Give Studio 60 What They Deserve This Friday
November 16th, 2006 by Andy |
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 Do you find “Studio 60″ to be self-important, unfunny, inaccurate, condescending and generally ‘cancellable’? Yeah, me too. I for one am surprised that a decorated veteran of some of the best dramas on TV, who has never been nor worked with actual sketch comedians as far as I can tell, would produce a bad comedy. I mean how does that happen? Maybe comedy audiences just aren’t smart enough to see the clever disguising of Aaron Sorkin’s life and personality traits [and ego] in each one of his characters (it’s like watching a boring megalomaniacal version of that scene in “Being John Malkovich” where Malkovich goes inside his own head). I don’t know if you’ve ever known a comedian, but I have met a few in my life, and they are nothing like the people on that trainwreck of self indulgence. Enough. I hate “Studio 60″, you get it. Part of what makes the show such an abortion is that the sketches in the show are supposed to be just soooo funny and controversial and witty and groundbreaking… but you never see them… because Sorkin can’t write them… Well, to call out and hopefully really drive home the situation, LA comedy group Employee of The Month Is doing a show this Friday, the 17th, at the Westside Eclectic in Santa Monica. The show consists entirely of all the sketches you never got to see (because the talent to write them does not exist in the writer’s room at “Studio 60″, okay really, we get it now). To quote A Socialite’s Life:
Now to be fair, “30 Rock” is what happens when you send a sketch comedian to do a sitcom writer’s job (it is also just awfully written). |
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November 17th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Studio 60 is THE best show I’ve ever seen and I’ve been an avid television viewer for over 30 years. It’s funny, smart, well written, interesting and a genuine pleasure to watch. If you don’t like it, turn the channel. Do NOT say this show is a “cancellable” program, because it has become, in the course of it’s short season thus far, my all-time favorite program.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:08 am
Oh and if your little sketch troop was worth their salt, they’d already BE on tv.
November 17th, 2006 at 5:59 am
While I actually think Employee of the Month’s show is a great idea and I’m sorry I won’t get to see it, you seem to have missed the point: Studio 60 is a DRAMA. The show within the show is a comedy, and there is plenty of room for discussion there, I’ll admit that. But the show YOU tune into is a drama. It’s got your standard Aaron Sorkin touches of the occasional laugh-hell, we could maybe call it a “dramedy,”-but it’s a drama. And NBC and Aaron Sorkin have been real clear on that point. And as a DRAMA, it’s excellent television
November 17th, 2006 at 10:12 am
ok first off, jeff, let’s keep this place civilized- the talent or lack thereof of the av club has nothing to do with whether or not studio 60 is a good show, so let’s stay on topic and try to respect everyone here.
i stopped watching studio 60 and 30 rock after about three painful viewings each, but for different reasons. yes reggie, it is a drama. but the characters depicted in said drama are comedians, and due to sorkin’s apparent very thin understanding of, and experience with actual working sketch comedians, they are very poorly represented. when the greatest working comedic team in the nation is about as funny in their personal lives as the presidential staff in another part of the sorkin-verse, you are in trouble.
i personally know a lot of working comedians; people who work on mad tv and snl, as well as lesser known tv shows and on tour doing standup and improv. using my experience with actual comedians as a guide, i can say that a show filled with the comedians depicted in studio 60 would be, to say the least, canceled. my problem with studio 60 is not that its not funny, my problem is that the characters are not comedians. if the west wing had been about a president who was always playing practical jokes on foreign heads of state, and his personal assistant actually ran the country, i would expect a similar outrage from the viewers. if you are going to make a show about comedy (even if it is a drama), you had better have some funny people in it, because we comedians (yes, i include myself) like to laugh, and we like to make each other laugh. and from what i saw, studio 60 is about as embarrassing as 30 rock, with the serious moments in 30 being about as poorly written as the ‘funny’ moments in 60.
to conclude, i will point out that there are two very talented and very successful comedians in studio 60, but they are playing characters that are written by someone who is out of his element. i find it ironic that the two anchors in sports night are actually closer to a lot of the comedians that i know in terms of personality… so sorkin is able to write that type of character, he just choses not to i guess.
November 17th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Oh andy, come on, give 30 rock a little break…
“the government is injecting our chicken nuggets with AIDS. That’s a metaphor, yo.”
Brilliant.