And I am now 99 cents poorer. Thanks!
I ripped the show a new asshole in last week’s thread, and was pleasantly surprised by how good this episode was.
A couple bits were jarring; I’m still not sold on the walk & talk. The Harriet interview started out clunky, but got much better. The reporter’s whining early on about how “This is important. What you do is important. Television is important.” had me rolling my eyes to the point of physical discomfort, which was a bad way to start. And ripping off Bill Parcells annoyed me before he even said the word “groceries.” It was even more annoying that Danny immediately followed it up with “Bill Parcells. He’s a coach who hasn’t won a playoff game in 9 years.” Uh, yeah, but he wasn’t even coaching for four of those years, fucker. Anyway…
I thought the comedy on the show-within-the-show was much improved. Damn near funny. Actually, I found myself smiling and chuckling at several of the bits, so I’ll go ahead and admit that I thought there was genuine humor there. That’s a huge improvement that greatly increased my enjoyment of the entire show.
Still not great, but my honest assessment would be pretty good. I’m cautiously optimistic that it just had a slow start, and things will pick up starting with this episode.
Oh yeah, and the previews for next week look quite promising. Shows like this need to be good to help put a stop to the glut of reality shows.
Obviously.
He desperately needs to work out his issues in therapy. With a psychologist. And not on national TV on a show that I really wish I could like, but can’t because he’s rehashing his relationships, and they’re mostly interesting to him and no one else.
BTW, who is the woman in his life who grew up with a ton of brothers? Because she’s shown up in Dana, CJ, and now Harriet. Move on. Please, please move on.
Search and Destroy sounds exactly like Temptation Island and the Real World thing that happened over the summer, that didn’t get good ratings. People aren’t going to watch - that’s the argument “We’ll give better programming,” or “trying to get a new demographic with more disposable income,” or “rebranding our network,” would have been good speeches. “I alone am saving all TV from being a cesspool” was just too self-congratulatory and smug.
When Timothy Busfield only has, what, 6 lines and he’s my favorite character, something is wrong. (Not the Timothy Busfield part, the character with no screen time part).
The studio 60 sketches were better, though.
I wonder if Aaron Sorkin is trying maximally hard to make the comedy bits super-funny, or whether he’s content with them being somewhat hit or miss, just like SNL, even SNL-at-its-best?
I didn’t think the Nancy Grace thing was great (although I’ve never actually seen the real Nancy Grace) but I thought the way it was presented, in rehearsal with all this chaos swirling about it, was very interesting.
And I really enjoyed learning more about Harriet.
Oh, and the cast member of the SWAS who does the impressions (Nick Cage, Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller)… who is he? Why isn’t he one of the “Big Three”? He’s hilarious.
To be fair, she only thinks she’s saving broadcast TV from being a cesspool.
I don’t think I’d call the “Search and Destroy” pitch a strawman. Yes, it was absurdly, patently offensive. But what do you expect from a network television reality-show-history that’s now six years old (that is, Survivor first aired in 2000, and really kicked off the blitz), and a reality show producer who is apparantly top of the game in creating new, exciting shows. The networks have to one up each other, and the producer has to one up himself on every project. I can only hope nobody gets any ideas from Sorkin and pitches something similar for next season.
I missed the first 15 minutes or so of the episode, but enjoyed the other 45. Rocky as it may be at times (and “Nick Cage: Marriage Counselor” was the worst sort of BS over-the-top-flailing-impressions-will-make-people-laugh dreck that turns me off of SNL), the show is still damned good.
Oh, and this straight boy now has to buy the Sting album. That’s some hot stuff.
I’m amazed to find myself in the minority here- I thought this was the worst episode yet. The Nancy Grace thing was tedious and unfunny. Unfunny is OK if it’s trying to make a point rather than be funny, but that segment did neither. It went on too long, like episode filler.
More filler at the end, with Sting. I loved the song and the arrangement, but it came across like a cop out.
And no matter how hard Sorkin tries to shove the Harriet and Chandler (I forget- is he Danny or Matt?) “relationship” down my throat, those two have absolutely no chemistry together, and I just can’t buy her as some super talented comedic actress. She’s just not funny, and the “funny” bits- like the Nancy Grace sketch- seem very forced. The only true moment for me in the relationship storyline was at the very end during the “you knock my socks off” line. Otherwise the whole thing just fell flat.
I really want to like this show, and every week I watch hoping that this one will gel and bring it all together, but every week I’m more and more disappointed.
+1. Found this one surprisingly good - it had much of what I hope to see in a Sorkin show. I found the reporter conceit effective in that it brought on the Harry/Matt romantic stuff, but did it in a way that shows how reporter’s (might) work when going on set…it was an effective MacGuffin, kinda…
He’s Matt. You can tell because people have been calling him “Matt” pretty consistently for the last five episodes. Also? Actor’s name is Matthew so there’s a helpful mnemonic right there.
I don’t think that’s a particularly over the top concept for a reality show. Temptation Island, for example, was all about having hotties try to break up established couples. This would merely be using truth from someone’s past to do the same thing. It actually seems less egregiously stupid than Temptation Island and the like.
Well, I’m sure we can disagree about how over the top such a concept would be, but I see a big difference between most reality shows, which try to stir up discord solely through interactions captured on camera (housemates arguing over who ate the peanut butter, couples dealing with the encroachment of hotties) and exposing things like a history of abortion, infidelity, criminality and whatever else one might imagine.
The very public disclosure of such things would figuratively .“destroy” a person in many ways (family, work, community), and not simply impinge upon a specific relationship. Given that the title was to be “Search and Destroy,” the intent really seemed to be to search for information to destroy people’s reputations. I think it would be more difficult for an executive to take a principled stand against Temptation Island, for example, than “Search and Destroy.”
I forgot to say in my earlier post that I was very ready to hate this episode as well when it opened, because the idea of a reporter sitting there and staring at a writer and the writer essentially tolerating it struck me as complete nonsense. What would she get out of that? Why would he, clearly under pressure, not just kick her out? But it got better from there.
I think when Christine Lahti’s character was introduced, Danny said that the demographics of Vanity Fair were very good, so they hope to improve the show’s ratings by participating in her article.
This is the second week we’ve had Corddry (and he is one of the big three) do his Cage imitaion, right? Maybe they keep coming back to this becauseit’s the best imitation he does.
I’d like to see Danny developed more. I hope we don’t have to wait until next season. I think now would be a good time to show more of his life (guest star Joshua Malina as his little brother?) , and more importantly HIS JOB!!! C’mon, we know Matt is Sorkin, so that makes Danny Schlamme, so what does he do? Just walk around the building all week until the night of filming? There’s got to be more to his job than that - so let’s see it. Matt and Harriet are now on autopilot as far as I can see - so let’s get Danny in there.
Re: Lauren Graham. With her being on last night and next week’s, at least she’ll be on two well written televisions episodes this season.
I think he is the third member of the “Big Three”. Him, Simon (DL Hughley), and Harriet Hayes.
I thought the Nancy Grace skit was an absolute hoot; the real Nancy Grace is an absolutely horrid woman and one of the main reasons I hate flipping past Headline News these days. And Simon’s lines “Can I go?” and “Our central computer is a Commodore 64!” just completely sold me.
I think I’m done with this show. I gave it five episodes and last night’s was the worst one yet.
The Nancy Grace sketch was interminable and unfunny and suffered by comparison to the Amy Pohler sketch.
The stuff about a TV sketch show saving the world was unbelievably self-aggrandizing and pompous.
The romance is tedious, unbelievable and pointless. The use of their relationship as a metaphor for the culture war is heavy-handed and obvious (and if you weren’t getting the metaphor, a character has now helpfully pointed it out to us. I guess that shows what Sorkin thinks of the intelligence of his audience). It also doesn’t really work because, so far, the show has not really given us any indication that Harriet actually represents any “red state” cultural values other than being a “Christian” (so are most blue staters, Sorkin). If they’re going to be a “metaphor” then let’s see some genuine philosphical tension. Let’s see Harriet express an authentic right wing opinion. Simply being a “Christian” means nothing. If she’s a conservative Christian, as the show implies (so far it’s identified her as a Southern Baptist and a creationist who feels comfortable on the 700 Club), then we need to see her ACT like one. That is, we need to see her act like one if Sorkin really wants ring any allegorical meaning from its defining relationship. I get the feeling the show is afraid to let Harriet say anything that makes her seem stupid or bigoted but in that case, why are we supposed to believe there would be any tension between her and Chandler. Is the tension ONLY supposed to derive from the fact that he’s an atheist and she’s a Christian? Well fine, that doesn’t actually represent the culture war (which is mostly being fought between two different factions of theists, not between theists and atheists) but let’s at least see some debate about THAT. Would Sorkin have the balls to let those characters have a full on EvC debate? Would the network ever have the sack to air one? The more the show pussyfoots around the real differences, the less important it seems for them to “overcome” them.
Did Sorkin really need to add another “Mary Sue” to the show? Was Chandler not enough? I have to say, as bad as the reality show sounded, I still think it would get better ratings than the other show. A dramatic series about the United Nations? Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
A good episode. The speech about how this show is so important was overdone. And too much Sting (it didn’t fit in with the rest of the show - it seemed more like “let’s stop the show while we feature our famous guest star”). And Lahti’s interviews would have been the perfect excuse to fill in the personalities of some of the overlooked characters instead of more Matt and Harriet. But overall it worked.
Did anyone else feel that some point was being made about Matt’s drinking? He was almost always shown with a can or bottle in his hand (although it was never explicitly stated he was drinking beer) usually while he was talking about how much pressure he was under. Are we getting the foreshadowing of a drinking problem plotline?
I, for one, would actually love to see a show like that air.
Was the guy doing the Nicholas Cage impersonation the same guy as the guy in the lobster suit?
Huh. Ironic, ain’t it. Many of you who hated it before thought this one was pretty good, and I (who liked it before) thought this was the weakest link. It just seemed like…too many words. I dunno. I just didn’t care about Harriet’s backstory, and she didn’t say anything at all surprising or important, IMHO. The “what you do is important” speech made me roll my eyes so far I think I had to retrieve them from under the couch. I have no problem with the people doing the show thinking what they’re doing is important - as was pointed out several threads ago, the guy running the hot dog stand thinks hot dog casings are the most interesting thing on earth, and I can buy that - but I don’t see why a reporter who covers presidents and wars would think they’re important. It seemed like obvious whining for validation on Sorkin’s part.
I did, however, like the “cutting” of the Jenny sketch - now that’s clever. Show us the sketch so we know what you do all day, but then say “Eh, no, that doesn’t quite work” so that those of us who thought it was unfunny are right and those of us who thought it was funny are impressed that you can be even funnier. Tell us you’re cutting it, and you don’t have to write really funny stuff. Actually a good way to handle the SWAS.
I like how the Gilmore Girl chick wasn’t treated as Our Very Special Guest Star. She was there, and doing stuff, but neither the cast ‘n’ crew or the script made a big deal about it. I suppose that’s next week - this week it was Sting, as **Little Nemo **points out.
I really didn’t like the Nancy Grace bit, but since I have no idea who Nancy Grace is, I’ll chalk that up to my ignorance and leave it at that.
I did like the final scene. I liked how I have no desire to see them hook up and I think it would bring the curse of Moonlighting to the whole show, yet I really, really wanted him to kiss her at that moment. Good writing and acting, that.
No - the guy in the lobster suit was Nathan Corddry, and the guy doing the Nicholas Cage impersonation was Simon Helberg.