Review: Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
That was until Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip came along. I didn't notice it at first. Perhaps it was the exuberant rush of the pilot episode: Sorkin was writing television again for the first time since he got the psychedlic mushroom-fueld bum's rush from the last series he created and my fannish inclinations were probably kicking in, but by the middle of the second episode, I noticed something. These people really do talk about themselves constantly.
From Matt Albie's ongoing, loopy descriptions of his writing struggles and feelings for his former paramour Harriet Hayes to her own monologues about her relationship with Christ, Studio 60 never fails to let a character be as blunt as possible. Matthew Perry's great on this show as Albie - when he gets a chance to shut up. There are moments when his eyes flash a certain way and you can see there's a real thought process going on. In the fourth episode of the series, it's revealed that two of his writing staff may have plagiarized and he doesn't say anything - he stands, his legs apart, his head down for a moment and then he bursts from the room. Without getting a clear shot of his face, the viewer knows that someone is going to get a thorough bit of abuse. Sadly, this is fairly rare. At least once an episode, Perry is forced to spew out an embarassing monologue about how he's really not in love with Hariett even though she's his muse and he's terribly fond of her, even after they've broken up. Then the camera pauses and makes sure we know that the rest of the room doesn't believe this, just before he announces that he doesn't really believe it himself.
Harriett's faith, as refreshing as it is to see a Christian on television who's not a right-wing nutjob or Cylon, is similarly clumsy. In a recent episode, she was asked by a reporter (played by Christine Lahti) to talk about her religious convictions and Sarah Paulson spends more than 5 minutes of a 40-minute running time doing just that, in mind-numbing detail. Her faith was spelled out to the journalist as the show crawled to a standstill and settled into place like a frigate. This is especially galling because Sorkin found other ways to introduce matters like this in his earlier programs. The Passover seder from SportsNight's "April Is The Cruelest Month" not only established Jeremy and Dan's faith, but it served as a dramatic lynchpin for that episode. It doesn't help that Paulson seems outclassed on the show - her character's Juliette Lewis impression didn't appear to be a huge stretch.
Speaking of religion, Sorkin's doing a lot of sermonizing in this series. He wants us to know that writing and making television is important business and that it's hard to write. I have no doubt that it is difficult to produce a television series and I imagine Sorkin's own experience is playing heavily into his scripts, but I say this as someone whose career is just now at the point where he occasionally jots stuff down and gets handed a check for it - the process of creation and production is not interesting for at least 90% of the people outside of the entertainment business. If I can figure this out, surely someone with an infinitely greater amount of experience can, too.
The audience doesn't need to be told more than once every few episodes that we're in the middle of a downward cultural slide because of reality TV and cheap gags - they know that, that's why they're watching an Aaron Sorkin program. Judd Hirsch's Network-inspired monologue from the opening episode should have served as a call to arms instead of a mantra repeated by Amanda Peet in each episode.
In The West Wing, it was never the events the White House staff and President were involved in that served as the story's point. It was how those events - military strikes, assassination attempts, political manuevers, whatever - affected the characters that the audience tuned in to see. That is the very definition of "story" - how the plot's events change the characters. Sorkin's latest show seems to have missed making that connection, instead having characters spout rhetoric instead of dialogue while a plot seems to happen without anyone noticing. Much of the series "drama" so far has revolved around things that would make no impact in real life - NBS's chief Jordan McDeer'e DUI 8 years previous, combined with a bad marriage is said to be an earth-shaking event in the media world presented in the show, becoming joke fodder for Saturday Night Live and media pundits and representing a real threat to the fictional network's success. This brute-force attempt at story failed because it's hard to imagine anyone in the real world caring if NBC President Kevin Reilly had a blot on his driving record and a crazy ex that wrote a self-published tell-all.
It also doesn't help at all that a show about writing comedy features very little in the way of laughs coming from its much-heralded character who was brought back to the program for the specific purpose of saving the titular program. Some sketches have had potential - Nancy Grace tracking a white girl's cellphone that was lost in Jamaica - and others have fallen flat on their face and then proceeded to eat dirt for long minutes of screen time - the Gilbert and Sullivan routine at the end of "The Cold Open."
Is Studio 60 a complete disaster? Not at all - much of what is on the screen in any given episode makes the show well worth salvaging. D.L. Hughley is great at Simon Stiles, a character obviously based on his own experiences with gangs and a rise through comedy. It's refreshing to see a black actor playing a role where race is tied to the character but is not the entire reason for his existence. The most recent episode featured Stiles confronting Albie over the writing staff (read: Albie) and their inability to write truly edgy racial humor because of their white liberal guilt. The rest of their plotline in the episode allowed race and comedy to be discussed without being talked about bluntly - Stiles invites Albie to see a hyped black standup comic from New York who rolls out every cliche in the book and it's after the initial disappointment in him that they find what they were really looking for in a rough-hewn amateur from South Central whose cerebral routine goes down poorly with an audience that loves jokes about big-booty girls.
Bradley Whitford, as expected, is about as comfortable as any actor can be delivering Sorkin's dialogue. What's remarkable is how similar his character of Danny Tripp is to Josh Lyman, his West Wing alter ego while actually being an entirely different person. Both roles played by Whitford are driven men who push themselves and their staff, but where Lyman had a near-manic energy about him most of the time, Danny Tripp is resigned to being the serene yin to Albie's yang. He knows the job will get done and a live television program will make it to air, even if the rest of the world conspires against him.
Of note is the fact that the latest episode finally figured out how to use the bosses of the fictional network that the show calls home. Amanda Peet, since the first episode, has been a gamine presence that didn't seem to match the personality and competence that NBS president Jordan McDeere should exude. Peet finally made that work to her advantage when she announces to the female cast that she needs friends, at least for the night of the cocktail party and she comes across as both slightly weird and truly warm. Maybe this was the effect she was trying to reach in the first several episodes of this series - a strange executive who may be touched in the head but is very good at her job - but never quite reached until the moment when she breaks a tiny bit. Steven Weber's mustache-twirling NBS chairman Jack Rudolph finally worked on-screen, too, in a sarcastic confrontation with Danny Tripp that entertained while letting everyone know where he stood on just about every issue the two had between them.
Thomas Schlamme's direction is, as always, about as perfect a match for Sorkin as you can get. This series has seen him doing fewer of the long "walk fast, talk fast" shots that have been a Sorkin trademark and I've noticed that the cinematography has gotten a lot more intimate. As the series has progressed, there have been more close-ups and two with a shallow depth of field, causing the view to focus on the speakers instead of the surroundings. Whether done intentionally or not, this serves to counter the overly expository dialogue that has riddled the show.
Rumor has it that NBC is actively looking to retool the show and a few things could certainly help it get bring in an audience besides its affluent core and make it a success closer to its lead-in program, Heroes. Four simple changes could bring the show closer to this goal.
- Limit the size of the cast. Right now, there are far too many speaking parts, especially featuring extraneous cast members for the fictional program.
- Make the aforementioned fictional program funny. Mark McKinney's apparently been hired to do just that, but we've not seen any results yet.
- Expand the writing staff, fast. Sorkin's reusing too many of his tropes at this point and even casual viewers are sure to pick up on a few bits that have appeared before. New blood may reenergize him and allow him to spend more time crafting material instead of recycling what he's done in the past.
- Make us care about these characters by having them do something besides beg for our attention. Let them be people instead of jukeboxes.
