harriet's Christianity. It's not even her audience's Christianity. It's that Matt feels that by appearing on The 700 Club, Harriet was tacitly supporting Robertson's political views. Considering that most of the 700 Club's audience would no doubt have taken her appearance that way, his objection is hardly unrealistic.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I was a little disappointed with Harriet's put down scene.
I read that at one point in the script, this took place at a table where the "real" cast members hung out. That cast it as Chuckles trying to funny his way into the group and she cooly cutting him down, ending the "Untill you..." with "you need to find another table."
I liked that scene better.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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You know, I was thinking about it. Aaron Sorkin is one of the people who deals with religion in his shows and has no problem with having characters who have religion as an important part of their lives. In Sports Night they have a full on Seder and Dana rediscovers church. In The West Wing President Bartlett is clearly a religious man and they've got plenty of going to church in the storylines. Now, he's got one of his main characters as an unashamed evangelical Christian.
And yet people complain because he doesn't do religion the way they want him to. You ever wonder that maybe this might be a contributing factor as to why religion doesn't show up on tv that much?
Its too easy to switch from complaining "No one talks about God on TV" to "No one talks about the True God on TV".
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I really like the show. Whitford is great, I liked him on WW (though sometimes his character whined so much I got tired of him), but he is really shining in this role. The character is honest, and he plays it no problem. Perry is okay, he can still deliver one liners and he is very likeable. But Whitford carries the show for me when it comes to actors. I think the writing is superb and can only get better. I want them to do more with Hughley. He can be so much more than they've let him so far.
Posts: 176 | Registered: Sep 2006
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The only thing that does edge a little on me is the overt preachy-ness. However, it's only a very little and since I think that most of what has been said pretty much needed to be said, I approve.
I really love the huge countdown clock in Matt's room.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Sweet Jebus, this show is good except when they're doing the actual show.
"Jenny doesn't have anybody"? Even if it weren't the kind of stupid "the other side are idiots" that the show is supposed to be against, it just wasn't funny.
The fundamentalist Jeopardy show wasn't funny either. They're mean. They're cheap shots. And, most importantly, they're not funny.
And it's not like they need them. Everything else is just so good and they're dealing with those issues. They don't need things like that.
I'm sure they could borrow someone from Second City or somewhere to write them a sketch each week. Who the heck wouldn't want to write something for an Aaron Sorkin show? Or, the "Society Carwash" bit sounded funny (Do people get what I mean about the very simple names for the sketches?).
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I gotta say. If I was in a theatre with a woman I wasn't immediately related to and Sting was playing "Fields of Gold" on a lute , I'm pretty sure we'd end up kissing. It's not even fair; it's like getting zapped with a love beam. So, I'm having problems with that last scene.
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I agree, the show is great...but their skits are simply not funny. Then again, many of the skits on SNL aren't funny either.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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I think the actual sketches are amusing, but not hysterically funny. I watch it much more for what happens off camera than on camera, so to speak. I wonder who Sorkin is consulting, if anyone, on the actual sketches that are used or hinted at in the show.
I thought the sketch with Harriet as the woman who didn't have a baby was kinda funny, and the news show they do is usually kinda funny. The thing with the lost cell phones and the African soldier seemed to drag on forever, but a couple moments were pretty funny. "Can I go now?" "No!"
Sorkin is funny, but he isn't necessarily good at sketch comedy. I agree with Squick about getting someone from something like Second City. Or, god willing, cancel 30 Rock, and move Tina Fey over (and have Alec Baldwin join the cast!).
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I don't think the actual sketches are supposed to be as funny as actual sketches on SNL (even when those aren't that funny). I think that the sketches are just background noise and that if they were too well done they would distract from the show. They don't want people to watch the show for the sketches. As long as they seem like the type of sketches that you would see on SNL, they're fine.
Posts: 3056 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:I gotta say. If I was in a theatre with a woman I wasn't immediately related to and Sting was playing "Fields of Gold" on a lute , I'm pretty sure we'd end up kissing. It's not even fair; it's like getting zapped with a love beam. So, I'm having problems with that last scene.
To be fair, I think he really wanted to kiss her. And, if he had kissed her, that would've made that particular plotline come to a head far too quickly. But, yeah, that last scene had me sighing. Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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The show they are supposed to be putting on is supposed to be much better than SNL. SNL, esepcially after Tina Fey left, is really bad.
I do think they do an okay job in the news show. But I don't see anything that is remotely funny about the no baby sketch. It was just two characticures quick delivering "Having a baby is great and not having one sucks." lines.
I think there are places you could go with the basic idea that would be funny. Like, I don't know, treating it like the people - like the Jon Stewart character from Half-Baked, who think that everything is better and more meaningful on weed.
"Have you ever looked at the back of a dollar bill?" "Yeah, but have you ever looked at the back of a dollar bill after giving birth to a baby? It's just so much more meaningful."
or you could show the women thinking that they have either superpowers or a deeper understanding of say poetry because they gave birth. Maybe sort of like the Motel 6 commercials.
"Are you a doctor?" "No, but I have given birth to a child, which makes me understand everything on a much deeper level."
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:To be fair, I think he really wanted to kiss her.
See, that's what I don't buy. I could be standing next to my worst enemy and you pop Sting doing that song live on a lute in front of me and we're going down to make-out town. If it was someone I had broken up with but was still in love with? Forget about it. I'd either have asked her to marry me or at least had a trial run through of the wedding night right there on the balcony.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Come to think about it, they could have made a sketch out of that.
"Sting - marriage councilor"
A couple comes in, furiously fighting with each other.
Sting tries everything, but they won't stop sniping, so he pulls out the lute and gives it a go. They now start telling each other how much they are in love. He stops, they fight. And so on. The endings tough. Maybe it stops with him sending them out with a CD or something.
Or you could just do an "unlikly pairings" in response to the music, like a pig and an elephant.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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