May 31, 2007
This is why Studio 60 sucked
NBC is burning off the last episodes of Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip, Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes look at a thinly-fictionalized Saturday Night Live clone.
Featuring the signature snappy overlapping dialogue, swirling camera work and long tracking shots that were such a big part of Sorkin's late series, The West Wing, Studio 60 also featured the same ultra-serious tone that was reserved for the high-stakes political dealings and world crises in the White House.
Which, of course, was the problem. Studio 60 was a TV show about a TV show, a meaningless late-night comedy sketch show.
And Sorkin, for all his talent with dialogue and character-driven drama, simply cannot write funny; whenever we're given a glimpse of the supposedly hilarious ensemble cast performing their gut-bustingly fall-down comedic sketches, the laughs are harder to find than a conservative in favor of Bush's illegal alien amnesty.
For instance, take tonight's show -- please.
It opens with a riff on SNL's fake-but-funny presidential press conference. This one features reporters peppering the beleaguered administration spokesman with questions about the troop surge in Iraq, and its (supposedly) apparent failure.
As the scene plays out, there's the weird sense that pages from a West Wing script have been inserted into the Studio 60 binder; this is just reporters badgering the Bush spokesman about the war. It's not only a political diatribe, it's most assuredly not funny.
So, I guess Sorkin decided to use the show as a platform for his politics, rather than trying to ... entertain the viewers.
What a boor -- and what a bore.
Good riddance.
Posted by Mike Lief at May 31, 2007 10:05 PM
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