Studio 60 - 10/2 (The Focus Group)

Cafe Society
41

[QUOTE=amarinth]
I love even the bad Sports Night episodes, …
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This line is up there with “it’s too hot to drink coffee.” Individually the wordsw make sense, but have no meaning to me when strung together.

[QUOTE=McNew]
I think the problem I’m having with the show is that there is an overwhelming sense of importance surrounding the characters and what they’re trying to accomplish each week. I’m sure that what they do is difficult, but Sorkin seems to be bringing the same level of intensity to sketch comedy as he brought to the White House. On The West Wing it worked because, well, they were running the country. This is sketch comedy. The more minor characters- basically all except for Matt, Danny, Jordan and Jack- are almost too well-spoken, too smart, too intense.
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But in their world, it is as important as running the country. Let’s face it - the average week of a television show is more influential on the immediate lives of people than your average week in the White House. That’s not the way it should be, but that’s the way it is.

I really like the interaction between Matt and Danny. If you want to see this same chemistry from awhile back, check out the episode of The West Wing from the fourth season, “Evidence of Things Not Seen.” Joe (Perry) is being interviewed by Josh (Whitford) to fill the position caused by Ainsley Hayes leaving. They get trapped together for most of the show, and it’s just gold. Not funny (although there are a few funny lines) but instead a very natural pairing. I think Sorkin wanted these two for their Studio 60 characters based on this episode.

My funniest line:
Danny: “Jordan wants us to make fun of her.”
Matt: “Okay. Your teeth are too big.”

42

[QUOTE=Ethilrist]

And what was up with the pensive confusedness which was Matt Perry’s last scene? I don’t get what he was trying to convey there. Any help from the psychics in the audience?
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It goes back to the pilot and Harriet’s line about “if you saw me dancing with Danny, your head would explode.”

43

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Wow, I didn’t get that at all. Didn’t she offer to do the “Science Schmience” skit in a Holly Hunter voice before the Missouri high school conversation? I agree with Eve, it was simply a comedic actress being silly and cute by doing a Holly Hunter impression to get her ex to crack a smile.
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And the voice was a spot-on Holly Hunter at that.

44

Didn’t sound anything like her to me. It sounded like a mediocre actress doing amateurish southern accent.

45

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Didn’t sound anything like her to me. It sounded like a mediocre actress doing amateurish southern accent.
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Seems to me, and I apologize if I’m completely off base here, you’re just looking for reasons to not like the show. I thought it was a great imitation, at least the first time she did it in the read through. The second time, not so much.

46

[QUOTE=McNew]
I think the problem I’m having with the show is that there is an overwhelming sense of importance surrounding the characters and what they’re trying to accomplish each week. I’m sure that what they do is difficult, but Sorkin seems to be bringing the same level of intensity to sketch comedy as he brought to the White House. On *The West Wing * it worked because, well, they were running the country. This is sketch comedy. The more minor characters- basically all except for Matt, Danny, Jordan and Jack- are almost too well-spoken, too smart, too intense.
[/QUOTE]

This is the problem exactly. The juxtaposition between Sorkin’s frenetic, intense presentation and the ultimate triviality of the sketch-comedy result is just too jarring. I truly cannot believe people spend this much time agonizing over lame jokes in a “Weekend Update” piece.

FWIW, there is an amusing parody of other possible Sorkin TV projects that illustrates the point. I’ll quote from the pitch for “Overnight Express”:

47

[QUOTE=Sean Factotum]
I thought it was a great imitation, at least the first time she did it in the read through. The second time, not so much.
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I’m going to have to agree with Sean. The first time she did it, I thought she was dead-on. The Shakespeare was a little less, but that’s probably at least partially due to the fact that I’ve never heard Holly Hunter do Shakespeare.

48

I’ve been one of the people saying the show hasn’t clicked. But I feel it did last night. It wasn’t a great episode but it was a good one; they finally seem to have settled into the show and characters.

49

[QUOTE=Eve]
Liked it; didn’t love it. I’ll certainly keep watching.

I’ve aways said Matthew Perry was the most talented of the male Friends, though admittedly, that’s a very backhanded compliment. Amanda Peet . . . Nothing against her, but she is too young and soft for the role (anyone notice that most of the male leads are schlubby middle-aged guys, and the female are all young hotties?). There are any number of 40-something actresses in L.A. who could play that role and make it more realistic. Donna Murphy and Wendie Malick come to mind right off.
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Man, I would have loved to have seen Malick in that role. I’ve always been lukewarm about Peet, and nothing here has actually changed my mind.

50

[QUOTE=ddgryphon]
Man, I would have loved to have seen Malick in that role. I’ve always been lukewarm about Peet, and nothing here has actually changed my mind.
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I’m a fan of Peet here (not so much in her earlier collaborations with Matthew Perry, and hated her in Saving Silverman). I have nothing but trouble seeing Wendy Malick in this role. Nothing I’ve seen her (Malick) do makes me believe that she could have pulled off that scene with Webber about her ex’s pending book, and I remember her from that series she was in on HBO years and years ago. I thought Peet did a damn fine job right there, and has been a believable network maverick to me throughout all three shows so far.

51

You know I’m a huge Sorkin supporter, but I was disappointed in last night’s show.

Two reasons.

One is that the show didn’t advance or deepen the characters. We’re still going over the same ground as in the pilot. So Jordan had an eight-year-old DUI. That may be a big deal in their little backstage world, but outside? Could anyone here even name the presidents of entertainment for the broadcast networks? Would anyone care if an eight-year-old mugshot appeared? The audience cares about performers, not the suits. Even Jordan’s ex-husband’s tell all book (based on Jane Fonda’s tell-all on Ted Turner?) would never sell to a publisher and wouldn’t get ten hits if put online. We need to see these people as people, not as devices in a plot line.

The other is that the writing is very soft. Nobody ever disputes what are meant to be important lines, even if they make no sense. I could have demolished Harriet’s line about the small town people needing a break in five seconds, and so should have Matt. He needed to overrule her at that point. Stephen Weber needs to take down Jordan and overrule her some time as well instead of standing there and losing to all her lame comebacks. Danny’s bit about drinking kills people while cocaine doesn’t was simply insane. Nobody ever drives with a cocaine high? Even Ricky and Ron are correct: Matt can’t write the show himself. I suppose this is another plot point being set up for a future episode. In the West Wing people argued with one another. Here they declaim and one side always wins. The ratings going up the second week was as bad as pointed out earlier. Wish-fulfillment fantasy.

That’s what the whole show is right now. It’s Sorkin’s revenge fantasy getting back at everything and everybody in television. But I don’t care about that and it’s already gotten old. He needs to give up the revenge and start writing about this new set of people. And he needs to start making satiric points about the world outside the studio.

IOW, stop talking about satire and start doing some.

52

[QUOTE=mhendo]
Saw this for the first time tonight, and was pretty underwhelmed.

I should confess that Sorkin’s staccato dialog is something that you either love or hate, and while i was willing to put up with it for the first few seasons of The West Wing, it just got old after a while. There was nothing especially bad about the show; i just didn’t think there was anything especially good about it either. I may try it again next week, but i don’t think it will make the rotation.

The show did, however, confirm something i always suspected about Matthew Perry from his days on Friends—he’s not a comedian, he just plays one on television.
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It’s not the staccato dialog I hate. It’s that every conversation is an argument. It was the same way with Sports Night and West Wing. If one character makes a statement someone else must contradict him (until, of course, it’s time for the Impassioned Speech). And nobody answers a question directly. They either refuse to answer the question, or respond by asking why the question was brought up. And then the characters argue about that. It’s annoying.

53

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Even Ricky and Ron are correct: Matt can’t write the show himself. I suppose this is another plot point being set up for a future episode. In the West Wing people argued with one another.
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Which brings a problem I have to mind: we find out the reason that Matt hates Ron (Ricky?) is because of the Politically Incorrect blow-up five years ago? C’mon that’s ridiculous. Matt hating them/him because they’re bad writers I would buy, but not this high school-ish reason (“he bad-mouthed me by inference”). So I kind of agree with you on that (tangential) point.

But I think this thing with Jordan is important, in the context that these people think they are important to operation of the world.

54

Following up on the ‘gravitas’ question (using the same level of tone for a comedy-sketch show as for a White House show), just imagine Sorkin writing a pilot for a show about two partners running a hot-dog cart. The same level of gravitas just seems silly there, and I’m afraid, so far, that it does here too.

I get how Matt and Danny would take their jobs as seriously as the President and the Chief of Staff, I’m just not sure I’m interested in watching that.

55

[QUOTE=Otto]
Harriet’s whole “they’re tiny and poor so don’t make fun of them” routine pissed me off. Shouldn’t they be able to raise their kids as they see fit without being ridiculed? Well, Harriet, no, not if their actions are deserving of ridicule and not if they’re raising their children to be ignorant twits. Shut it.
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I gotta’ agree. I think Sorkin is using the Harriet character to give a sop to the “little people” and those who chose religion over knowledge. But they don’t need a sop. It’s a damn shame 90 percent of Americans don’t know who Moliere was; it’s a failure of our education system and of our culture. If a bunch of breadmakers in Podunk don’t at least get the main themes of “The Crucible” and “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (never mind the subtext) then they deserve to be made fun of.

Unfortunately, I missed the whole rasslin’ on the beach bit. I had to go let the Yorkie/shi tsu bastard killer dog in, when I got back they were walking back into the party. Wha’ hopp’n?

56

Count me among those who really want to like this show. I never saw Sports Night, but the West Wing, until just before Sorkin left the show, was the best television show of the last 20 years.

Perhaps it is the problem of shoehorning the serious matters that were the currency of the West Wing into the framework of a weekly network sketch comedy show, but the discussions of religion seem particularly forced, stilted and poorly resolved. I thought this was particularly true in the extended look at the game show with Rob Reiner during rehearsal. Lines and lines of dialog went into a more subtle bit of ironic comedy that would never fly if that were a sketch.

It’s all well and good to comment on how America is being dumbed down and pandered to by networks who aren’t having discussions about restoration comedy, Moliere, or commedia dell’arte, but to believe that ratings are going to shoot up if people are force fed stuff because it is good for them is not really believable. I wish that it were true, but Jackass 2 does actually exist.

Oh, and Harriet had just commented that she had done A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She was doing some lines as Holly Hunter. It had nothing to do with the small town in Missouri. It just wouldn’t make any sense for her to be bordering on mockery when she had spent the episode defending those very people from being mocked.

57

[QUOTE=sciurophobic]
It’s not the staccato dialog I hate. It’s that every conversation is an argument. It was the same way with Sports Night and West Wing. If one character makes a statement someone else must contradict him (until, of course, it’s time for the Impassioned Speech). And nobody answers a question directly. They either refuse to answer the question, or respond by asking why the question was brought up. And then the characters argue about that. It’s annoying.
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Ya new around here, pardner? :stuck_out_tongue:
(You just described 9/10ths of the SDMB!)

58

[QUOTE=McNew]
I think the problem I’m having with the show is that there is an overwhelming sense of importance surrounding the characters and what they’re trying to accomplish each week. I’m sure that what they do is difficult, but Sorkin seems to be bringing the same level of intensity to sketch comedy as he brought to the White House. On *The West Wing * it worked because, well, they were running the country. This is sketch comedy.
[/QUOTE]
I agree. Sports Night, still my favorite Sorkin creation, was amazing because they still managed to make lots of interesting cultural and ethical observations within the context of the sports & media communities, and they managed to tackle issues while still understanding that conflicting positions sometimes had no resolution. But a sketch comedy premise? Stretched over 60 minutes (as opposed to SN’s 30)? It’s just not happening. There’s no real There there.

I’m also tired of Harriet Hayes. She’s a Christian. We Get It! I know of any number of Christians (including myself) who manage to go days, even weeks, in our jobs without having our belief systems being the center of conversation. The fact that they keep contriving situations to harp on the matter (in an oh-so-balanced fashion) is getting tedious. And not for one second do I believe that she’s a funny, successful, charismatic sketch comedienne.

Also, for a “hip” sketch comedy show, all the sketches we saw looked terrible. Otto nailed most of the criticisms, but “Pimp my Trike”? You’d be hard up to come up with 90 seconds of humorous material. “Science Shmience”? Knee-jerk, smarter-than-thou soapbox posturing not even camoflauged as “humor”. This is what we’re supposed to believe is a vast improvement over the previous episodes? Ugh. And as promising as the Commedia Dell’Arte sketch might be (in theory), there’s no way a sketch comedy show worth its salt would run it two weeks in a row (although even that’s more credible than a pro like Harriet not knowing anything about focus groups!). And the whole electricity outage business? Zzzzzzz. What’s next–someone gets stuck in an elevator? Or gives birth in a taxi? Or has their parent visit the set? :rolleyes:

I really wanted to like this show, but I’m continuously frustrated that the characters I think I would like (Simon, Tom, Cal) are wasted or given short shrift, and the characters I see much more of (Danny, Jack, Harriet) or all so one-dimensional.

The only genuine saving grace is Matthew Perry. He’s the same good actor, but has abandoned his Chandlerisms, and his character is the most interesting of the bunch. I’m looking forward to the Ricky & Ron conflict because I sense that the show really does believe that he’s being a bit too hard on them, and he’s unstable but talened enough to hold my interest. I like Amanda Peet and believe her in her characterization, but there’s almost nowhere for Jordan to go (except to rehash all the tedious ratings/markets/censor debates).

I think I’ll give it a couple more weeks, but I’m not very encouraged by the trajectory of the show. Sorkin’s a real talent, but he’s not God, and this may be the biggest evidence of his limitations as an entertainer.

59

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
Following up on the ‘gravitas’ question (using the same level of tone for a comedy-sketch show as for a White House show), just imagine Sorkin writing a pilot for a show about two partners running a hot-dog cart. The same level of gravitas just seems silly there, and I’m afraid, so far, that it does here too.
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Over on another message board that I spend time on, we once had a post from a guy who was responding to a complaint about the quality of the hot dogs at his hot dog shop. Not a cart, admittedly, but not so far off.

He went into a great deal of detail about how they had improved things. The new casings they were using now, the difference (of about a quarter of an inch) in the diameter of the new dogs they were using. The fat percentages. The new baker for the buns. It was about 5 paragraphs worth of details about changes to their product, which was hot dogs.

Like pain, importance is relative. If it’s what you do all day, if it’s what feeds your family, then hot dogs can be important, and you can become an expert on them. And the decision to switch from a five-eighths casing to a three quarters casing can become a very big deal indeed.

One of the things I like about Aaron Sorkin’s work is that there are no slackers - at least not as central characters. The people who populate his world care about what they do, and work hard to make a difference, even if it’s in something as unimportant as the west coast edition of the third place sports wrap-up show. Perhaps that’s not realistic. Realism would demand slackers and incompetents in place of some of the caring, professional people. But I wouldn’t particularly want to watch them.

60

[QUOTE=CJJ*]
This is the problem exactly. The juxtaposition between Sorkin’s frenetic, intense presentation and the ultimate triviality of the sketch-comedy result is just too jarring. I truly cannot believe people spend this much time agonizing over lame jokes in a “Weekend Update” piece.

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This comment and others uthread seem just wrong to me. Can you imagine the frenzy there must be creating a brand new 90 minute live comedy show every 7 days?

The writing, editing, rewriting, rehearsals, set-building, costumes, etc. having to be developed from scratch every week?

The frenzied pace seems like it would be accurate to me.