Last night was my second time watching the pilot, after having seen it through Netflix. My take is that this is her character’s main technique for manipulating other people, especially men; it causes those around her to misperceive what she’s doing and underestimate what she’s capable of. Note the Steven Weber character saying “I’m not like the others, I don’t find you charming.” Her actions were far from naive; the moment where she pulls her boss out of the crisis meeting with a borderline command, “Let’s talk in my office,” is not the act of a naive person.
Obviously, whether or not this interpretation is correct, or if the character legitimately doesn’t work, will be seen over the coming weeks.
And next week’s preview looked hilarious.
For the record, I never watched either West WingorFriends, so I’m coming to the show without any actorly baggage. And Perry and Whitford’s characters both worked like gangbusters, in my opinion. For what it’s worth.
I wonder who the mentor will be? On Sports Night is was Isaac, on WW is was Leo, but Wes got fired right off the bat, so I don’t know if he will be the mentor to those crazy kids.
I caught one thing that might have been an in-joke. Or I could be reading too much into it.
When Jordan was introduced to Matt, she said “I couldn’t be a bigger fan of yours.” I wondered if this was meant to echo Chandler Bing’s “Could you be more [adjective]?” speech pattern.
The Jordan McDeere character is pretty much modelled on Jamie Tarses, who was president of NBC Entertainment at 30 or 31 or somesuch similar age. So it shouldn’t be entirely unbelievable that someone that young has the job, since someone that young has had the job.
I thought of Victoria Jackson – IIRC, Jackson got some undeserved flack for some of her non-SNL activities – Christian music albums and the like. In the pilot, Harriet said she stood by the “Crazy Christian” sketch, and Jordan told Matt to lead with the sketch on the next show. I see Harriet getting a chance to speak for the overwhelming majority of un-crazy Christians, and I predict a speech about being tired of being lumped in with the radical right, about how her faith allows her to be pro-choice and a bunch of other issues that Christians are unfairly tarred with. Hollywood giving mainstream Christianity a voice – wotta’ concept!
The inside poop, to my knowledge is that Amanda Peet’s character is based on Jamie Tarses who was the head of - what? - maybe programming or something very senior at ABC for about 1 - 2 years. She was young, attractive and aggressive and the TV biz supposedly chewed her up and spit her out.
So the whole “isn’t she too young and pretty?” parts come from there. Whether or not you think she is a good actor and/or a good fit for this role is your call. I thought she did a great job and especially loved her exchange the Steven Weber’s character about him having to sacrifice his balls based on Judd Hirsch’s meltdown and the network’s need to position itself effectively. It was funny and she came across as competent, aggressive and willing to speak truth to power in her world. And it positioned her character as a prime mover on the show. Good stuff.
In Network, news anchor, having recently been told of his pending termination, has live on-air meltdown, ranting against his industry. Bosses want to fire him until they realize ratings went through the roof. Build show around him.
In Studio 60, warhorse producer, having recently been creatively castrated by an oily apparatchik, has live on-air meltdown, ranting against his industry. Talking heads immediately draw comparison with Network. Difference: he gets fired anyway.
Basically, Studio 60 is about to go live. At the last minute, the executive producer (Wes) is told by standards and practices that a skit must be cut because it’s too controversial. Wes tries to stand up to him, but eventually folds. He fumes, and in the middle of the opening skit (some spoof of Pres Bush and VP Cheney) he storms on stage and begins a diatribe against censorship and the dumbing down of TV to avoid pissing off the FCC. At first, the audience thinks it’s part of the skit, but he grabs their attention as he continues to rant.
The S&P guy storms into the control room demanding they cut Wes off. The TD, Timothy Busfield, hems and haws and says he hasn’t done anything that would get them in trouble with the FCC. Finally, after 53 seconds, they cut to opening theme music.
At a dinner party, Jordan is being feted by her new bosses when she gets a phone call. It’s her assistant, and as she tries to laugh off its importance, everyone else’s phones and pagers go off as the news gets out that there was a live meltdown on broadcast TV.
There’s a big meeting with the network execs, and as they wring their hands about lawsuits and FCC, Jordan points out that what they’re really worried about is that Wes may be right. She takes her boss out to the hall and tells him she wants to rehire two men who used to helm the show but were fired four years ago, and have gone on to bigger and better things (one of them is getting a Writer’s Guild award as they speak.)
I hope its okay if I just copy in the comments I made in another thread when I saw this premier a couple months ago:
I thought the following things about it:
Pleasant suprise: Brad Whitford didn’t just make me think of Josh Lyman the whole time. It’s subtle, but, his face moves a little differently, he speaks a little differently. He’s a new character. I find this rare in TV actors.
Matthew Perry is just “Matthew Perry,” but IMO there’s nothing wrong with that. He fits the part.
The portrayal of the Christian character seemed off to me. She didn’t seem to be saying things that I found realistic to the concept of her character. The performance was fine, (not great,) but for the most part I’m talking about the actual written dialogue. No examples come to mind at the moment, though.
Whoever is in charge of deciding which shades of which colors should be on screen at what times is doing something very interesting and pleasing to the eye. I’m not sure how it integrates into the work as a whole, except that I suspect it somehow adds to the “its all a veneer” theme that runs through the show. I’d have to watch one or two more times to confirm that intuition. But what I’m thinking is, the shiny and interesting colors jump out at you in this kind of “glitzy” way which seems to attempt to hide the perfectly ordinary objects giving rise to them. Hard to explain.
There’s a scene at the very end comments about which I need to spoiler box:
The actors and the director have done a very nice job of transforming Whitford and Perry’s characters before the viewers’ eyes from semi-successful semi-losers to the “big men in charge.” The scene where they inform the producer that he’ll be keeping his job is where this really happens. Somehow, their faces look more adult, their suits look more shiny, they look bigger in relation to their environment. It’s just a really nice effect. It indicates promising things, I think, for the series.
Dialogue was a little stilted at points, but it seemed compatible with the “Pilot Episode Effect” IMO.
Amanda Peet does a no-good job, unfortunately! I didn’t believe her as a high-powered Exec. She was trying to be the rational, soft-spoken high-power exec, which is fine, but somehow she didn’t pull it off right.
53 seconds is an eternity in broadcasting. Instead of cutting it off immediately, the TD, probably feeling loyalty to his exec producer, let him go off for a bit.
I think it’s funny that if he had cut it off, the show wouldn’t have hired Matt and Danny and it would have continued its slide into unfunniness (Peripheral Vision Man?)
I thought that was the funniest part of the show. One after the other, each of 4 news channels makes a reference to “Network” or Howard Beale. It’s a little implausible that the news shows (network or cable) would be covering this story simultaneously, within minutes of its happening late on a Friday night, but the effect was great.
Ratings are in: 2nd behind CSI:Sheboygan with an 8.6/14, but it lost some viewers in the second half-hour. Understandable, since the second half-hour was kind of slow and exposition-y.
