As you may have realized from a previous post, this has been a weekend of family business, so it was only this evening that I finally got to "Studio 60" …
I ended up not elaborating on last week's episode because it ultimately felt as if there wasn't any point to it. The show's not coming back. It doesn't deserve to. Case closed, right? I'm watching out of professional obligation — some notion that Aaron Sorkin's name means that I should at least play out the hand — but it wasn't good last week and I didn't expect it to be any better this week either.
Mostly it wasn't. The show just lumbers. I don't buy anything any of the characters are doing. They're playing out the hand, too, and they know that they won't be saved by the river card.
Which does not mean I was unmoved by the closing scenes with Tom. But neither does it mean that it didn't find the scenes self-important. Yes, there are more important things in life than the TV ratings — and, by implication, the TV shows that try to generate those ratings. I have been surrounded this weekend by things that are more important than a TV show. By family. By a major moment in my family's life. By joy and bittersweet memories. I don't need Aaron Sorkin to tell me that's important.
I do need Aaron Sorkin to not make crappy TV shows.
I do need him to provide something that, at the end of a tiring day, provides pleasure or insight or provocation — that, in sum, does not make me feel as if I have wasted an hour.
I need him to make comedy sketches that are — what's the word? — funny. Which he didn't do even when Matt was supposedly sober and on his game.
I need him to make an episode that does not feel as if he is playing a losing hand.
And I need him to keep his self-righteousness to himself, especially in the face of his own massive creative failure.
There are times, after all, when an entertaining TV show can be important, too.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. Studio 60 has always felt like Sorkin's self-righteous response to his experience on West Wing – sometimes event for event. Even now, with the show's endless debate over the meaning of ratings. I love Aaron Sorkin. As a writer, his work on West Wing and Sports Night regularly made me burst into tears (rather embarrassingly) and I adore Matthew Perry. But, I never connected with Studio 60, no matter how hard I tried and I'm not going to miss it.
I like Aaron Sorkin's work. I look forward even to those final "Studio 60" episodes because I like watching his work. A lot — although it certainly has major shortcomings. And having worked in network TV much of my life I have been offended not so much at the lack of humor inside the sketch show (after all that is simply wallpaper for "Studio 60") as the fact that the show never gave off the feel of a real, live network TV program. (There have been a few brief exceptions, scenes almost always involving Timothy Busfield.)
Until, for me at least, this week. Sorkin finally got it down. He nailed the atmosphere of hwat it feels like to be working on a live network show.
The overarching problem as I see it is that Sorkin obviously knew when this episode was produced that the show was doomed. And he has a sorry track record in such circumstances.
Remember at the end of season Four of "The West Wing" how his final episode left Zoey kidnapped, and John Goodman as acting president?
Yeah, let his successors write their way out of THAT!
Well, as we all know, it took them two years of meandering through the desert before they finally emerged with what I think was an above average season seven. But by then Sorkin's revenge had proven fatal.
I am a little perplexed how critics seem to forgive him that sort of almost treasonous professional behavior (in painting "The West Wing" into such a rotten corner), as well as neglect to call him on all his own personal and political pecadillos which clearly have, at times, had an effect on what he produces. I do recall a couple of articles emanating from the January TCA tour where he seemed to be prickly at best when responding to some queries.
At any rate, "Studio 60" has been enjoyable for me to watch this season. And in a poll of over 700 respondents on my own website, it came in a surprising 11th as favorite network series (new or old) of the season.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10697156&&#post10697156
I hope that Mr. Sorkin returns to us in the future with something important to say and a far more adult way of saying it.