I didn’t have to register to read it maybe because I linked directly to the article instead of the LAtimes main page it is asking people to register.
Basically comedy writers hate(d) it because the comedy isn’t funny (the ardor has died down as the show has improved) yet the audience is supposed to think that the Matt Perry character is a fucking genius. We are supposed to think that because Sorkin TELLS us over and over again that he is. Like other people have said you can’t just tell us that someone is the best at something and then give numerous examples of the opposite being true. The same can be said of the Harriet character. Everyone bows down before that character and tells us that she is a gifted comediene but the actress herself isn’t charismatic or funny. She’s a great actress… but quit telling me she’s the second coming of Lucille Ball.
The article actually ends with a former comedy writer for a late night show saying that the reality is that the backstage politics of comedy tv is much darker than either show (Studio 60 or 30 Rock) can imagine. Which isn’t true at all…30 Rock being made up of former SNLers (Tina Fey had a bad reputation when she was running things) just realizes that comedians cutting eachother down and jockeying for position isn’t as funny as Rachel Dratch in a blue blob costume.
I took the bullet and registered to read the article. The summation is that (according to the article) comedy writers don’t like it because they don’t think it’s authentic. They don’t think the sketches would really work as sketches (it cites a sketch comedy troupe who performed some of the fictional sketched in order to prove the point), they think the Matthew Perry character is pretentious, political and moralistc in an unrealistic way. They make the point that comedy writers are more interested in getting a laugh than getting across a mesage. The character of Harriet is also mentioned as a character who is supposed to be exceptionally talented and riotously funny but who never actually shows any evidence of it on the show.
The article mentions a popular blog by a comedy writer named Ken Levine who has apparently done a lot of commentary on the show which is held up as being representative. It doesn’t give a link but it shouldn’t be hard to google.
Levine was a writer for The Simpsons; in fact, his latest posting is a nice long segment from his script (cowritten with David Isaacs) for the classic episode “Dancin’ Homer.”
I actually wrote the one wholly original piece in the show. A running sketch about the protestors outside of the Studio 60 building protesting “Crazy Christians”.
I was involved with the whole show so I can tell you about that.
My sketch went over well with the audience. Overall though I’d say the audience appreciated the show but it wasn’t a laugh riot. It was a show written for people who had followed the show first and for a general audience second.
With filling out the couple of sketches that appeared on the tv show the difficulty was working in the bits that were actually on the show and trying to write in the style of those sketches. I think we had varying degress of sucess with that. Our full version of Nic Cage Couple’s Counselor can stand on its own. The Nancy Grace missing cell phone sketch, not so much. Other things like the Comedia Dell’Arte sketch wasn’t seen on the show just referred to as being outrageusly funny. All we had to go on was that it took place at a movie theater concession stand and used traditional costumes. So we wrote a sketch about a modern person having to deal with comedia characters (I played Pantalone). That was funny regardless of if you had been watching Studio 60 and knew that it was so funny it had become a recurring sketch.
