mplspunky ([info]mplspunky) wrote,
@ 2007-06-21 03:18:00
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Current mood: amused

Studio 60
It is good.
Really.
You should be watching it.

It has all the wit and charm that we have come to expect from Aaron Sorkin. The characters are the perfect balance of relate-able, endearing, and wonderfully neurotic.

If you liked West Wing, (at the beginning at least) or Sports Night, I bet you'll love this show.
(Or A Few Good Men and The American President)

His dialog, my God, his dialog!

It's funny and it's emotional.

You should watch this show. Otherwise I fear, it will go the way of all good shows. and get canceled far to soon. I don't want it to be another Sports night or Arrested Development style waste.
That would be a bummer.
So, yeah.


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[info]skzbrust
2007-06-22 10:21 am UTC (link)
Am I confused? I thought it was cancelled after 12 episodes.

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[info]lollardfish
2007-06-22 12:59 pm UTC (link)
It was, according to Laurel who knows all about TV. But they had made some other episodes so are showing them now, after sweeps. It's sad - it had all the Sorkin charm, but the official "comedy" bits (the sketches) weren't all that funny imho. Moreover, they took a big cast and big writers room buzzing with energy (in the pilot), and stripped away characters and were left with ... two not-very-believable romantic relationships.

Sigh. It saddens me.

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[info]lollardfish
2007-06-22 05:23 pm UTC (link)
ok.

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[info]mplspunky
2007-06-22 04:31 pm UTC (link)

mplspunky
2007-06-22 11:24 am (local) (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
nope not according to my sources
It was picked up for a 2nd season despite weak ratings because both the top network execs and it's biggest advertisers think it's great and have faith it will catch on.

These last few episodes are so incredible.

You can watch full episodes on nbc.com but with it being nbc it's a bit lame



Also dude
The relationships not being believable is your opinion, so it's ok that you are completely wrong. But regardless anyone watching past the point where the critics started calling it a failure might have noticed the way they attack the war and the bush admin is brave and poignant and deeply needed in television and the media in general.
That the situations and plot points are gripping and intense.

And David, I think the biggest reason why your opinion on this matter is so completely useless to me is this:
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE SKETCHES!!! What you said about the sketches not being funny, to me, is like saying that Sports Night wasn't good because they did a shitty job of covering basketball. It was never never about the sketches. It's about being influential liberals working in and around the confines of a conservative and corporately owned media. It's about trying to produce tasteful comedy in the face of national tragedy. And also people. Funny people.

You couldn't be more wrong.


So, There.

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[info]lollardfish
2007-06-22 05:35 pm UTC (link)
I'm glad they picked it up and will keep watching it, although I haven't been watching lately (as I thought they were just the last couple episodes of a doomed show).

So here are some more well-formed thoughts:

First - I want to love this show.

Second - I found the core relationship drama, with Harriet and Matt, interesting initially. But then it seemed that their on-off-on-off patter was being used as the way of moving the drama in show after show after show, and it stopped being dramatically interesting to me. Now, you may have found it interesting, but you cannot say that I am wrong that I wasn't interested. It seemed like they had a nice little tension there, but by using it again and again to drive episodes, they used it up too fast and then had to re-create it. Still a lot of potential there.

Third - I liked the buzz of the early episodes when the screen was crowded with characters. I found that as they moved off "Ricky and Ron" and the old writers, that a lot of the backstage stuff became a little devoid of that buzz. It became a few people in an empty room trying to write.

Fourth - I like the politics. I'm not sure that having the right politics in mind makes it dramatically interesting.

Fifth - Sports Night was actually really good about talking about sports the way that sports fans and reporters actually talk about sports. The West Wing was very good having their characters talk as if they were involved intimately in the governing of our country. I found that Studio 60 was not as strong at convincing me that they were writing a hit comedy sketch show. It's not about the sketches, but the premise of the SNL-inspired show does matter. If you hadn't believed that the West Wing looked, felt, sounded, and operated like the real West Wing, I don't think that show would have been as successful. Sports Night got the sports-geek vibe just right. Studio 60 isn't there yet.

Obviously, I don't actually expect to convince you of the validity of my opinion, but I thought I'd try to express it more clearly.

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[info]laurel
2007-06-24 05:05 am UTC (link)
Studio 60 did not make it on the schedule for next season, as announced at the Upfronts in May. You can see the schedule for next season on my website (though I need to make a tweak or two, haven't removed Jericho from the canceled list yet for instance and at least one new show has had a name change, etc).

I didn't care much for the show at first for a variety reasons though there was a ton of potential there, but will admit recent episodes have been great. But the show is already dead and isn't coming back (ratings have been even worse now than before). I'm pleased the show is going out with good episodes and wish they'd done good episodes earlier in the show's run (though I'm not sure even that would've saved the show).

But really, it's dead. People who work on the show have moved on to other projects. It's not coming back.


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[info]laurel
2007-06-24 05:10 am UTC (link)
Eek, can't believe I got the URL wrong for my own page. Here's the real link to the Fall 2007 Schedule Grid.

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[info]thorintatge
2007-06-24 05:22 am UTC (link)
I agree with you about this show. I think it isn't as good as The West Wing because the setting is a little less awesome, a tad less glamorous. But it's still super-excellent even so. The show-within-a-show isn't funny, and that doesn't bother me at all, because I've never found the likes of Saturday Night Live funny and I'm perfectly able to believe that what most of the hypothetical viewers in the show's universe find funny or entertaining isn't what I do without it hurting the narrative. The one thing that bothers me about the show is that it's been so slow-paced. It's like one long episode, instead of lots of little connected ones. But that's a complaint along the lines of "these cookies suck because the package is too small."

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