"Studio 60" is done, but this near-valentine in the Los Angeles Times indicates that he still doesn't know what he did.

Are we done? Please, please, tell me that's it. …

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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" …

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NBC began burning off the remaining episodes last night. Pretty painful spectacle. I'll expand on that thought later.

TVtattle.com notes that NBC.com has posted a return date for "Studio 60": May 24. Tattle notes that's the day after the May sweeps end. It's also after NBC announces its schedule for Fall 2007. Bad signs all around.

Of course, the show's fans will be happy. But if NBC was interested in making fans of dead shows happy, it could get those unaired "E-Ring" episodes off the shelf. And that "American Dreams" finale.

And I'm dreaming on both counts.

Should they call it "Studio 60 at the Overlook Hotel"? and other viewing issues, after the jump

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Pondering an NBC schedule change, after the jump …

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I managed to sit through last night's "Studio 60" (as well as the last 15 minutes or so of "24" which is NBA-like in holding the real drama until the clock is ticking down). Mostly a snooze, once again no point to a two-parter. But I did perk up at the reference to the TCA being in town.

TCA is the Television Critics Association. I'm a member, and you have read about some of its gatherings in this blog.

On "Studio 60," Tom, in a bad lie, claimed that he had to be a celebrity waiter at a TCA event. The lie was bad because there was no point to it, and because his getting caught seemed inevitable — pretty much the way you knew that Danny and Jordan were going to get locked on the roof before the door even snapped shut. (And how many cell phones would be unable — oh, never mind, it's not worth it.)

Now, I have been to many TCA events over the last 22 years and I don't remember one with celebrity waiters. That said, I do remember:

— Craig Kilborn having Jell-O shots delivered to everyone present at a TCA awards.

— Jimmy Kimmel working the grill one lunchtime.

— Richard Simmons carrying a tray of fruit to reporters.

— A Fran Drescher press conference accompanied by bags of her croutons.

So maybe Aaron Sorkin was a waiter one time, and I just didn't notice.

Caught up with "24" yesterday and this morning, and I have to say the absurdity of it is so brazen that I'm almost amused. As near as I could tell, exactly one southern California street was clogged by panic-stricken drivers. Jack's own driving attempts, as well as those of other characters, for the most part were blissfully unimpeded.

Then there was the seeming lack of real alarm about the nuke and the radiation — oh, it's blowing somewhere else! Sort of like the second-season nuke, which was put aside almost immediately after it happened. Jack moved on, and so did the show.

And I can't overlook Jack's latest Prince Hamlet move, the I-can't-go-on-I-must-go-on attitude (all right, that's more Samuel Beckett) that didn't make CTU think Jack was a little too unsteady to deal with THE BEST CLUE THEY HAD!

Finally, speaking of clues, anyone else think they were blatantly signalling that Jack's brother's kid is actually Jack's?

On "Studio 60," maybe I was just tired but I did laugh at Dolphin Girl. Beyond that, not too thrilled about the episode. The whole Danny-chasing-Jordan thing is getting way too creepy. And when so many plot threads were hanging with 10 minutes to go, I started thinking, "Rats, a two-parter." Not least because nothing was interesting enough to justify a second part.

Then again, I may also be reacting to recent reports of Aaron Sorkin playing Mr. Crankypants during the January TV press tour. Check out my friend Alan Sepinwall's account here.

An especially big mess for "Studio 60" in what, if I'm counting correctly, is its fourth telecast — hence the title of this post.

Are we really supposed to believe that Harriet didn't know that was the baseball star's phone number? (And why does Sorkin insist on giving strong women a dumb streak?) Are we really going to have to sit through a faux Maureen Dowd? Is the show ever going to do a sketch — or, in this case, a monologue — that is genuinely funny? (I was particularly disappointed by the references to the show-within-the-show having had two good weeks; I had hoped that someone had recognized that it isn't really all that good.) And what sort of fake sunshine was that ending supposed to be?

Arrrrrrrrgh. But I'm sure Vanity Fair loved it.

Here's where I get a little crazed: Last night, it was about 11 p.m. when the bride and I got back from the screening of "The Departed," and I just couldn't relax. Too much Diet Coke at the movie — it was in one of those cups you could float a paper sailboat across — and I was just wired from watching and thinking about the movie. So, after a feeble attempt at sleeping, I settled down with my recording of the third episode of "Studio 60."

Which didn't help me sleep either.

I fear the wheels are falling off the bus with this one. The biggest reason is that Aaron Sorkin keeps insisting on showing us comedy sketches within the show and it's now absolutely clear that Sorkin can't write sketch comedy. (Maybe he should send a distress call to Tina Fey.) We're supposed to believe that something remarkable is happening with the show, but we have no on-camera evidence of that — and at some point viewers are going to catch on.

It's my secret hope that the dour, show-ending expression on the face of Matthew Perry — one of the two best things in last night's show — means that his character at least knows that the show isn't very good. That it's not just that the ratings will decline, or that the media scrutiny will get more intense. He knows as well that the laughs are artificially generated and will dry up soon enough. But nothing other than Perry's face (and our own view of the sketches) makes that point, so I may be giving it too much credit.

More gripes: An 8-year-old DUI for a network entertainment division president isn't going to generate much of a frenzy — and a book about her would lie dead on the shelves. The focus-group research was oversimplified. The speech about a DUI being worse than a coke problem was absurdly self-righteous.

Second best thing in the episode (after Perry's performance): The Tina Fey-Alec Baldwin promo for "30 Rock." Now, THAT's comedy.

Maybe this is the late hour and the caffeine talking — although, based on some conversations with other viewers this morning, I doubt it. Your thoughts?

… here's the question: Did the cold open live up to the hype? I mentioned before that I didn't think it was all that good, and I still don't think so. I mean, an edgy and contemporary show — and it supposedly wows the crowd with a riff from Gilbert & Sullivan? That cuts into the credibility of the piece; if the sketch wasn't really great, we probably shouldn't have seen it at all. Then again, I have heard conflicting opinions at work — pro-sketch and anti-sketch. Any thoughts out there?