TVSquad

I don't think there IS a way to save this show. Sorkin is Sorkin, and alas that means he will write everything as if it has the meaning of the Cuban Missile Crisis in everyone's lives. Good premise, bad execution. Don't even get me started on some of the mis-casting.

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I agree, you can't save the show now, just give it a full season and tell them to wrap it up.

I do love Matt Perry and whats-his-name from West Wing, they are amazing together. Sadly like someone said last week you never feel anything after the show. There is never a negitive reaction or a positive reaction, just a void. On a show you like you should go "that was a good episode" or "that stinks", with Studio 60 there is nothing. Even if the show gets better, how are they gonig to get the viwers back?

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James Poniewozik wrote a similar piece about the show's problems:

http://time.blogs.com/tuned_in/2006/10/aaron_sorkin_tv.html

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"Science Schmience" was not funny at all, It was just a cheap excuse to crush beliefs that Sorkin doesn't argee with.

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I think the show is great as is! Give it some time to grow on you as it's grown on me.

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I think you started with one premise then switched to another...

If you want the show to present reliable workplace stories like "The West Wing" (I never saw "Sports Night" so I can't comment) I don't think the sketch comedy segments can possibly be dropped, at least not their genesis and rehearsal. That's like doing West Wing but never showing any politics or people actually running the country - sketch comedy is what these people do as much as diplomacy and legislating was what Jed, Toby, CJ and Leo did.

However, S60 simply needs to refine and improve the way they present that creation process. If you want to be a show about the people that create a show, then show how that show is created. Er, you see what I mean.

But then I'm right with you on how they should stay away from the other parts of network TV (i.e. buying rights to Reality Shows, courting HBO writers) - that should be very peripheral and only used to expand the lives of the executive characters.

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Well, I like the show very much. It is well written and acted which is more than I can say for most of the stuff on the air. In my opinion it is not as strong as sports night or west wing but is very engaging in its own right. Give it time to develop.

One thing I do agree with, is that Matt and Danny should spend more time together on screen it was some of the best stuff in the pilot.

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Even on Sports Night, which I love, there were times when instead of showing, Sorkin got into telling . . . stopping the show for a speech, or contriving it in such a way that sometimes characters did or said uncharacteristic things so that we could all be taught a lesson. By the time he did those things I was so deeply into the characters (something he hasn't bothered with in Studio 60 -- making us care about those people so intensely) that I was angry at him for using them that way. It left a bad taste in my mouth to see a writer treat his characters like that.

Later, when I heard he was going to make a show about politics -- an hour-long show where he'd have lots of time to speechify -- I knew I wouldn't want to watch it. I did give The West Wing a try, and there was a lot to admire, but mostly I was angry that he didn't cast his own politics aside to make a truly great show about the way it really works in the White House: about dirty tricks and arrogance and manipulation and damage control and spin, and, yes, about statesmanship, moral courage, and wisdom, too. Instead he gave us a fantasy land where Bartlet's team was wonderful and wise and good and anyone else was limited, mean, dirty and small-minded.

With Studio 60 all his bad habits seem to have caught up with him: his laziness about making characters multi-dimensional instead of mouthpieces for his own views, his need to show off, his trouble with creating female characters, his inability (seen through the character of Matt) to respect the input of others. He's right and anybody who disagrees with him is wrong, uncool, stupid, somehow a lesser form of humanity. He's forgotten that you have to make us care about the people in the show first--let us know who they are. He's got too many stars to serve, too many characters to introduce all at once. I don't feel as though I know any of them very well.

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I thought yesterday's show was FANTASTIC!!! It's growing and evolving into a solid comedy/drama...jeez people just enjoy and give it a chance. OR take your little opinionated fingers and change the channel to reruns of Married With Children...

i hope you don't get frustrated and criticise your kids this quickly???

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I think the show's great, but I do agree with a lot of the points. I think another writer needs to handle the sketches because they should be L.O.L. funny, proving that Harriet and Matt are comedic geniuses.

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I've been really critical of the show, but I have stuck with it since it premiered 4 weeks ago.

The show was over-hyped and so our expectations were very high.

Finally, in the last 30 minutes in last week's show, it started to work for me.

I think the show will build and it could--read, could--become one of the finest shows about the biz ever.

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I've been really critical of the show, but I have stuck with it since it premiered 4 weeks ago.

The show was over-hyped and so our expectations were very high.

Finally, in the last 30 minutes in last week's show, it started to work for me.

I think the show will build and it could--repeat could--become one of the finest shows about the biz ever.

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Yes, last week's episode should have been only 30 minutes long. The first half was pointless.

And I think over-hyped is exactly it, but people still didn't watch. I find it funny that several months before the show started it was the best thing. After the show is shown no one thinks that. It's rather odd.

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My girlfriend also gets all bothered by the sketches - the sketches arent there for comedy, they are there for the story.

That said, I would be all for Sorkin outsourcing the sketches - if they were funny it *would* be a plus.

As for the television inside thing, that was part of the success of West Wing also, and most of Tom Clancy's novels - I call it 'informed fiction'

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"Sorkin seems to be delving even more deeply into the intricacies of the television industry."

That's great and entirely appropriate for today's society, but TV cannot comment on TV accurately. Especially for a show that's on the same network as the in-front-of-the-scenes show that it's based on.

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My issue with the show is that the tone of the whole thing is an attempt to make it seem all-so-serious. This worked with West Wing for obvious reasons, but on this show I mainly just roll my eyes at people getting upset over things like a stolen joke. Like they would have broken in 3 or 4 times to correct it. It's just pretentious and feels very self involved. Which Sports Night never felt like to me. What was up with Sports Night being rerun with a laugh track? That was terrible.

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I love the show. I love the characters. It's one of the top three shows on network TV. That said - it's not perfect.

I would like to see more interaction between Danny and Matt.
I'd like to see them spend more time on the big issues of free speech and the dumbing down of America.
I'd like to see them fight with the network brass more.

Overall, I'm excited to see where this show will go. I hope it finds a wider audience and NBC gives it a chance to grow.

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I actually really like this show. I'm a TV junkie and a long-time fan of SNL, even though the show has really dipped since Will F left. Studio 60 provides great insight into what really goes on in the background of the 90-odd minutes we get to see every saturday night.

May be technical and a tad bit boring to some, I'm sure - but I find this show really interesting.

I have to agree with everyone on the fact that the comedy sketches just don't cut it. The background story is intriguing enough, and doesn't warrant broadcast "of the actual broadcast"

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The show's premise is the show's premise. It's suppose to be about the 5 minutes before and after the show. If YOU don't like it, if you watch it and dont find enough laughs, then that's your problem.

See, I dont care if the sketches arent funny. The real meat of the show is the ideas about religion vs science, free speech vs. government, liberal vs. right, black vs. white, and all the societal beliefs sorkin decides to write about.
Pop Culture as a symbol of society. And since S60 is at the forefront of culture, they will talk about it.

Harriet and Matthew dont look like a couple. One is a Christian, the other a dedicated non-believer. That's the whole point. The only thing they have in common is the dedication to the job of comedy, of entertainment, of theatre.

There's no faults with s60 other than the fact that Sorkin rushes out some parts of the script with old material. Sorkin is overseeing a movie and a tv show after all.

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ABC forced Sorkin to use a laugh track in the first episodes of Sports Night. There is a marvelous and very funny account of his fight with the network execs over the use of the laugh track in Tad Friend's essay, "Laugh Riot", which was originally published in The New Yorker. The piece is anthologized in a book of essays by Friend called Lost in Mongolia. Worth your time. It was Sorkin's first real experience of what the TV suits can do to you, and I'm sure it's one of the roots of Studio 60.

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