Studio 60 - 2/12 - The Friday Night Slaughter ....

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
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.
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It is - it also helps when you read it [the IMDB] correctly - which I didn’t. I just checked JLH’s page instead of the show’s page. She left the show in '99 to start her own spinoff. (I still don’t think that someone would have been working on a Neve Campbell long term before even - as opposed to sticking on a wig for a sketch).

I’ve started making up things to hate about this show. Highly unnecessary when there’s so much that’s really there to loathe.

Even that’s not true, unless the mention of her character Julia on IMDb in virtually even single show summary during the 1999-2000 season is imaginary.

her character was named “Sarah”

I went huh? until I realized that I had been talking about Neve Campbell and you had been talking about Jennifer Love Hewett.

I still say pitching a Neve Campbell/JLH sketch would have made sense in 1999 (presumably at the beginning of the fall season, since everybody is new and getting introduced) because the show that JLH left to do was a spin-off from Party of 5 and the connection between the two would still be fresh.

But I’m properly embarrassed for not reading your post closely enough. :smack:

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
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.
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A very good point that applies also to Sports Night. They were always in the cellar for ratings. It’s something I didn’t consider before.

Agree with you on Revelations (in fact, that was they first thing I thought when the griping started upthread - “That’s all I ever hear it referred to as.”

But I disagree with you on the size of the writer’s room. Matt is falling apart. He has constantly been told through the life of the series that he looks tired, that he should get some sleep, that he should go home. And now he’s on some kind of pills. He has been able to do the vast majority of the writing by himself for a couple of months at the expense of his health and social life. (his sparring with Harriet has been a substitute for any type of relationship with someone).
This chicken is coming home to roost in the next couple of episodes - this isn’t something he can maintain over the course of an entire season of shows (inside the show). And I think Perry is doing a great job with his character (but then again, I was surprisingly impressed with his recurring roll as Joe the White House Counsel on TWW.)

Is anyone else vaguely uncomfortable with Matt Perry playing a guy who is (possibly) ruining his career with pills? I’m guessing it’s either a type of therapy for him to play this out again, or it’s really difficult for him and he’s a consummate professional.

[QUOTE=featherlou]
Is anyone else vaguely uncomfortable with Matt Perry playing a guy who is (possibly) ruining his career with pills? I’m guessing it’s either a type of therapy for him to play this out again, or it’s really difficult for him and he’s a consummate professional.
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For me, not so much. Perry seems to be handling it well, and I’m sure if it bothered him we would have heard about it. He seems to have moved past that part of his life.

They loose me a little more each week. I really like Matthew Perry and was kind of liking the show, but I care less and less each week.

I am guessing that by the time they can it, I won’t care.

[QUOTE=Sean Factotum]

But I disagree with you on the size of the writer’s room. Matt is falling apart. He has constantly been told through the life of the series that he looks tired, that he should get some sleep, that he should go home. And now he’s on some kind of pills. He has been able to do the vast majority of the writing by himself for a couple of months at the expense of his health and social life. (his sparring with Harriet has been a substitute for any type of relationship with someone).

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Did you notice that on this week’s 30 Rock, Liz Lemon is totally wiped out because she stayed up one night just finishing - not writing from start to finish - the work of her other staffers? I swear, they get an advance peek at Sorkin’s scripts and then mock them mercilessly.

Amazing that 30 Rock is a hundred times more real to the world it inhabits even though it caricatures the characters. It just keeps getting better as Studio 60 falls apart.

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Amazing that 30 Rock is a hundred times more real to the world it inhabits even though it caricatures the characters. It just keeps getting better as Studio 60 falls apart.
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I agree, but we should have expected it. Fey’s been in that place, Sorkin’s just read about it. I believe her comment was along the lines of “He wants to make a family comedy about my family? Bring it on, bitch.”