Since Maggie tried her best to say nice things about Studio 60, I’m going to say some mean things. And then I’m done with it. Because it makes me grumpy.
Some of my friends just gave up on it cold turkey. They tell me that their lives were much improved. I couldn’t stop. I almost enjoyed myself sometimes. But it was so infuriating. A late night sketch comedy program is not important. I don’t care how good it is. Nobody cares what Saturday Night Live puts on the air. 30 Rock is extremely aware of this fact. Any sense of self-importance Liz or Jack (Donaghy) might get during an episode is always intentionally deflated by a glimpse of a Robot vs. Bear sketch or something equally ridiculous. But Aaron Sorkin was so hell bent on making this show IMPORTANT that in an act of desperation he had to move the core of the last 4 episodes into the one month in recent history when anyone was paying attention to comedy.
Yes, after September 11th nobody felt like being funny. Someone prematurely declared the death of irony. Then David Letterman came back with a heartfelt monologue from the desk that everyone paid attention to. Saturday Night Live had Guiliani and an extremely relevant farting-baby sketch. That’s My Bush was cancelled. Bill Maher got in trouble for repeating his guest’s point that it’s not cowardly to be a suicide bomber. Ari Fleischer said we should all watch what we say. Maher ended up losing his job at ABC at the end of the season. So I can imagine that Matt and Danny had a lot of people paying attention to them back then. A lot more than would normally be paying any attention to a show that like the other—real—sketch show, hadn’t been Important in 25 years.
Maybe Sorkin should have set the whole series during that time. The good guys could have been endowed with incredible foresight and the bad guys could say stupid things about how soon we’d be wrap up the war. But he didn’t. And just to add even more insult to a season full of insulting injury, he engages in a little revisionist history. You see, it turns out Matt and Danny weren’t fired like we were told in the pilot. No, like all real men, they had control over their own destiny and took a principled stand! They quit! Did everyone then cover it up and pretend they had been fired so they could look stupid when Matt and Danny became a successful writer/director team? Sadly that question will have to wait for some Season 2 fanfic.
In another neat piece of revision, Jordan claims at the end of the show that she wanted Danny to be the father of her baby the moment she laid eyes on him. Now, it is true that they flirted when they first met, but Jordan then pulled out a nasty bit of blackmail about Danny being uninsurable. She then spent several episodes showing no interest in Danny. Totally hot, Jordan.
And speaking of Jordan: Endangered Pregnancy? Really? Writers have a term for this kind of plot device. It’s called schmuck bait. Is Jordan going to lose the baby and/or die? No she’s not, but a lot of easy drama comes from the situation. It’s lazy. And Sorkin was so ashamed of pulling such a cheap stunt that he explicitly called attention to what a cheap stunt it was. “The number-one audience manipulator among women is a pregnancy in jeopardy.” Just like admitting that getting them together by locking them on the roof is the oldest cliché in the book, it doesn’t make it any less lazy. (Does anyone remember that great episode of That’s My Bush? I’d love to see a second season of that show.)
I can’t remember the last time I disliked a television show so much. Most shows I just stop watching if I don’t like them. But there was this great TV show that desperately wanted to break free from the crushing web of ego and narcissism and the brief flashes of that show kept me coming back. It was a punishing experience and I don’t plan to go through it again.
As another show might put it, the facts are these: Philo T. Farnsworth, a scarcely-trained farmboy from Utah, transmitted the first moving image using the process we still use today (sort of). But he never quite got his television to work quite right, and his patent ended up embroiled in a dispute with GE/
On the other hand, I did not like that Tom was going to use Trask but was saved from his own stupidity at the last minute. That struck me as a little cheap. Since that is not a positive point, so I’ll just add: Nate Corddry was great in this show. He should get something good again soon.