Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

[topher]

Hunter really likes the show but is afraid to admit it.

[James Earl Jones' voice]Hunter, come to the dark side.[/James Earl Jones' voice]

[huntergrayson]

Topher - are you my father?

Because the show does indeed have a great cast and great potential. Like many, I *want* to like it and I keep hoping it will get better. And I'm not going to be all network execy and give up on a show before it has had a full season.

Plus, they suckered me for two weeks with Lauren Graham.

I'm not saying it's all bad - Nate totally amuses me (and is cute), Steven Weber is consistently awesome and I do have an inexplicable love for Jordan McDeere. But it's not as good as it should be, given the talent and the hype. And the whole "I'm changing TV! Everything else is crap!" agenda.

But it's not unsaveable - just given the ratings and declining critical love, NBC has to do it quickly.

[indygirl]

Somebody slap me. I actually laughed out loud.

More than once.

[Binky]

The spit take scene was actually funny. First time I believed this group of people are supposed to be funny.

Still hate Amanda Peet and want her to go away.

[Deleted]

I was going to stop watching this show after those boring episodes in Nevada or Idaho or where ever they were, but Inertia bound me to my chair (Newton's Law: A big fatt butt stays on the couch, except when excess gas or food craving causes motion.)

This was a pretty good episode. And then it hit me, an epiphany not a food craving. This show is what they used to call a Variety Show (singing, dancing, skits, and goofy audience dialogues) that they used to have on TV in the old static, black and white kinoscopic, shades of vaudeville, and vaccum tubes in furniture console days. This is a Variety show with a dramatic backbone, underpinning. Instead of the Variety host announcing the next guest or sketch, they have a dramatic playlet that frames the next act (both structure and guest).

OK, Mr. Sorkin, now I get it. And Mr. Sorkin, you know what is funniest? The slapstick, even in the high tech age, slapstick (spitting in each other's faces) is funny.

[huntergrayson]

So...having Harriet be blatantly unfunny is canon now?

She's supposed to be a comic genius but can't tell a simple joke to save her life? Wha?

I...don't understand. It would make sense if they had written it like she had lost her mojo or was really freaked out about getting the award, but you have the head writer taking glee in the fact that one of his top cast members is now painfully unfunny? Rather than freaking out and re-writing the sketches around this? That doesn't make sense. Does not compute.

Also? SHOUTOUT! times 1000! My doctor gives me B12 shots all the time.

See, I would be a lot more tolerant of stuff like spit-take theater if the show didn't keep telling us how brilliant and just too darn smart for middle-America the skits sketches are (or having Mrs Tommy Schlaemme gaze adoringly at just how awesome the show is). That, to me, is the key difference between this and 30 Rock. The behind-the-scenes people on the latter work hard at The Girlie Show, but knows that ultimately they're doing stuff like bear(s) versus killer robot and their prime goal is to make people laugh. The cast and crew of S60 (the show within the show) seems to make laughter their last priority when they could be showing off their knowledge of commedia del arte or "satirizing" the Christian right and so on, so forth.

I didn't hate it. But the plotting seemed all over the place.

[pamster]

Well, I really want this show to get better because I like it more than I hate it. I'm glad it got picked up.

But I don't have tivo, or a VCR any more, so what am I gonna do in January when No Reservations starts up again??

[Deleted]

pamster said:

But I don't have tivo, or a VCR any more, so what am I gonna do in January when No Reservations starts up again??

Tell Santa all about your problem.

[india7]

I caved and caught it for the very first time last night. Dammit. Now I'm hooked, I really liked it alot.

[indygirl]

Last night's repeat is the best of all the episodes aired thus far imo. People--except for Harriet--seemed very real, very comfortable.