John Walker's Electronic House

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – NBC

by on Oct.03, 2006, under The Rest

Something’s been holding me back from writing about Studio 60. I’m a bit scared to. I’ve become like some sort of crazed Pharisee, unwilling to say the name of their God as it can only demean him.

I don’t care if you think this is hyperbole. I do care if you pronounce that “hyper-bowl”. It is the most exceptional writing I have ever seen.

So, a thousand people tell me at once, that’s because I’ve not seen The West Wing. Well, I’ve started watching it, and it’s phenomenal. The West Wing is, without question, one of the best written television programmes ever. I care about politics, but I’m in love with comedy. So you’re going to have to forgive me for picking Studio 60 over it.

Three episodes in, and I don’t know what to do with the emotional response I have to it. Not to the story, because the story hasn’t attempted any huge emotional waves. But the quality. It’s more good than I realised television could be. It’s pure television drama, embracing the rules. Rather than the naturalism that’s necessary for a British drama to not sound like pantomime, here everyone takes their turn to say their perfect line, in a manner which cannot happen in real life. And that’s what television is for. And their lines are perfect.

Set in a parallel version of NBC (the channel on which the programme is shown), called NBS, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is their flagship live sketch show, shown on Friday nights. It’s Saturday Night Live. And Saturday Night Live hasn’t been funny for a very long time. It’s a cold, flat, soulless mess of corporate drivel, lacking any balls, bite or comment. And so is Studio 60 in episode 1, until the producer walks on set during the live broadcast to decry the state of a programme that once mattered.

He’s fired, and a producer and lead writer who had previously worked on the show, until some unrevealed falling out, are brought back by the new president of the station. And they care. As does the new president.

And then comes the finest acting and dialogue I’ve ever seen, as the process of making television good again, against the pressures of sponsors, right-wing Christian groups, executives, ratings, focus groups and people’s pasts.

Writer Aaron Sorkin sets himself a challenge that few could ever achieve. Because not only does he have to write a brand new show in the shadow of The West Wing’s massive success, and one that must face all the pressures of sponsors, right-wing Christian groups, executives, ratings, focus groups and people’s pasts, but he has to write a sketch show inside it that’s consistently extremely funny. Three episodes in, he’s outdone anything I could have hoped for.

The Larry Sanders Show, certainly a close second when it comes to finest television writing ever, got out of it cleverly – they deliberately had the sketches be poor, the writers weak. Sorkin can’t do that, and thankfully doesn’t need to. The lines, in the hands of the biggest and finest cast I can think of, blossom, the sketches outstandingly funny. Anyone who sees the end of the second episode, the song, and doesn’t laugh until their face aches, is an empty human. (“We’ll happily do the favour of an intellectual reach-around.”) Forget your prejudices against Matthew Perry – he’s fucking incredible here. The only person better than him is Bradley Whitford (West Wing), who makes me gasp out loud with his delivery. Sarah Paulson (American Gothic) is so wonderful, so incredibly believeable, and the only bearable Christian character in anything (since Firefly got cancelled). Amanda Peet, who you would assume would be the weak link, is superb. Everyone. Everyone is brilliant. There’s no weak link.

I have never, in my life, watched a programme twice in a row. I tend to never watch anything twice, unless in the company of someone who hasn’t seen it before, so I can absorb their enjoyment like some sort of entertainment vampire. The second time I watched the Studio 60 pilot, I started it again the moment it ended, and watched enraptured for a third time.

This is the sort of thing that makes me feel like I’m a useless writer, and want to write. It overwhelms me with its quality. It’s the best thing on TV right now, and certainly one of the best things on TV in the last few million years.


11 Comments for this entry

  • Tom

    Sorkin is my God. I haven’t watched the third episode yet, and I didn’t think the pilot was as good as the West Wing’s extraordinarily clever one was, but it has the two things that make me love him in spades: one, my mind isn’t just being entertained, it’s scampering to keep up. I watch every episode three times, and ideally I’d like to be a few inches from the screen with headphones on max volume: there’s that much in every line and scene. Second, I admire the bejesus out of these people. Some of the best writers in the world couldn’t come up with a character I care about to save their lives, but more or less everyone Sorkin thinks up – even some of his right-wing bigots – are bastions of human virtue I watch in awe. He’s basically the antithesis of the two main problems I have with most TV: my brain has nothing to do so I’m falling asleep, or I don’t like anyone on-screen so I don’t care what happens next. With Studio 60, I both care profoundly and have no idea.

  • Tom

    One thing you’ll notice if you watch a lot of Sorkin stuff is how much of the performances the actors give is down to him, and perhaps his persistent posse. Everyone from Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, Martin Sheen and Matthew Perry delivers with Sorkin’s mannerisms, Sorkin psuedo-adlibs, Sorkin pacing. There are even different archetypes within those – the ratings guy talking to Wes at the start of the pilot acts uncannily like Stockard Channing in the West Wing: his cut-off leading into “God, Wes, and you knew that when you-” is pitch-perfect for the countless times Abi’s said “-God, Jed, why don’t you-” etc. Then his “Yes, yes she is, it’s a dinner party /for/ Jordan McDeere” is dead on so many Bradley Whitford one-breath exasperated retorts.

    Once you’re done with the first four seasons of West Wing, Sports Night is next. It’s a little more repetitious than his other two series, but has some of his best characters. The guy cast as Danny plays off Sorkin’s writing as brilliantly as Whitford at his best.

    Incidentally, I’m starting a pool for how many episodes before Joshua Molina turns up in Studio 60. My money’s on eight episodes.

  • Tom

    (Going for the hat-trick). I couldn’t resist re-watching that bit of the pilot I referred to, and it reminded me why I still prefer the West Wing at this stage. I have no interest in politics, really, but just as you love Studio 60 because you love comedy, I love the West Wing because I love philosophy. Every argument, point and speech is impeccably, forcefully, elegantly worded. Studio 60’s dialogue has a lot of that flair, but the speech that starts it all isn’t terribly coherent. Wes makes two conflicting points almost simultaneously: TV’s too scared of the censors to do anything challenging, and TV has become so sordidly extreme that it’s “just this side of snuff, and friends, that’s what’s next”. Is it too censored or not censored enough? Both the extreme’s he’s railing against are stupid, but that’s not the criticism he picks: it’s first their timidity, then their lewdness, then their timidity again. The meter and vim of it is fantastic, but when you’re actually listening to what he’s saying, which as I say I tend to do three times concentrating intensely, you’re not quite sure what his point is. That never once happens in the first hundred episodes of the West Wing.

  • Steve W

    I’m pleased you like Studio 60, and The West Wing for that matter. In fact I’m genuinely delighted; it makes me warm inside like only knowledge of someone else’s getting something you love really can. For me, it’s the pure beauty of Sorkin’s writing. The show it’s on is almost secondary.

    The West Wing still has the edge for me though. I was unable to define it coherently after only seeing the pilot, but three episodes in on Studio 60 and there is one thing perhaps lacking in Sorkin’s writing which was present in at least the first couple of seasons of his masterpiece series: a complete and utter, one hundred percent trust in the intelligence of his audience. Despite featuring its fair share of ‘outside’ characters to act as our proxy, often The West Wing would just jump in to a situation without preamble, without explanation, and run with it. It’s not that it relied upon pre-existing audience knowledge of the US political system, not at all; it’s that it relied upon the audience’s being intelligent enough to pick it up as they went along, often making no attempt to explain things for most of an episode until one brilliantly-dropped line would illuminate the situation like the sun coming out. That wonderful feeling and that total faith is still missing from Studio 60, but by the third episode it’s only little short.

    And finally, ever since Matthew Perry guest starred in The West Wing I’ve been saying he was born to say Sorkin’s words; that he initially turned this role down doesn’t bear thinking about.

    I just hope the ratings pick up soon; if they don’t, perhaps it’s time to call in the focus groups…

  • Steve W

    Mr Francis, I believe Wes’ point, in part, was that lewdness no longer equals daring. Daring is challenging accepted wisdom. Daring is pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. Not just in terms of sexual or violent content; being daring is asking your audience to think.

    I didn’t get that at first. I thought his diatribe was a little flat. I was wrong.

  • Tom

    I don’t doubt there’s something to be said about TV not challenging its audience enough, and that this is the spirit in which Wes’s speech is written, but the words themselves don’t convey it. But after a brief mention of challenge at the start he spends the rest of the speech talking about how scared the network is of the censors and religious lobbyist groups, both of whom are strong opponents of worm-eating, sister-screwing near-snuff pornography. If the network’s producing too much filth, that’s the opposite of being “scared gutless of the FCC and every psycho-religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott.” Either of these could be argued well for, particularly by Sorkin, but trying to do both at once undermines each alternatingly.

  • Andy Krouwel

    So, better than Rentaghost?

  • MHW

    Nothing will ever be better than Rentaghost. It had a ghost pantomime horse FFS.

  • Martin Coxall

    The quality of writing was, curiously enough, the thing that eventually made West Wing irritating. People do not, cannot, speak continually like every word was lovingly crafted by a master screenplay writer. It feels false, unrealistic. And that detracts from the overall experience.

    It’s an odd paradox.

    The mere mortals in Studio 60 appear more flawed. Matthew gets a word wrong in the new episode. It’s good that Sorkin has finally realised that in West Wing, the characters were inhumanly perfect, and decided to avoid a repeat of that mistake.

    Nonetheless, I do spot a threatening undercurrent of perfection beneath most of the characters, that could erupt alarmingly if he’s not careful.

    It’s not big to be clever.

  • Tom

    Near as I can tell, no-one talks anything like anyone in any TV show except perhaps The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Also, most people don’t lead interesting lives whose events divide neatly into forty-two minute story arcs. It all kind of comes with the fiction territory.

  • Kieron GIllen

    I stormed out of King Lear because of all that Iambic shit.

    KG

2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks for this entry

  • arcon | On The Sunset Strip

    […] There’s two good reviews about the “story so far” concerning the must-see show of 2006: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the first, by John Walker, freelance Games Journalist who used to (and possibly still does) write for PC Gamer back when I used to read it. Championing the whole show for, if nothing else, its snappy dialogue: Three episodes in, and I don’t know what to do with the emotional response I have to it. Not to the story, because the story hasn’t attempted any huge emotional waves. But the quality. It’s more good than I realised television could be. It’s pure television drama, embracing the rules. Rather than the naturalism that’s necessary for a British drama to not sound like pantomime, here everyone takes their turn to say their perfect line, in a manner which cannot happen in real life. And that’s what television is for. And their lines are perfect. […]

  • Kieron Gillen’s Workblog » Studio 60

    […] Got around to watching the first three episodes of Sorkin’s Studio 60, if only to catch up with the general net debate. Better men have talked a lot more. (For two, Ellis here and Walker here . Ellis is a little down on it, especially the third episode, and Walker is very much up on it. That said, I suspect the Mathew Perry character is the fictional character he’d most like to be in the world, so I’m not actually that surprised. Which isn’t a criticism, of course), but it hit a couple of nerves. Right TV show, wrong time and so on. […]