So, did anyone else watch Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip on Monday? Did anyone else wait a day to write about it so their boiling anger could slow down to a more manageable simmer?
Well, I did, and here's why: That was the worst episode I've ever seen, certainly of that series, and possibly of any intelligent hour-long drama on television. And for once, my problem with it was not the show within the show, or the distracting, contrived universe that the show within the show preposterously exists in, but with the show, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip itself.
In short, last night's episode proved one thing: Aaron Sorkin thinks you're really, really stupid. Either that, or he's gotten really, really lazy in his storytelling, which is especially noticable when you're trying to shoehorn about 18 different issues into one hour-long show about a show that is not SNL.
Here are a few examples: 1. D.L. Hughley's storyline.
Sorkin takes great pains to point out hackneyed, cliched "black people vs. white people" humor when Hughley walks off in disgust during the act of an awful comedian at The Improv. Hughley even gives a speech about how horrible that kind of humor is.
Then, in the next scene, Hughley proceeds to tell Matthew Perry a story of his childhood friends (who are all incarcerated) and growing up in South Central that is straight out of Boys In The Hood.
So Sorkin thinks his audience is savvy enough to recognize that the African-American comic talking about how he loves a big booty is a walking cliche, but not savvy enough to notice that both of the African-American characters on Studio 60 are walking diamond-in-the-rough cliches? I mean, come on. Do they both have to be from South Central? 2. Nate Corddry's parents.
Nate Corddry's parents are American, around 50 years old, from a pretty big city, and somehow they have never heard of "Who's On First." Based on this example, here are a few other things they may not have heard of: obviously Abbott & Costello, moving pictures, television, comedy, the movie Rain Man, radio, microwaves, the artificial heart, possibly fire, etc., etc. 3. The old man and the ending.
At the end of the episode, Eli Wallach talks to Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, and Timothy Busfield about what it was like to work on a sketch comedy show in the 1950s, which is a really poignant moment because, you know, they're all working on a sketch comedy show right now. Just in case you forgot that, Busfield looks at the television in the room just as the West Coast feed of Studio 60 is beginning to air, then smiles. If there had been a thought bubble over his head that read, "The more things change, the more they stay the same," the overall effect would have been just as subtle.
Ditto for the part when Wallach describes how he just wanted to make that one special girl laugh, and it cuts to a shot of Perry thinking about his romance with Sarah Paulson. How do I know he was thinking about Paulson? Because I'm able to make simple connections. Also because right after, they cut to a shot of Paulson thoughtfully peering into the writer's room. You know, just in case I didn't get it.
And those are just the most egregious examples. To be fair, there were some flashes of good entertainment in that episode–like the ditzy girls and even the Amanda Peet/Sarah Paulson storyline–but those moments just make the rest of it seem that much worse by comparison. If Studio 60 didn't have such potential (and wasn't so much fun to, well, hate), I would definitely give up on it after that episode.
What did everyone else think?