You know, this is a damn good idea. I thought the same thing last night when Matt’n’Josh decided nobody did frat-boy humor better than Gilbert & Sullivan. No offense to frat boys, but how many of them have even heard a G&S parody, much less seen the original?
If they want to track the blogs rather than the critics, maybe they’d be better off drawing from the material bloggers actually discuss.
By the way, does anyone know where I can find a transcript of the number? Maybe the lyrics were hip and edgy, but I was watching on a 5" TV and could barely marke out the melody.
No one did a show within a show like the old Larry Saunders show on HBO.
I thought the prayer group thing was sort of silly. People actually stand around and pray over a TV show? When I watched that I thought it was actually sort of insulting to christians because I really had no idea that was done in real life.
Maybe they should have done some of that first for those of us who didn’t get it.
Like someone else said, I expected the show to be a little funnier because it was about a comedy show. I’m not talking about slapstick, laugh track funny but quirkier.
In regards to the prayer circle–even in my high school drama club, we’d have something like that before every show. As mentioned, it was more a desperate “please don’t let us screw up” than a real religious event. I got the impression that Harry led the prayer simply because Harry is the most religious of the group, and they all just let her do it because they respect her, and while they may not agree with her methods or beliefs, they do agree with the sentiment.
The more I think about it, the more forgettable I find the Studio 60 take on G&S. It was short and repetitive and any time I try to remember how it went, I end up thinking about the much longer, more detailed and hugely better parody version at the end of Season 3 of ReBoot:
*…his chances for survival shrank from small to infinitesimal…
…he was face-to-face-to-face-to-face-to-face with Hexadecimal…
…everything is alphanumeric!* Studio 60 really needed to spend a good three or four minutes on that song and work in some of the (valid) criticisms of the Judd Hirsch character in the first episode, discussing how the quality of the show had slid. There were several references to how offensive they might get, but no promises on how funny they intend to be. It’s a longstanding misconception, I feel, that humour by definition has to be offensive to someone, that it hasn’t done its job until a certain level of offensiveness has been achieved and that there are people out there who feel nothing but offense at everything and once you’ve pissed them off - you win.
Overnight ratings are in: Zap2It has the show at a 7.5/12, Mediaweek at an 8.8/14. Not sure what the discrepancy is (or why) but it’s still a respectable second behind CSI: Palm Beach.
They specifically asked whose turn it was this week, and it was hers. I don’t think we’ll see it again in future weeks (though it would be an interesting recurring point, and a way to establish comparative character for a lot of cast members) but it seems like they’re angling for ‘everyone gets a shot at this and it just happened to be Harry’s on this highly appropriate week’.
No, the Harriet Character is specifically drawn from Kristin Chenoweth, who is a devout born-again Christian, but who does not subscribe to the right-wing fundamentalist vision (and who did go on the 700 Club to promote her work). That’s a brilliant character choice; it avoids the cliches and goes for something with a lot more dramatic conflict. Granted, it does serve to make a political point, but the many rich character possibilities make it well worthwhile, since you have the built-in conflict between her religious principles and what the show portrays.
People do it before football games, basketball games and NASCAR races. They do it before sessions of Congress. Some do it before every meal. Prayer is something that shows up in people’s lives on a daily basis. Is it really so hard to believe that a group of people going out to do comedy in front of a live audience and on national television for 23 weeks every year would do something as comforting as a quick informal prayer circle?
Funny, I first compared it to the Old Folks Theater episode of Mad About You. YMMV, I guess.
At the risk of sounding like an absolute ass, it’s a theater thing. Not a prayer circle, but certainly a pre-show circle…with each person taking a turn to lead it in the manner they choose. I’m speaking as someone who did theater for over a decade and participated in a circle or something similar for every single show.
Try putting more "y"s in next time, it might sink in for us thickheads better.
And of course if that had been the entire point…but of course it wasn’t, and I believe I noted some of the various other reasons for having the McGuffin sketch.
Some of us got the plot point without having to have it “strengthened” and some of us understand that coming up with a wacky sketch name was completely beside the point.
What, no love for either the The Pirate Movie version or the Yakko Warner “Cartoon Individual” parody?
Eh, I don’t think anything would work at this point.
Listen. If you are trying to show that the Matt character is somehow a talented comedy writer- Back it up. I had some hope when in the sketch pitch meeting he was clearly pained by the incredibly lame and unfunny sketches being pitched- but you know what is on a savy comedy writer’s unfunny scale right after a Clintons vs Bushes Family Feud sketch? A sketch about Crazy Christians.
Ours never mentioned Jesus. My point is just that the whole thing didn’t seem weird at all to me, whether it mentioned Jesus or not. It was obvious from the context that it wasn’t a Christian thing for each of the people in the circle.
For me, as soon as someone says the word 'Jesus," or even “God” or comes anywhere near praying to anything at all, I’m out of there (politely). I can’t believe that out of an entire cast of “edgy” L.A. comics and actors, not a single one would do the same.
Also, if we’re supposed to accept that they “respect” Harriet so much, I think we need to see a reason why. So far she’s been nothing but unprofessional and shrill and hasn’t contributed a single funny line.
j;