Episode description:
The cast and crew gets better acquainted with an intoxicated Jordan at a wrap party; three sexy women help Danny try to alleviate Matt’s ex-girlfriend woes; Simon wants “Studio 60” to hire more black writers; Cal encounters a strange man (Eli Wallach) wandering around backstage.
Canadians, please spoiler box anything until after the show airs on the East Coast if you would.
the funny thing is this episode might actually be the “wrap party” for the series.
Next week it gets bumped for Friday Night Lights correct?
Friday Night Lights will be auditioning in S60’s time slot next Monday.
S60 is already producing episodes 9 and 10, so they’re not killing it just yet.
I think a move to another night could be helpful, since the show doesn’t really seem to fit on Mondays.
Shuffling a show around the schedule is always a sign of a show in trouble. The network desperately wants to find an audience and moves the show to different time slots, in hope that there’s no competition. For some reasone, TUESDAY AND Wednesday nights are crowded, whereas the weekand is more or less a wasteland. Maybe tv exec don’t want to put high profile shows on weekends, because they think everyone is out partying. I think they are wrong. The potential universe of viewers is larger on a weeknight @ 9, but given the fierce competion, it might be better to be #1 on Saturdays @ 8, than # 5 on Tuesdays.
I’m gonna be surprised if S60 survives 13 eps. I like the show and want it to last, but I can see why it won’t.
We learn a bit about Tom and his folks in this episode…
Tom’s parents are so stupid it makes the baby Jesus cry. And he’s got a brother fighting in Afghanistan.
But his parents are still smarter than the bimbos who Danny thought Matt would date
Who’s Tom? The only names I have down so far are Matt, Danny and Jordan.
Tom is Nate Cordrry’s character. He’s the young guy who dressed like a lobster last episode
Blah. Can I spoil this yet? I watched it last night.
Ah, what the hell. Unboxed spoilers below…
I’m sorry, but this show is annoying me more and more. The writing is just so over the top and cliched it’s pathetic. So Tom’s parents are from the midwest. Do they have to be THAT stupid? Does his dad have to be THAT close-minded? Those characters were caricatures.
Speaking of caricatures… How about ‘good black comic/bad black comic’? The bad one was the worst stereotypical ghetto comic you could imagine, and then suddenly the good one comes out, and he’s just perfectly good. He even had the intellectual eyeglasses and soft demeanor.
And how about that exchange between them? Here they’re looking for a black writer who can help elevate black comedy to something other than bitches and booty, and they treat him like that? How about saying, “We liked what you had to say about black culture, and think we could use some of that on the show.” Instead, they treat him like he has no opinions, they TELL him he’s working for them, and to cap it off he gets called ‘boy’. Horrible writing.
Then we had the bimbo caricatures. We get it - they’re stupid girls hanging around stars. But no one is THAT stupid. “What do you mean, you write for the show?” Please. Again, I’m sure this was meant to show the contrast between the smart love interest and the stupid bimbo world, but it was WAY overdone.
And what the hell happened to the high-powered TV studio head? Two episodes she was this hyper-confident, aggressive, interesting person. In the last episode she wandered around giggling like a little girl and trying to make friends with everyone. What was THAT all about?
This show is doomed unless it gets much better very fast.
I caught a Gianelli.
Kind of an uneven episode. The “Tom has father issues” storyline was pure Sorkin paint-by-numbers (I was waiting for Jed Bartlet’s dad to smack Tom, in fact.) The baseball subplot was predictable (of course he’s gonna write his number on it.)
Sorkin telegraphed the “he used to work here” B plot way too early with Tom’s tour of the building.
The side plot about Sim and Matt going to the Improv was a little predictable as well. but I take it as a sign that they’re going to mix the writers back in a little more.
YES! Okay. Finally. Now we’re getting somewhere.
I’ve been feeling kind of meh for the last couple episodes, but this was the show I’d been waiting for. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but that was by far the most interesting, diverse episode I’ve seen. The Matt/Harriet thing was toned way down, Cal got to do something …
Yeah. What randwill said.
OK, I’ve missed the last two eps but tuned in tonight. Doomed, I say; DOOMED.
I like the idea of a fairly serious show about comedy, but the earnestness of this thing is turning me off big time. Well, that and the sloppiness in the scripts: DL Hughley’s character actually had no frickin’ idea what sort of comedian he was dragging Matt off to see? Bubble, or whatever her name was, had to ask three times what a writer does? Please.
Evil Network Guy’s tirade about the net picking up a ‘show about the UN’ over his pitch for a reality series just about describes this series in a nutshell. Unfortunately, the whole show appears about to disappear up its own ass.
Which is a shame, 'cause I thought Amanda Peet’s character showed a more interesting side tonight, and Matthew Perry continues to be superb, although maybe he really IS as lost as the character he plays seems to be at the moment.
Er, I will say, however, that my current job clearly has a glaring lack: we never have wrap parties. Of course we never actually seem to actually ‘wrap’ anything to begin with, but still…
Very uneven episode. On the one hand, the ‘writing: plot division’ was the weakest of any episode so far. As others have mentioned, it was mostly a combination of entertainment-cliches and Sorkin-cliches. The characterization of the two big network characters (Jordan and Jack)… well, I don’t think having them meander around drunk really improved it at all. On the other hand, it was sort of fun to have an episode that only hit on Matt and Harriet in passing, and focused mostly on the other characters… but then we get the sort of disappointing, cliched approach to that. It was giving us some of the variety we wanted - I just wish it could have been more creative while it was doing it. But at the same time, I like that it tried to go there, and it portends well for the future, if there is a future.
Sort of happy that it’s being bumped next week, so I can ignore everything else and watch the Pats on MNF. Long-term, I don’t really know how much moving around is going to help it. The switch is as much to see if Friday Night Lights can float somewhere else, as it’s getting pounded by both Dancing With The Stars and CSI:Navy (NCIS). Neither S60 nor Friday Night Lights is going to beat CSI:Miami in the 10pm Monday slot, because if you look at the top 20 shows week to week, like 9 of them could be described glibly as “CSI:Something”. It’s just what’s popular right now, for one reason or another. Heroes actually has the cushiest slot on the NBC schedule, with Fox throwing up Justice for the sacrifice and Two and a Half Men not having much genre crossover. I think Studio 60 can stick if it stays in a medium to strong second, but the bleeding has led to a less than strong showing, of course.
I’m constantly amazed that people who, I assume, are at somewhat equivalent in intellect can watch the same thing and have such radically different reactions. Two people thought this was the best episode ever and there’s Sam and me and some others on the other side of it. This episode killed the show for me. Killed it dead.
Tom’s parents have never heard of Abbott and Costello? Bullshit. But even if they haven’t, thank god Tom had time to run out to the all-night Abbott and Costello 78 RPM record store. And that ridiculous “Your brother’s in Afganistan!” outburst. Christ.
And the good Negro/bad Negro comedy club. Shamefully unoriginal and shamefully telegraphed. That whole “it’s an insult to me not to have black writers.” You’re so fucking funny, you write something! I bet if you wanted to write something in your unique black voice it’d get heard. The good Negro comic had the funniest bit on the series so far. I wonder if that was on purpose.
The baseball player is the anti-Matt? I don’t believe it, because if he were the opposite of Matt he’d be INTERESTING.
And the network president who was mortified two episodes ago about a DUI getting dug up shows up to the cast party drunk? Nice consistent bit of characterization there.
And the old guy wandering around the studio clutching the photo? Gee, I wonder if he used to work in the building or something some time? And then to dump that fucking Harriet/Matt parallel into the scene like the lead weight that it was. I rarely actually yell at my television but that steaming pile made me.
Awful. Just fucking awful from start to finish.
Note to Mods: I’m not saying that having diverse opinions is a bad thing or that people who think differently from one another are bad. Hope that disclaimer satisfies the new rule.
I figured he sent a PA or someone out to get the record.
I really think that sending a couple of people off to Mandyville wouldn’t be a bad thing, because this cast is so huge that we’re getting bad characterization for most of them.
I think it’s realistic to believe that this show won’t beat CSI: Miami, CSI: Green Bay or even CSI: Wingo, KY. NBC, however, is expecting this show to do CSI numbers because of the cast and production team, and that’s why it’s being spun as a disappointment so far.
This is still the second-best new show on NBC, and it’s pretty good compared to almost anything else in this year’s freshman class (Smith? Justice? Kidnapped?) It hasn’t found its groove yet, and I think part of that is because Mondays at 10 is not the right place for it. Friday at 9, leading into Law & Order might be the better spot if you don’t move it to Saturday.
The “good” black comic was not sufficiently insightful to earn that look of awe from Matt.
At the all night fucking Abbott and Costello 78 RPM record store.
By groove do you mean “audience” or “voice” or what? Because if you mean audience, I don’t know what to say to that. But if you mean voice or style or something similar, then that can’t really be blamed on the timeslot. The show’s either good or it’s not. When it’s on makes no difference.
Something that might explain why this episode felt like it was put together using the Aaron Sorkin Scriptwriting Kit: Sorkin’s been on-set at the production of his adaptation of “Charlie Wilson’s War” with Tom Hanks. That means he’s likely just doing polish work and tweaking on staff scripts, and I don’t recognize any of the names on the writing staff from the good West Wing episodes.
If this script was a trainwreck coming out of the writers’ room, he might have felt pressed to go to the well and use some stock storylines to fix it. It would also explain the plot holes and bad characterization (I agree, Jordan was WAY off, and Sim should have known what the comic’s material was.)
The old guy (did anyone not think he was in the photo or at least had some decades-past connection to it?) mentioned one writer who would only talk to another, female, member of the writing staff. This reminded me of a character in the movie My Favorite Year, which was based loosely on the Sid Caesar show. Was there a real-life comedy writer who served as basis for both?
Beyond that, a nothing episode. Clichés all around. Manufactured conflict with strawmen characters. Blah.