Getting a head-start on tonight…
“The Cold Open”
Matt and Danny have five days to organize their highly publicized first show; Harriet and Matt try to work around their romantic history; Jordan defends a controversial sketch.
Sounds pretty good so far.
I hope we don’t actually see the “Crazy Christians” sketch (which M&D’s 1st episode is supposed to open with) since they hyped it up so much in the last episode nothing could live up to those expectations. Still looking forward to the show tonight, though…
Prediction: At no point during the run of this show will we ever see any sketches or “bits” from the “show-within-the-show.” At most we see a few straight lines or a disembodied punch line followed by laughter.
The last thing that Sorkin needs is to have the real audience (the meta-audience?) judge Matt and Danny by the ability of himself or his writing team to come up with bits from an SNL-type variety show that would qualify as “classic.” Because, let’s face it, whatever they do is going to be compared with classic SNL moments.
By the way, was anyone aware of the “defaker” blog? It was a LAME attempt at viral marketing by NBC, in which they forced some assistant-to-an-assistant to create a pretend blog about the SSOTSS Show-Within-A-Show.
It was up for less than 48 hours, apparently a victim of its own comments section. Here’s a story about it from Saturday’s LA Times.
It’s arguable that their worst mistake was creating a name so similar to Defamer; since defamer.com linked to it on Thursday, many of the comments probably came from defamer readers who, let’s face it, tend to bring a lot of snark to the party…
Here in Canada we get the show a day earlier than you guys do. So I’ve already seen it. Good episode. And yes, you do get to see skits from the show. You’ll see a complete one tonight.
And not only a complete one, but a good and complete one. I missed Aaron Sorkin’s style of television.
and then we can watch it again on Mondays!
Like our fearless leader, I intend to stand by my prediction even in the face of irrefutable evidence, because if I were to admit I was wrong then the bad guys would win and terrible things would happen…
Like According to Jim getting renewed…
That musical number was great. A bit predictable (Sorkin using Gilbert & Sullivan? NEVER) but still great.
Show had good pace, the dialogue was snappy and it wasn’t too “inside baseball.” I’m satisfied.
I found this episode extremely disappointing. The whole show builds up to the opening sketch and then instead of anything funny we get a hackney, insipid musical number. What a letdown. Why couldn’t we see “Crazy Christians?” I found that sketch to be really gutless…a way to evade having to write a real sketch. There was nothing funny about it.
I also can’t stand the “Harriet” character. How the hell is it any of her business who Matthew Perry bangs? I still don’t gt that. And what’s with the obnoxious, grandstanding prayer circle before the show? Is that something we’re supposed to believe everybody would really go alond with. Why can’t she pray in her dressing room?
I also thought the press conference was nowhere near as clever and edgy as THEY thought it was.
I’m having a hard time getting into the show. I really want to like it because I dig the premise but it seem like too much of it is just routine, bullshit soap opera about relationships. I’ve never seen West Wing, saw Sports Night maybe once, so I’m not familiar with Sorkin’s work but my brother tells me all his shows are like that (wasting time with irrelevant “relationship” storylines). So far I’m having a hard time seeing what’s so great about this guy.
That musical number sucked ass.
Apparently Victoria Jackson prayed before every episode of Saturday Night Live, although I’m not sure if she got the whole cast to pray with her. The Harriet character seems to be an amalgam of conservative Christian actress Kristin Chenoweth (adorably perky blonde who can sing like crazy and used to date Aaron Sorkin) and Victoria Jackson.
And SNL’s musical numbers almost always suck ass too, so at least they weren’t deviating too much from the source material.
Well, thanks for your time. Go watch “30 Rock” until they cancel it.
I actually expect it to be a better show. Tina Fey is capable of writing a funny joke once in a while. I have yet to see one on Studio 60.
Dio, they never said Crazy Christians was going to open the show – either in this episode or last. That’s why they were casting about for the cold open. If you looked on the board, Crazy Christians was the first sketch after the initial commercial break.
Yeah, Rachel Dratch and Tracy Morgan scream “hilarious.” :dubious:
Studio 60 is some of the best writing Sorkin’s done since the first 2 season of The West Wing. It’s snappy, witty and the kind of dialogue I loved on TWW. It’s like the funniest moments of The West Wing all in one show.
Wasn’t there a line from Amanda Peet late in the pilot: “That sketch, Crazy Christians? Open with it next week.”
The romantic subplot I could very live without. The Gilbert/Sullivan song was somewhat predictable and I didn’t think it was particularly clever so the idea of the Studio 60 audience giving it a standing ovation (as was shown) feels contrived. Besides, how do you have a late-night live-broadcast comedy show in L.A.? It’s already 2:30 a.m. on the East coast; half your potential audience is asleep. Saturday Night Live, based in New York, gets rebroadcast on the West coast three hours later at 11:30 Pacific time. The L.A. setting of Studio 60 can’t be reconciled with the idea of it being a show with nationwide influence.
If you are looking for a funny sketch show, look somewhere else. This show is not sketch comedy, it is about running a sketch comedy show.
In the pilot, they mention the west coast rebroadcast, so I assume it’s actually filmed at 8:30 LA time and they say 11:30, 1, etc, because they know it’s being done for an east coast audience. At least, that’s how I’m justifying it to myself.
I was also disappointed. Most of the romantic/ex-romantic stuff dragged intolerably. And the musical number was lame and shouldn’t have been shown.
At some level, I just kept comparing it to West Wing, and thinking “on that show, this stuff actually mattered”.
Incidentally, can somebodt explain how Gilbert & Sullivan is “the greatest frat humor ever?” How is it frat humor at all? I think it barely even qualifies as humor.