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Sneak Peak at "Studio 60 On The Sunset
Strip"
By Pat Reeder, The Comedy Wire
9/12/06 -- For a brief period after midnight last week, someone
posted the pilot of Aaron Sorkin's upcoming NBC series, "Studio 60 on
the Sunset Strip," on YouTube. It's a behind-the-scenes drama about a
live comedy show obviously based on "Saturday Night Live." It was
quickly yanked, but since I never sleep, I watched it before it
disappeared. You'll soon see lots of reviews by TV critics, but I
thought I'd give you a reaction from a perspective you probably won't
hear: that of an actual comedy writer who has friends who've written
for shows ranging from "WKRP" to David Letterman.
I admit, I never cared for
"West Wing;" as a Libertarian-leaning independent, I always thought the
idea of all the world's problems being solved by a passel of earnest,
fast-talking, clipboard-toting Ivy League preppies as they hurry down
endless circular hallways had to come from someone who was smoking
crack (turned out I was right). But at least the dialogue, acting and
characterizations were usually first-rate. "Studio 60" has a lot of
those strengths, too, but it has one big weakness, at least in the
pilot. It's a show about comedy writers, but there doesn't appear to be
anyone involved in it who knows anything at all about writing comedy,
or who even has much of a sense of humor. If there is, then they
certainly weren't allowed much input. (Lorne Michaels has
admitted that he did not allow the writers to sit in on "SNL"
sketch-selection meetings.)
To sum up the plot: The
hard-ass NBS-TV president fires the producer of a long-running live
comedy show after network censors force him to cut the first "relevant"
sketch they've tried to do in years, and he goes on the air live and
delivers a Howard Beale-style tirade about cowardly network executives,
meddling advertisers, the FCC, threatened boycotts by offended viewers,
etc. To save the show, the former writer/producer (Matthew Perry), who
left under bad terms with the network (and apparently took the show's
"relevance" with him), is coerced into returning. He also is on bad
terms with his former girlfriend, who is a star of the show.
It's all well done and
entertainingly dramatic, but the only humor is the type of flat stuff
you get when someone really pompous tries to write dialogue for someone
who's supposed to be a comic genius. Now, I understand this is not
meant to be a comedy but a show about all the tense drama and tragedy
that goes on behind the laughter (like last week, when I had to try to
write jokes after looking at my electric bill). They don't show any
comedy, they merely refer to it, and we have to take it on faith that
these unfunny people actually do funny things somewhere
off-screen. It's not the lack of comedy that grated on me, it was
the tone of the comedy that they referred to, which was completely off.
Like "The West Wing," this
show seems to exist in a cozy, insular, pre-9-11, Clinton-era,
Left-Coast time warp. The big "controversy" is ludicrous. The sketch
the network won't let them do is called...wait for it!..."Crazy
Christians!" Ooooh, that's edgy! They're afraid of retaliation by
offended Christians! Speaking as a comedy writer from the futuristic
year of 2006, I can assure them that doing jokes about Christian
fundamentalists is hardly at the top of my worry list. What are they
going to do, ban me from their church bake sales? Sure, if they're
riled up enough, they might threaten a boycott or write an angry
letter, but so what? It's easy to poke groups with a stick when they
don't poke back, and it's certainly not "dangerous" comedy.
Even Aaron Sorkin must know
what a total McGuffin this is, since he has Perry arguing in one scene
with his girlfriend, a Christian whose unforgivable crime that broke
them up is that she plugged her gospel album on "The 700 Club." Perry
slams Pat Robertson in the scene, and even says (I didn't take notes,
so I'm paraphrasing here) that the only difference between the 700
Club's audience and the KKK is the costumes. Since this will soon air
on NBC, that scene renders the entire plot of the show false. It's a
show about a major network that is too scared of retaliation to insult
Christians, yet it contains a gratuitous and obviously unfair slam at
Christians and a major network plans to air it with great fanfare in
prime time.
If they'd wanted it make this
real and relevant, we all know what religion people are afraid to make
jokes (or cartoons) about these days...you know, aside from the
Scientologists. We have to grapple with that here every day. We've done
the Comedy Wire for 14 years, and before that, I was head writer of the
Morning Punch, editor/columnist of the North Texas Skeptic and
columnist for the national Skeptical Briefs, so I've never shied from
mocking religious zealots of any stripe (What are the Scientologists
going to do, ruin my credit rating? Ha! I beat 'em to it!) But we have
to walk a narrow line: we can't just put out whatever we want to say
because we're writing material for you to perform, and we don't want
you to get in trouble for using it.
Just last week, we had a
story about a theme park canceling Muslim Fun Day that was a goldmine
of comedic potential, but we finally decided to dispense with it in a
one-liner because everything we might have said would have been stuff
most of you wouldn't have used (Like, "There's a special sideshow
attraction for people in burqas: Guess Your Sex, 25 cents" or "The ring
toss barker promises you can win 72 virgins, but all you really get is
a beard comb" or "Everyone wanted a refund when they discovered that
'Muslim fun" didn't involve bombing Israel.") This is the stuff comedy
writers in 2006 are actually debating whether they can get away with,
not Pat Robertson jokes. Hell, Jay Leno is often derided for being "too
safe," and has even he ever shied from doing a "crazy Pat Robertson"
joke?
So as good as "Studio 60's"
pilot was in many ways, it was a disappointment to me. I hope it gets
better, and it might if Sorkin dials back the melodrama and hires some
writers who have actually written comedy, preferably within the past
half decade. I'm not holding my breath, but I am waiting breathlessly
for "30 Rock," the sitcom version of the same idea, written by Tina
Fey. Maybe they could airlift her over to "Studio 60" for an emergency
humor transplant and a few injections of veracity.
BTW, Laura wanted me to make
a special note that even though I wrote this, she agrees
wholeheartedly.
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