My thoughts on last night's episode of Studio 60 (spoilers!):
- How far out of her league is Amanda Peet? She was given some interesting material to work with in this episode and seemed to bring the same blank, i know more than you do even though i've never demonstrated it and will continued to be amused by every problem stare to every scene. Major casting faux pas.
- In contrast, the Matt and Danny interactions were even better than usual. Bradley Whitford can do no wrong, and the dreaded 'Chandler' fall-back persona only rears its head once per episode (in fact, not at all that I noticed in this one). The climax to the focus group story (the sandy part) was surprising and clever.
- Overall the character development in this episode seemed to step it up a notch from previous weeks. Case in point: Jeannie (resident show-ho) can write smart sketches about Italian commedia dell'arte? (I definitely had to look up that spelling by the way, and I still have no idea what it involves).
- I enjoyed the pop culture references such as Politically Incorrect circa 2001.
- In general, however, I've decided that my biggest problem with this show is that Aaron Sorkin clearly knows very little about comedy. His strengths are in the "let's walk and talk" snappy dialogue, good characters, and generally superb show structure. But gosh are the actual comedy sketches horribly un-funny. I'm mostly referring to last week's big intro which was supposedly heralded as turning the show around, but to me seemed boring and poorly produced.
But then, I guess this is a bit of a catch-22 with the show. It's not really about the actual Studio 60 show, but whenever they reference what they deem to be a hilarious sketch, we as viewers naturally want to see it. When we don't (as with Crazy Christians) they lose credibility fast, and when we do it's often disappointing. I actually think the way they handled it in 'The Focus Group' probably worked best of all, showing us snipets of each act. I actually laughed out loud at some of the Science Schmience jokes.
Speaking of comedy on TV in general, I think everything is pretty much horrible except for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He is consistently the only comedian with the actual comedic clout (/talent), guts, and personality (/delivery) to make me laugh, think, and respect him all at the same time. It should be noted that Stephen Colbert certainly has the first two going for him, with an extra helping of guts. Surely this is partly due to the fact that both air on the Comedy Channel and thus don't have the network pressures to avoid pissing off certain groups. But then again, if Stephen Colbert can get up in front of the entire white house cabinet and tell them off to their faces, is this really an issue? Anyways, now I must go watch Heroes! To close, an awesome Stewart quote from this week:
''In the West Bank, a group calling itself the Lions of Monotheism firebombed four churches, telling the Associated Press, 'The attacks...were carried out to protest the Pope's remarks linking Islam and violence.' The irony — and this is often the case, we find — was completely lost on them.''
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2 comments:
Excellent review of this week's "60"!
I think one of the areas where I'd disagree with you, though, is in your assessment of the sketch comedy shown as "the show within the show" here. As I watch the little snippets they show us, I'm always struck by just how much they remind me of SNL skits... which are also sometimes remarkably unfunny (to me) but clearly were believed to be hilarious by whoever wrote them, not to mention whoever greenlit them and probably whoever's delivering the comedy in them. A typical SNL 90-minute show, for me, is made up of a half-dozen or so really funny moments, gags, scenarios or punchlines... and about ten times as much stuff that just leaves me cold. Even back in the heydey of SNL (think: Akroyd, Belushi, Radner, Murray, Curtin), they'd be lucky to knock the ball out of the park even half the time. That's sort of the nature of sketch comedy, I think, especially if you try to avoid slapstick (like a sitcom would do) and actually target your humour at people who require more than fart jokes or double entendres.
And I have to say that I don't hate Peet the way you do (you disliked her before you even saw the first episode of this show, and we both know it!) but it's been tough for me to get a handle on her character so far. On the one hand, she's manipulative out the wazoo; on the other, she "looks like one of them but talks like one of us" as one of the boys said tonight. Her deer-caught-in-the-headlights look may yet work, but I'd say the smart money's on your view that she may not be up to the job.
As for the sandy scene, it's clear that Peet's character isn't the only shameless manipulator in the group, and hopefully that wasn't a throw-away line since it certainly seemed to show a bit of a dark side to Danny (or "Josh", as I inevitably call him in my head!).
And finally, yes, I agree Mr Perry is acting way above the level of Chandler, which I imagine speaks to both the quality of the writing and (to be fair) some degree of acting skill that he was never called on to reveal before.
The lack of hilarity in the clips of the sketches they show doesn't really bother me that much. I mean, on Sports Night, when they showed them doing the actual show, I always thought 'man there's no way I'd actually watch this show if it were real' but that didn't really matter because the crux of the series was the behind-the-scenes stuff.
It was cool that they focused more on the on-air stuff this week though. The one guy's Stiller/Cruise impersonations made me chuckle.
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