Running Studio 60 thread (spoilers)

Oh, yeah. She did her hit on SNL several weeks ago. Can't think of anyone I could compare her to. She's totally unique.

 

He was so low-key. That's what made him funny.

I hope he stays on for more than just a week or two.

One other question -- What was the deal with Danny not taking a B-12 shot? Does it have something to do with his recovery from drugs?

 

You mean you don't think he's pregnant?

And I never said the stuff with Harriet butchering jokes wasn't funny, just that it didn't make sense for the character. If she can remember her song lyrics or her lines on the show, she can remember a simple joke.

Add me to the list of new fans of Corinne Bailey Rae. Beautiful voice.

 

FYI: NBC announced its midseason lineup and Studio 60 is staying at the same day/time slot.

As far as the Harriet character goes, hell, she can't even tell a joke well when she's supposed to - those news update jokes had horrible delivery (from D.L. Hughley, too, I thought).

 

Several people have talked about the show within the show being bad, that the sketches aren't funny, etc. And I'm askin', why the fuck does that matter? Did you become upset when Bartlet's initiatives didn't work? No, because that's really not the point. I'm sure Sorkin spends about 15 minutes a week on material for the show within the show, because the meat of S60 is what happens outside the show. I just don't understand the obsession with the lack of quality of the inner show.

 

THANK YOU. Nobody watched Sports Night for dunks and home runs.

 

If you are going to claim that Matt Albie is some comedy writing genius, you have two options: either never show the sketches and let us just assume you are right or show the sketches and make sure they are pretty damn funny. Sorkin/Albie's sketches have been B-grade SNL sketches and it affects how you view the characters.

 

In the words of Matt Albie, that is a solid double up the middle.

 

How many people have been asking to see Crazy Christians? Of course they're going to show some sketches, it's part of the narrative, but it's not the important part. When Josh and the gang wanted to fix social security on West Wing, did it matter how they planned to do it? Not at all. What mattered was how they worked through the problem, how they attacked an issue. I agree, the skits should hold some water, but griping because they're not funny, well, that's like saying Slap Shot was a disappointing movie because the Chiefs' left wing lock wasn't very effective.

 

The main reason the sketches aren't funny is because the whole show, including the sketches, is written in Sorkin's trademark bam-bam-bam dialogue. It works all right for witty byplay between the characters, but when it comes time for actual staged comedy, there should be a shift of gears. And there's not...Just the same machine-gunning of words back and forth, with hardly a pause for laughter, much less for thought.

I'm with the Pope (DirkBenedict not the other Benedict) on this one: If Matt Albie's the funniest man alive -- writing 90 minutes of hilarious, ratings-boosting television every single week -- then why can't they show us some funny?

The obvious answer is because funny sketch comedy is really hard. And it's harder when it's being presented to your audience as a distraction between actual plot points.

Bottom line, Sorkin -- or whoever else is writing the show -- is too obsessed with making his grand, overarching politico-socio-cultural points to take time to be funny. (Plus, he and Busfield and whoever else are directing are too obsessed with making every line of dialogue zip by so fast you hear the Doppler Effect.)

That's why even the non-sketch parts of the show aren't often that funny, despite the actors' best efforts.

As for News 60, it makes the increasingly stale Weekend Update look hilarious.

 

Read a good point about the show in the NY Times today.

How the comedy writers don't even realize when something is funny.

Remember the Jessica Simpson debacle when she had to strectch and wished for peace in the Midwest?

They treated that as a national disaster instead of something that was probably funnier than anything on the show that night.

 

Good point, Ace.

In the old days, SNL would have run with something like that...The next week's show would have opened with something like "Nightline, with Jessica Simpson," analyzing the Midwest peace process.

Which reminds me: Meet the Press with Juliette Lewis? How in the world did the writers -- in the real show or the show-within-the-show -- decide THAT was funny?

Another thing: Even though Matt's supposed to be a comic genius, a lot of his ideas are so bad even the other characters make fun of them. Like the Jesus/Standards and Practices sketch, or the thing with Danny being pregnant. I know even the funniest people aren't always funny, but Matt's misses seem to outnumber his hits.

And this may have been brought up before, but even before the guy in Grosse Pointe killed his hostages, why in the world would Matt and Danny have greenlit a sketch about a hostage-taking while hostages were still imprisoned?