I think this is why the G&S number tanked for me (not terrible, but certainly no great shakes, either)–because we weren’t watching what the TV audience was seeing. Like Larry Sanders (no U), we should see behind-the-scenes stuff in a fluid, cinematic sense, but the actual skits on the show should be presented as if we were the NBS audience. I think our expectations of humor will be different, too, since a humorous skit played for the camera isn’t going to be as funny when watching it as a fly-on-the-wall. That wouldn’t have necessarily made the number “great”, but it not only would have improved it, but it also would have hopefully shown that this type of intro was going to be a bit more unconventional (and certainly, they could’ve staged it to play up this angle, so we could say “Wow, SNL never did something like that”). They built that bit up too much (“best dress ever!”) and the audience overreaction didn’t help either.
I must admit we watch it from curiosity of Bradley Whitford or Whitley Bradford or whatever his name is. It doesn’t seem as exciting as West Wing. It’s ok, and as the man said, it’s only the second episode.
Assuming it runs more than six episodes, it should end with Matt’n’Josh saying a calm goodbye as their contract ends and after an slowly increasing pace of editorials and pundits saying they’re behind the times and should step aside so the show can adapt for a younger edgier audience.
Matt [packing up his office]: So, did we get anything done?
Josh: What, you mean anything permanent? No. But it was never about changing the world; it was always about holding the line. Seven days of stress for ninety minutes of glory. That has to be better than seventy years of piety for, I dunno…
Matt: [snarkily] Eternity in Heaven?
Josh: [chuckles]
And as they walk out, one person starts to clap slowly, to be rapidly joined by everyone else in a standing ovation. 
Still don’t like Harriet, and I don’t think she is going to grow on me.
D.L. Hughley’s character is puzzling. His dialogue seemed very stilted and clunky. If he is supposed to be the “comic relief” it’s not working.
The cast of the SWIAS is totally uninteresting; they have no energy, other than Harriet’s annoying energy.
I hope Matt and Danny loosen up soon. I realize they are under alot of pressure right now, but they are so serious!!!
I guess Sorkin just can’t help but put his characters in a press conference situation after the daily press briefings in WW.
I’ll still watch. I don’t think the show has hit it’s stride yet. It might not hit its stride until next season, but I’ll keep watching.
I really enjoyed this episode. I thought the writing was tight, and Matt and Danny really seemed to take charge.
I have one question regarding theater superstition…I thought it was bad luck to have a great dress rehearsal. So when Danny was going on about how they killed in dress rehearsal wasn’t he tempting fate, at least as thespians are concerned?
Amanda Peet is coming along. She is unafraid to stick by her guns and stand by her promises. Brad and Matthew have good chemistry, and I loved the press conference. It took a lot of balls for Danny to admit that he had failed a drug test and that’s why he couldn’t do the movie. He was right, it would have come out sometime anyway, and this way he controls it.
When Jack (Steven Weber) said something like “Is there way we can screw this up more?” I had a Leo McGarry flashback.
How cool would it be if Martin Sheen or Rob Lowe were guest stars on Studio 60?
No Josh Malina yet. 
Because not coming up with a title for a sketch that causes side-splitting laughter is 100% indicative of the talent of the writer. Uh huh.
Reminded me of Star Trek 6, actually.
I like Weber a lot, but I hope the show doesn’t suggest the antics at their fictional network’s equivalent of SNL occupies a lot of his character’s time. He and Peet would have plenty of other stuff to do. Studio 60 should be a five-minues-a-week concern for them, if that.
If you are trying to establish that a character is really good with cars- What’s a better line?
“The engine just broke down.” or “The engine was out of a '78 Dodge Dart and those are notorious for faulty gaskets.”
I never said the sketch title had to be 100% side splitting laughter. It just needed, for me to not be wasted opportunity to actually get some sort of reaction from the audience (If we aren’t going to see it, give it a title that will make the audience actually react one way or the other) AND ring true to what we keep getting told about the character.
If you’re trying to establish a sketch as a McGuffin plot device, which is the better choice, to come up with a hilarious title for it or to simply establish its existence and then get on with the story?
I don’t think the sketch title is that important but the point about needing to back up the talk about Perry’s character being a genius comedy writer is a valid one. They’re going to have to do better than a vapid, witless musical number.
Look at the show board. Sketch titles are a couple of words that can be put onto an index card in large block letters and read from several feet away. That’s all they are. Don’t make anything more of them. They are not supposed to be funny. They are merely placeholders and mnemonics.
You know when we’ll have funny sketches? After we meet the cast.
If you don’t like the show, you don’t like the show. That’s fine. I give up on lots of shows after the first episode. Half a first episode even. But I watched enough television to know that you can’t stuff the whole season into two episodes. Yes, the show has to prove itself and has to produce. If it’s not working for you don’t watch it. I don’t care. But these criticisms that a drama hasn’t produced any super-funny classic sketches in the first two shows before we even know who the players all are smack of cluelessness, not of understanding and intellectual penetration.
I agree. Unless the audience is getting a program to follow along as they watch the show, they can call a sketch “Lucifer’s Left Nut” and as long as everyone knows what that refers to that’s all that matters.
BTW, did anyone else notice that one of the show-within-the-show cast members was the guy David Spade tortured in all those Capital One commercials?
That exterior of the Studio 60 location looked like a real building with a digital top added. Any locals know for sure?
Not a local, but I’ve heard it’s the Hollywood Palladium, which is on Sunset.
This was pointed out in the thread for last week’s show. Harriet skewered him at the wrap party.
DtC You call it a vapid, witless musical number, I called it an entertaining couple of minutes. They didn’t have time to show an entire number - it had to be fast and still get the point across (which some of us got, some of of didn’t, and the rest did get but didn’t enjoy) that they were going to be doing something different. The G&S opener was light years away from Peripheral Vision Man and the tired, cliched political bashings that the writers kept throwing out in that first meeting with Matt. It was something that Matt, Danny, Simon, Tom and Cal (Perry, Whitford, Hughley, Corrdry & Busfield) all contributed to, at least to get the ball rolling - meaning/implying that everyone assosciated with the show with a level of sophistication above Ron and Ricky and their cronies liked.
You can’t be shown everything to your satisfaction and still have a one-hour show be able to complete a story before the end of that hour. Some things you’ll just have to believe when you’re told, at least at first. Things such as Matt is funny, Harriet is funny, Jordan is smart and competent, and Peripheral Vision Man is worse than Massive Head-Wound Harry ever could be.
I though Peripheral Vision Man was funnier than that musical number but that’s just MHO.
I don’t actually believe you believe this. For one thing, we never saw the Peripheral Vision Man sketch. We heard the intro, but that’s not the same thing by any measure. All too often in humor, the funniness is all in the concept and not the execution. This is a curse that’s plagued comedy from SNL to the National Lampoon to McSweeney’s.
I will make a prediction right here and now that we will never see a whole sketch on Studio 60. A normal 5-7 minute SNL sketch would be death in a prime-time drama. Dramas live by scenes that are less than a minute long. Sorkin pushes his a bit longer at times, but they still move fast and are cut totally differently than comedy sketches. The two forms cannot co-exist. They won’t on the Tina Fey show either.
You’ll see snippets of sketches, you’ll see rehearsals for sketches, you’ll see references to sketches, you’ll see concepts for sketches, but you’ll never ever ever see a whole sketch.
Huh? We never SAW peripheral vision man, we just heard a teeny bit of its intro. And the intro wasn’t trying to be LOL-OMG-ROFL funny, it was trying to be different and dramatic and make a statement, while generating some genuine chuckles. It succeeded fine at that. It certainly needed to be followed up by laugh-out-loud funny skits, which, as far as we know, it was.
I was being sarcastic with the Peripheral Vision Man remark.
I guess I didn’t see anything different about the musical number. I saw it as tired and cliched. I’m not giving up on the show yet, though.