Great episode. Hilarious (I laughed out loud at least 10 times) and…
RICKY AND RON ARE GONE TO MANDYVILLE!
I knew someone would be disappearing, just didn’t expect it to be them.
When the episode was over, El Perro Fumando’s reaction was “that was one of the worst episodes.”
Mine was “that was one of the better episodes.”
I think what it came down to was that this episode was not a stagnant masturbatory love song to Aaron Sorkin. It wasn’t so much obnoxious potshots at strawmen.
The episode actually had a plot! People actually did things, showed motivation, expressed character. The scope of the show stayed roughly within the show; it wasn’t attempting to make DEFCON 1 out of a sketch comedy show. The problems were the small problems of network television: budgets, product placement, staffing issues, mistiming a show. And, by and large, that’s it. It was a refreshing change. It was a direction for the show that I hadn’t really seen since the pilot.
You know, I figured out that I don’t care much about the plot of each week’s episode. I’m just memorized by the dialog. I like good dialog.
See, now I really like the Inside Baseball stuff, and hope they do lots more of that. Liked the byplay among Matt, Danny and Jordan, who’s frankly looking totally pregnant. Didn’t someone on this board say something about maybe they should just go ahead and show her getting bigger and bigger without anyone ever commenting on it? Loved Matt’s recited list of everyone who was going to snub him on account of the show being bad.
Didn’t care all that much for the whole “Harry’s gonna do a lingerie shoot” subplot. BTW, what kind of Christian hussy parades around with her bra showing all out of her dress? More script dressed up as a character, if you ask me.
Anyway, pretty much on form as the season has gone so far: some sparkling dialogue and some eye-rollingly clunky bits. Not great, but enough watchability to keep me hangin’ on.
Er, and I missed the last 15 minutes due to a phone call, dammit. Can someone kindly summarize how the the ep wound up? Thanks in advance.
I really started to get fed up with the “No, Harriet, don’t pose!” brigade.
The real “Harriet Hayes” did do the photo shoot:
http://www.fhmus.com/girls_girls_of_fhm_article.asp?idx_id=734&cnl_id=1&stn_id=1#
I don’t see how you could say this was the worst episode. That honor clearly goes to “The Wrap Party” for the bad characterization and disjointed plot.
I love this show.
Most episodes have been a muddled, directionless mess. This one was “clean” and sharp. People talked (wittily) about real things _ budgets, careers, technical glitches. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode.
I’m sorry to see the entire writing staff go. One of the things I looked forward to when this series was announced was seeing the writers at work and the interplay between them as they produced sketches. We never got to see that, and now the emphasis will once again be on SuperMatt and his two sidekicks doing the entire show themselves.
Still, at least the show is going somewhere.
One other nitpick: Did they have to set this episode on the same day as the Nevada trip? It seems so damned crowded to have so little breathing room in the characters’ lives between episodes.
This was one of the stronger episodes. With any luck, it’ll be the template from which all future ones follow.
Although I must bemoan the fact that the only two characters not in the Studio 60 group hug circle have exited, stage left.
I’m not that sorry to see them jettison the staff, because Ricky and Ron weren’t being used at all, and the rest of the room was little more than a group of extras. Shipping them off to Mandyville is the best solution.
I didn’t watch The West Wing, so I can’t say for sure, but I always thought that a defining characteristic of Mandyville was that no reason was ever offered as to what exactly happened to the character. But here, these characters are not going POOF – their exit is addressed. So is it really Mandyville?
I thought this was a very good episode, definitely the best in a while. Lots of good dialogue, markedly less “really bad and/or silly stuff”, and much more (relatively) bearable on the moral preaching front. There was some decent chemistry going on all throughout the cast, too. If they can manage to build on this going forward, the show might be all right after all.
It’s close enough for our purposes. Sam Seaborn went to Mandyville, but came back, as did Dr. Nancy McNally.
I guess you could say it’s a suburb of Mandyville.
I’m confused. When Matt was talking to Ricky and Ron, they were leaving THEN, and Jordan could have picked up the option in the last hour, leaving them hanging in space, since they had also done some backdoor writing. Is that correct?
Was Matt feeling so guilty about how they took having him and Danny come back, that he was willing to give them pointers on how to improve their cadged show, and let them sink or swim on their own?
It was a decent episode and worth watching but I foresee a future problem developing from this plot twist. As I’ve written before, one of the show’s weaknesses is the lack of conflict - all of the characters like and support each other and are working towards the common goal of making the show a success. It would be great to work in an environment like that but conflict creates interesting drama that’s worth watching.
And the two sources of conflict on the show have been Jack Rudolph and Ricky & Ron. In the last couple of episodes we’ve had Jack being transformed from an adversary into a friend. And in this episode we’ve lost Ricky and Ron. Their loss is going to greatly reduce potential future plotlines.
Ricky and Ron had a contract and the studio couldn’t fire them (they would still get paid even if the studio wasn’t using their work) but they did have the option of quitting. Matt and Danny have been trying to convince them to quit but R&R were toughing it out to keep getting paid.
Then R&R got offered the deal from Fox to make a series out of Peripheral Man. So it now was to their benefit to quit the show. But in order for Fox to be able to make the series, NBS had to let the rights to the character of Peripheral Man expire.
But the potential deal wouldn’t have been grounds for firing them. Their contract allowed them to work on projects involving Peripheral Man so they hadn’t violated it.
If Jordan, Danny, or Matt had decided to renew the rights, then the Fox deal would have collapsed without the ability to use the character in the new series. Ricky and Ron would have been stuck in the same place they have been - collecting a paycheck but not being allowed to do any meaningful work on the show.
The part I don’t understand is how the other writers were involved. Presumedly they had their own contracts with some option to quit. But I don’t see why they acted as if they had to leave Elizabeth behind - why couldn’t she have left with everyone else? (I assume Darrius would have stayed of his own choice - he was the only writer hired by Matt not R&R.)
I’m guessing Matt decided he was partly at fault for the animosity on the show and also realized it would be petty to deny R&R their chance to move on just so he could keep them under his thumb. In a bigger picture, this was another example of Aaron Sorkin making his alter-ego into the hero.
The show would no doubt exercise its “cute English accent” option.
One thing I was wondering about: Why was “Peripheral Man” going to be such a black mark against Matt if it turned out unfunny? Didn’t he just come back to the show a few episodes ago?
This episode was freaking frustrating. I loved the A plot about Ricky and Ronnie and thought the B plot with Harriet was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen on TV.
Yes, but no one knows who Ricky and Ron are. They’d associate “Peripheral Vision Man” with Studio 60, and by extension Matt.