Aaron Sorkin’s latest overwrought wankfest, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, was reportedly in danger of getting the axe. Of course, these reports were coming from Fox News, an organization with little love for Sorkin, so fans of “good TV” can breathe easier knowing that new scripts have in fact been ordered.
Granted, the article remains cagey about the possibility of the show being picked up in the spring, so for those who simply have to make their voice heard, there’s a web site devoted to saving Studio 60, they even have a petition you can sign.
We, the undersigned believe in smart television. We have watched network executives cancel smart shows before-- shows like Arrested Development, Freaks & Geeks, FireFly and many more without giving them what we believe to be their rightful due.
Ah, online petitions. Is there anything they can’t do? Besides saving shows from cancellation, I mean.
The difference being, Arrested Development and Freaks and Geeks were shows one could watch without gnawing a hole in their own cheek. Studio 60 is – in the tradition of most Sorkin fare – didactic and repetitive. “Smart” television can’t be measured in words of dialogue spoken per minute, which Sorkin’s apologists seem to believe.
Beyond that, Studio 60 suffers from two serious problems. The first is NBC’s decision to depict the show as a comedy, which it really isn’t. There are (allegedly) funny situations, but things like last week’s blackballed comedy writer story (such current relevance) and the guy giving his dad the “Who’s On First?” album because he'd never heard it before(?!) are pure TV melodrama. It goes a long way towards explaining the show’s plummeting ratings, though it isn’t really Sorkin’s fault.
The second problem is, however, and that’s the ham-fisted political grandstanding the guy injects into everything he writes. It was understandable in The West Wing, which was a show about – guess what? – the Presidency. Hearing a bunch of TV writers (like Sorkin, coincidentally) pontificate on racial issues and HUAC and the like, on the other hand, is pretentious even by his usual standards.
Okay, three problems: Heroes isn't an appropriate lead-in.
And I've said it before (and I will continue to say it until I have converted every living human being to my cause) but if you still aren’t watching The Wire, whether on HBO, DVD, or the torrents, then you really have no idea what “smart television” is. Seriously.
Scripts being ordered is a bad sign, not a good one. A good sign is episodes being ordered.
I'm a big fan of Sorkin, and while S60 has some problems (most notably, unfunny sketches), it still hits my target.
Also try Denis Leary's Rescue Me on FX.... Nowhere else is it DELIGHTFUL to see an AA sponsor bitch slap his sponsee....
I've enjoyed Sorkin's previous work, but S60 is a mess. The biggest problem with it is that the show alternates between being condescending towards its audience and outright insulting them. Inside the show, the characters talk about how the show-within-the-show needs to respect the audience -- "let them know that we take our responsibilities seriously but don't take ourselves seriously" is a paraphrase of one line of dialogue I remember. But in writing S60 Sorkin has completely ignored his own advice. He puts his own avatar onscreen (in the form of Matthew Perry's character) and repeatedly has the other characters tell the audience how brilliant he is, how difficult his work is, how important it is, how worthless the audience's opinion is. It's insulting. But it's also so revealing of Sorkin's ego that I haven't been able to stop watching it.
I'm tellin' ya...Denis Leary's ego is way funnier onscreen.
I'm tellin' ya...Denis Leary's ego is way funnier onscreen.
A friend of mine spearheaded an ultimately losing effort to save the television show Firefly. She wrote about the experience in a chapter in her book that's available online: http://www.allysonbeatrice.com/firefly.html