Didn’t CJ have a list?
I liked when Jack was talking to Allison, and was too drunk to remember who she was and mistook her for Christine Lahti… who’d actually played the reporter early in the series. The mixing of real world/Studio 60 world made my head spin in a good way.
I kinda liked it. At least it was actually (mostly) about television. And not Red State vs. Blue State politics or Matt and Harriet’s tedious undying love.
I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it. I tried to work up some give-a-shit, but alas it was not to be.
That’s interesting to me. Weren’t you one of the show’s early apologists?
I liked it, in spite of some minor problems. Any problems were offset by three factors:
This episode demonstrated all the virtues and flaws of the series. A great cast and some great dialogue. Serious story line problems, going in and out of contact with reality, and characters who still have settled into a consistent personality. And Sorkin should limit his humor to characters saying funny things, when he tries to create funny situations he misses almost every time.
They’d made the point earlier in the show that the props department had deliberately fubared the prop settings–they even said ‘that sort of thing will be happening all night’ after the water was switched for alcohol in the cold open. I would assume the squibs being attached to the wrong costume would be, you know, one of those deliberate sorts of mistakes. How they got set off in the wrong sketch, I dunno, because I don’t know how they get set off in a normal sketch, but it didn’t seem like they were trying to pull a fast one, but that they had deliberately written that into the sketch.
Also, Allison Janney in the moll dress? Mrowr.
I laughed a lot during that show. Unfortunately for me, NBCHD from DirecTV lost primary audio from when Harriet kept everyone in the makeup room until much later in the show. (maybe when Simon’s girl was slapping him)
All I could hear during that time was the background audio (people walking by, Macy Gray’s song, etc)
This show just can’t catch a break. Plus the fans here seem to not like it, so I guess that’s that.
My favorite part was the Cal/Allison opening monologue.
Steven Weber needs a new show.
I think you have me confused with someone else. I didn’t even participate in the first ten or so threads about show episodes.
Is it truly plausible that kids in this day and age would not have an iota of a hint as to what would happen to them if the retrived their phone? I mean, come on.
Wikipedia has a description of blood squibs here:
You couldn’t not know you were wearing one.
They’re usually set off remotely by a radio signal. I’d have been willing to wave my hand past that inconsistency, but having them go off in the wrong sketch and the wrong costume is taking my suspension of disbelief too far.
Anyone else think that this show would have been much better if Cal and Jack were the main characters?
I missed the first 15 to 20 minutes. Did they ever explain where Matt and Danny were?
Cal told us that Danny was out in the parking lot trying to mollify the propmasters.
I didn’t hear where Matt (and for that matter, Jordan) were supposed to be.
Thanks, Fiver.
It had a definate** Three’s Company** hack writing feel to it, didn’t it?
My wife and I watched. Near the end, she turned to me and said “There’s no show here, is there?” She was right.
I’ll say it again. Many, many people started off wanting to like this show. But it kept playing to it’s weaknesses instead of it’s strengths. The banter between Matt and Danny was good. The ideas the presented for skits could have been really funny and fun to watch. The goings-on of a live broadcast is actually very interesting.
But dammit, the writing was crap. I cannot belive Sorkin actually penned any of it. The ridiculous ‘trapped on a rooftop (in Los Angels, the cell phone capitol of the planet) with no signal’ bit…the completely predictable sitcom-style Simon inviting 2 women to Hawaii…the endless Matt and Harriet crap…the completely predictable sitcom-style snake-gopher-wolf bit…the utterly nonsensical 'Tom being extradited to Nevada on a Nevada holiday *on the same day he was arrested in Los Angeles * two-parter…the bit about using coconut for snow because their prop warehouse collapsed (in Los Angeles, where fake snow is commercially available form 3 or 4 dozen places by making a phone call) bit…
Maybe it was all an experiment and I was the guinea pig? There were trying to see how much drivel the average over 40 couch potato would take before he screamed in disgust?
I have some inside sources. You remember how earlier in the season they had a room full of writers that just sat around getting frustrated while Matt wrote the entire show every week?
That bit was autobiographical. Sorkin wrote all of it.
No Darius, either. I found that a bit odd.
I did like to see Allison and Cal interacting…shades of CJ and Danny on West Wing. As for finding out Simon is a dog, surely there are more creative, less ham-fisted ways of handling that. I knew the second he invited Claire to Hawaii Stephanie was going to show up.
What’s up with Harriet telling everybody to sit down and shut up because she has seniority? Is that how it normally works in a series…the stars get to boss around the supporting actors?
Would Danny be involved in a contract negotiation? Wouldn’t the lawyers handle that?
Is it believable in this day and age a teenager would hear Muhammed and think Ali ? Muhammed Ali has been retired for ages…that was a bit of a stretch.
I’ll finish watching the series just for closure, as I said above, but it had such such potential.
For those of you in the know, what would really happen if the Propmasters went on strike 10 minutes before the show? Would they air a re-run? Would there be enough assistants willing to step in?
…ummm… not to sound snarky… but it’s pretty common knowledge that Sorkin was writing this series with little to no input from anyone. It was basically in his contract.