“Sasquatch” weighs in on Studio 60

Posted by Maximum Fun on 4th October 2006

I’ve been thinking about posting something about how dissapointed I was with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’s second episode. Themes I was thinking of including were: “why so much camera-swooping?” and “what’s with the music? is this Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and “why no fun?”

Then Aspecialthing.com’s beloved pater familias, In Search of Sasquatch (known in the real world as podcast producer Matt Belknap of AST Radio and Never Not Funny), said it better than I ever could have. Like me, he was a big Sorkin fan (love that Sportsnight) and defended the first episode, but like me, he’s gone sour on the whole proposition.

Here’s what Matt had to say:

“I don’t think Aaron Sorkin would know good sketch comedy if it shit in his mouth. We’ve seen what he thinks is funny (snobby historical references, obvious social, religious and political jabs), so why would he want real comedy writers coming in to muck up his genius?

I will hang in there until the bitter end with this show, but it’s fast approaching indefensible. You can’t write about comedy if you don’t know what makes good comedy. Sorkin could probably take on anything else in the world and make it work, but this is his Achilles heel. His humor only works when the characters aren’t meant to be funny for a living — CJ Craig is funny for a press secretary, but if she were running a network comedy show it would be a disaster (well, it would be Studio 60).

Also, these characters are incredibly pompous and self-absorbed, which would be fine (and realistic) except Sorkin’s presenting them as people we’re meant to like, admire and respect. Again, I don’t mind high-minded and principled characters on a show about the White House, because I want our leaders to be high-minded and principled — Bartlet being a proud intellectual was a reaction to Bush, and it made sense. But in the TV business, it’s ludicrous. These characters have no perspective on what they do for a living, and act like they’re saving the world by producing empirically bad sketch comedy. If the comedy they were doing was good, the rest might be permissible. If they acknowledged what they were doing was bad (or at least unimportant), it might be tolerable. If any aspect of the world Sorkin & Co. are creating rang true, maybe the show would work. So far, though, they’re moving further away from all that with every new episode.”

“Hear hear!” says I.