[nitpicky jerk]
it wasn’t quite his first day; he’d been there a week, at least. But yeah,he got thrown in the deep end pretty quick.
I thought it was really good. I didn’t watch WW very long (too often the politics made me mad) but Sports Night was one of my favorite shows.
The only thing I thought was weak was “Crazy Christians.” That’s kind of a lame title for a sketch, isn’t it? I wish they had shown some of the sketch, instead of just telling us how good/funny/controversial it was. Show us good and controversial.
I’m a real sucker for insider stuff, and I liked Sports Night a whole lot. Never saw an episode of The West Wing, however (didn’t try to avoid it, just never got round to seeing it).
Pretty damn derivative plot device to get things in motion, but there were plenty of snappy lines and I thought Matthew Perry and whoever his partner was were absolutely great. In fact, I’d almost call Perry a revelation; never thought he really had that much depth. Amanda Peet, well, she’s not bad, but I don’t know that I buy her in that particular job position. Yeah, I know it’s dramatic television, and everyone therefore has to be really pretty and have glamorous outfits. Clever how they started off with her attending a dinner party so she could do the entire ep in a really nice dress.
Kinda sweet that they got Felicity Huffman into the show. I also noticed they had Overweight Nerd from the Cap One commercials in a small part. He’s clearly building up to a promising career as go-to guy when one needs the archetypal jagoff.
It’ll be interesting, I think, to see what sort of Christian the character of Perry’s ex turns out to be, and where the plot points that end up based on that go.
One question: was this the pilot I was watching tonight, or at least part of it?
My main reaction after watching was self inquiry as to my ability to give this show a fair shake. Instead of judging the show and its elements on their own merits, I was making constant comparisons. Moreover, with the bar already set so high, I felt a tendency to seek nits to pick. I will, however, keep watching (at least for a while) as I trust it will be about the highest quality (acted, written) on network TV. And my wife was really smitten.
A couple of my “concerns”:
- it will take a while for me to slow down on the comparisons to WW. Tough, right now, to view Josh and Danny as different characters. Also, one thing I liked about WW was their intelligent dealing with important issues. Not sure if a network comedy scenario will allow them to address the same issues. Hope so, because I’m far less interested in entertainment industry politics.
- Amanda Peet seemed to almost always be smirking. Exactly what was that constant little smile supposed to convey? She sure is easy on the eyes, tho.
- Chandler Bing will need to do a bit more to convince me he has any serious acting chops. But I’ll try to give him a fair shake.
- The studio heavy - the guy from Wings? I had a hard time accepting his character, since so far I only know him from that role. For the 1st 1/4 I was wondering “Who is that guy.” Then for the rest I was thinking, “Not right in that role.”
- When they trotted out Ed Asner - not to mention Judd Hirsch, I wondered if they would rely too heavily on a revolving cast of TV warhorses.
- many of the scenes - especially in the studio and the bar - had background noise that interfered with my understanding the rapidfire dialogue.
Like I said, I don’t think I was able to give it an entirely fair shake last night. I fully expect things will improve when I get more of a feeling for individuals in this large case. And I think just about every good show changes/improves following the pilot. I expect this to be one of the very few new shows I will watch at all.
What do you think of the time slot? I can’t remember watching many other shows Mondays at 9 p.m. Is that traditionally a “money” slot? I hope they don’t move it around. No complaints from me, tho, as it fits well into my schedule.
No worse than, say, “Church Chat” or “Coneheads.” The name doesn’t matter.
Nah, the sketch is just a Maguffin. The content of the sketch makes no difference. If they presented the sketch then people would focus on how good or bad the sketch was rather than just taking it as part of the plot. Besides, if they broadcast the sketch it would put the lie to the premise that the sketch couldn’t be broadcast.
The “partner” is Bradley Whitford, who won an Emmy and was nominated for two more for his work on the West Wing. He’s very good, but as much as Perry’s challenge here will be to get people to think of him as someone other than Chandler, Whitford’s challenge will be to get identified as someone other than Josh Lyman.
Yes, that was the pilot.
The show itself? I like it, it has potential, ask me again in a season or two. 'Cause I’ll be watching, especially with it being my first Sorkin-HD action.
El Kabong, the show on NBC last night was the pilot. It just moved pretty fast, as the shows Sorkin writes tend to do. And if you liked Sports Night I think you’d really like TWW, at least the first four seasons.
I liked the chemistry that was extablished between Brad Whitford and Matthew Perry in the aforementioned episode of The West Wing, and I’m glad to see that they are working together here as partners. I think it will work.
I enjoyed it, the show. I purposely held off watching the pre-release just so I would see it fresh last night. And I’m glad to see that there was some pedeconferencing, but not nearly as much as their (Schlamme/Sorkin) previous shows. And the Harriet character, though at first looked to be something of a caricature, seems to have a lot more depth.
And I’ve got two favorite lines: The one where, after Matt’s rant about how it would be impossible to embarass NBS, Jordan deadpans, “I have a mutual masturbation show already in development.” The second was, at the eleventh minute (as pointed out by Otto, Jordan (again) says something like, “They’ve heard of Paddy Chayevsky. I’d say that’s something.”
All in all, I thought it was a good, solid start with plenty of room to grow.
Wow. That was just…wow.
Okay, I’ve never heard of completion insurance. Someone want to fill me in? I’m also a bit confused on the titles and roles. Jordan (Amanda Peet) is the new president, but president of what? Not the network, because Jack (Steven Weber) is her boss. I got that Ed Asner is the president of the company that owns the network (a la GE owning NBC.)
It was nice seeing some minor WW actors…anyone catch Katie the reporter as Danny’s date? Timothy Busfield looks better with a beard. Grow that puppy back.
How big is SNL, anyway? Studio 60 looked like it employed hundreds of people.
Are we taking bets on how many episodes air before Josh Malina shows up? 
I liked it, but Amanda Peet is way too young and dewy for that role. It should be played by Donna Murphy–it’s depressing to see one of the best actresses of her generation reduced to a bit part.
I was wondering that too…isn’t she a bit young to be the president of a network?
COmpletion insurance is an insurance policy taken out by a production company to recoup the costs of production should the project be uncompleteable. Say for example half the cast is killed in a plane crash halfway into the filming schedule. The insurance company is going to insist that the cast and important crew are in good health. In this case, “good health” means that the director, with a history of drug addiction, not test positive for drugs.
I think Peet is the network president and that Weber is the person in the ownership company responsible for the network. So Weber works for Asner and Peet works for Weber.
I was worried because there was so much hype that a backlash had already started from people who were saying that the pilot wasn’t all that good.
It wasn’t great, but pilots have to introduce everybody and set up the relationships, which is way too much to do cleanly in only 45 minutes of script for this many talking roles. Taking that into account, Sorkin did a fine job. Lots of people were introduced, and he left himself openings to slowly introduce the cast by leaving most of them out of this episode and using one-time characters to carry the narrative load. Good thinking for television.
Amanda Peet was the low point. I’d read that she was supposed to be the big breakout character for the show, but I thought she was way too wide-eyed and naive for the position, and she only used one facial expression in every scene. She was blown off the screen by everybody in sight.
And I have to say that it’s incredibly funny that people online make references to Vice President Otter as if everybody knows what that might mean when in reality half the people in this thread have never even seen West Wing and so those references go past them, let alone references to some 30-year-old movie. My suggestion: quit the cutesy I-know-them-from-another-role-and-will-refer-to-them-forever-by-that-name insider jokes. Pop culture has gotten way too fragmented for that to work anymore. People do it in every discussion thread of every tv show. It’s old and overdone. Please stop it.
Excuse me, but I called him VP Otter because I blanked out on his character’s name. I wasn’t being cutesy, and I knew people who were fans of WW would know what I was talking about, and if you weren’t, it wasn’t that big a deal.
Well for example Brandon Tartikoff was 30 when he became president of NBC, so a young network president isn’t unheard of. He was the youngest president ever.
What is “pedeconferencing”? Is it talking while walking? Is that a West Wing reference? I never watched West Wing, and I’m starting to think that’s a good thing, since I won’t have any trouble believing these characters in their new roles. (I’ll be waiting for the Capital One guy to break something though.)
I do remember Tim Busfield from thirtysomething, and he hasn’t aged much in what, 20 years? Maybe it’s the makeup. He looked great.
As a point of reference, Sherry Lansing was about 36 when she became president of 20th Century Fox (movie studio). Amanda Peet is currently 34, although she looks younger.
True, but I think he’s the exception rather than the rule. I could see her assistant (?), the actress who played Picard’s love interest in Star Trek: Generations, as more of a president that Amanda Peet.
…ahem, as I attempted to say last night…
I watched the pilot a week ago (I won’t say where indeference to board sensibilities) and I watched it again last night in its official broadcast. Overall, I’d rate it “acceptable”.
It had its flaws:
- It’s in danger of taking its subject to seriously. This isn’t about the American government; this is a show about a TV show. Lighten up - more Sports Night, less West Wing.
- It’s also in danger of being too autobiographical. It had better not turn into Aaron Sorkin’s fictionalized version of Aaron Sorkin’s life.
- Almost all of the characters were one dimensional. But that might be unavoidable in a pilot; hopefully, they’ll flesh out the cast as the series progresses.
- Amanda Peet’s a talented actress but you wouldn’t know it from this show. She was either badly miscast or badly mis-directed.
- The biggest surprise for me was the poor writing. There were several points where I was thinking of better lines for the characters than the ones they were actually saying. Which is bad because I’m not a particularly good script writer and also because it indicates I wasn’t being pulled into the story.
That’s walking while having a conversation. I think it’s a Sorkin trademark, and it’s quite tricky to do, but it looks cool. He also did it in Sports Night, so it’s not a WW reference.
Trivia…Josh Malina and Timy Busfield are brothers-in-law.
I just finally watched all of Sports Night, thanks to Netflix, and never saw an episode of West Wing, so I’m a relative newcomer to Sorkin.
Overall, I liked it, but not unreservedly. It had all the earmarks of a Pilot, with the attendant clunkiness and OverExpositoriness, but I’m determined to give it a fair shot.
I didn’t like Jordan at all. I’m sorry, and I know this says volumes about me, but I just can’t buy that such beautiful young woman would be taken seriously enough by her superiors to rise to that job quite yet. I feel like anyone who is that bloody good looking and in television is going to be in front of the camera, not in an office. Furthermore, she lacked the Sorkin “depth” and flaws - she was too plastic, too perfect and too precise. Where is her glitch? Why wasn’t she freaking out, at least a little bit in private, on her Very Bad First Day? Dana (Sports Night) was beautiful, but not too much so, but most importantly, she was flawed, as are all his characters, eventually. I hope he doesn’t wait to long to show us that Jordan is human.