A subtle way to handle the Revelation / Revelations thing would have been for Matt to always say “Revelations” and Harry to say “Revelation”.
I guess it’s a little thing, but I hated the way they tried to depict “young Matt” in Converse sneakers and backward baseball cap. It looked like he was a 40-year old trying to look like a teenager. It was only 7 years ago, for pete’s sake. Dress like an adult. I get that he was a struggling writer, but I thought it was a pretty ham-handed way to get their point across- see, we’re back in time, now. As if the multiple references to Y2K weren’t clear enough.
And I was hoping after last week that the Matt/Harry love affair storyline was finally over. Not so much, it seems.
Actually, I think the exact opposite. I came in to mention (costume geek that I am), how clever they were with the costuming. Past Matt wore shapes and colors that we’ve never seen him in, until the last flashback scene, when he was in a dark shirt with a collar line much like his present day dark suit. His cap was gone, and his makeup and lighting was back to “old”. The fired guy, on the other hand, wore the cap and the blue shirt. That’s when I knew we were being Fight Clubbed and Matt was talking to himself. I wish they had left it there, slightly ambiguous, instead of the whole stupid picture “revelation.”
Overall, I loved the flashback show. That’s the show I want to see - the energy and bustle and behind the scenes of how a show like this comes together and how the show impacts the personal lives of the writers, actors and producers. What we have instead is a show about how the personal lives of writers, actors and producers sometimes impacts this show they happen to be doing, and I don’t find that as interesting. It’s literally older and slower.
How the hell are four people (Matt, The Black Guy, The British Chick and the Old Guy) writing a show that used to take 60 eager young writers to put together? :dubious:
Since Sorkin wrote an entire season of The West Wing by himself, I think it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Well sure, but he himself admits that not a single show was done on time as a result.
They are all pretty worn out at the end of each week. And before Matt and Danny came back, they had a whole room full of writers, but the show wasn’t that good. Quality, not quantity (although they did have a large quantity of skits to kill after dress this week.)
Based on the go-around on the metric sketch, I thought the cast also wrote. That’s why Nate’s brother and David-Spade’s-commercial-punching-bag guy were so anxious to know if they were getting on.
I thought they were anxious to get on stage because they are actors who want air time. They “work” on their performances (timing, mugging, etc.), not on writing the script itself.
Although, yes, it’s clear that the actors sometimes suggest bits to the writers, like the execrable Dolphin Girl thing.
Yes, but it’s not as good as I would expect from Sorkin, that’s why I’m bitching.
No, I’m pretty sure that was the bearded writer who was seen in some other scenes. He was also seen earlier in the season as part of Ricky and Ron’s writing staff.
That was Danny? Are you sure…I thought it was the bearded and long haired writer that was shown working on the show in the first few episodes. One of the guys that Matt’s “Now on we’ll dress like adults” line was directed toward.
This episode wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t good though. As eyerolling as last week’s Rom-Com bits were I actually enjoyed that episode.
The flashback stuff was much more entertaining because it for once looked like Studio 60 was an actual television show that required a staff to run. There was excitement about it.
A nice little touch were the references to celebs and jokes they would have been making at the time. A Neve Campbell sketch? She’s not on the radar nowadays but yeah, in 2000 I could see a sketch about her.
I thought he called the couch lump guy by name, so I agree with whoever suggested that that was Danny.
He did call him by name, and though I rewound and still wasn’t positive, it sure as hell sounded like he said “Danny.” The voice that answered didn’t match, but maybe Whitford just wasn’t available to shoot that three-second bit, or something.
I thought the opposite (I know I said I was done.)
Party of 5 went off the air in 1999; no one was watching it. It was quite dead. No one would be perfecting their Neve voice (does she even have a recognizable voice?) any more than someone would be perfecting their Juliette Lewis voice today.
And according to closed captioning, the lump was Danny.
A perfect example of searching for nits to pick at. I seriously doubt that more than 10 people in the viewing audience would even pay attention to such details, and if in fact they did, they’d be wrong. Wild Things was released in 1998 and Neve Campbell was never hotter than right after that. She was in some very high profile films that came out in 2000, unfortunately for her they sucked. She was in Panic with Donald Sutherland, Tracy Ullman, Willian H. Macy, and John Ritter, and in Drowning Mona with Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Maybe not quite A list, but a solid A-/B+ for that time. She was never more popular.
We may not have it to kick around much longer. According to this week’s TV Guide (Feb. 12-18), NBC is pulling the show from Mondays at 10 to give a new show, “The Black Donellys”, the slot, starting March 5. NBC says it will return, but no firm date has been given. Not a good sign.
Ah, that’s too bad. Spotty as the show is, it has immense potential. And Matt Perry has my undying admiration - I had no idea how good he was before this. I liked him in “Friends,” but he made it look so easy I didn’t realize what he was doing.
(I liked the comments about getting their Canadian accents wrong - from a real-life Canadian.)
Ah, you’re right. I guess he was a writer in the early days. He seemed to have a lot more hair, and a beard, and it was red.
Well, at least we know what the Crazy Christians sketch was about now. It just took Matt three years to write it and get it to Wes.
Not a bad sign either. This has become a standard way to introduce a new series and give it a few episodes to test itself in a good time spot. NBC is also doing it with 30 Rock for the new Andy Richter show and CBS has replaced its hottest new comedy, the New Adventures of Old Christine, with Rules of Engagement for the same amount of time. It doesn’t say anything about whether the other show is in danger or not.
Some of the other comments are also kinda silly. Jennifer Love Hewitt was the guest host. It’s 1999 and she and Neve Campbell are still on Party of Five weekly. It didn’t go off the air until 2000. Pitching a Neve Campbell sketch made perfect sense. If you’re going to nitpick, get it right. IMDb is just a click away.
The size of the writers room (does SNL even have a writer’s room? All the books talk of an area in which pitches are made, but everybody writes in their offices not a central bullpen) is reality, and just points up the utter idiocy of Matt writing the show by himself, with or without two newbies. Writing a 90-minute full sketch comedy show compares to writing a weekly drama the way writing an anthology of short stories in a dozen genres weekly compares to writing a novel in a week. People do the latter; nobody human can do the former, let alone to acclaim by serious professionals. They are two separate feats. (How about running a marathon versus running competitive miles in 26 different states if you need a different metaphor?)
Every single reference to the last book of the Bible I have heard on television, and often in print, even by people who should know better, has been to Revelations. The only time I ever see Revelation used is by people online making the correction. Give it up. Revelations is the vernacular usage. It is used by Christians as much as non-believers. It comes off the tongue easily and makes a more nuanced reference to the number of prophesies involved. Harri - I refuse to use Harry - probably knows better, but has been so corrupted by every single person around her saying it that way that it comes out that way.
Sorkin’s problem is that he started the show at the wrong place. This happens very often in writing. He started the show with everybody coming in and saving the day. That’s an ending, not a beginning. I said in an early thread that having the show be a ratings success was a mistake. He should have had them barely on the borderline with death staring them in the face each week. (That was the saving grace of The West Wing.) This show was good in that it featured people trying to claw their way to the top, not people on the top at ease in their success. I still don’t see how to turn the series around to accommodate this, so I’m sure it will die with this season. But maybe he will take this lesson with him to the next show.
Which should be about the United Nations. It really should.
Well, Victoria Jackson was a born-again cast member of SNL, so there is precedent.