You Know Something Is Happening But You Don't Know What It Is
Last night I watched Studio 60, the new show by Aaron Sorkin. The Times reviewer gave it a reverential review and I've liked Sorkin's work in the past -- well, I liked Sports Night. I didn't watch The West Wing because it seemed creepy -- like a shiny idealized reality, close to our reality but all buffed and honed into sappy perfection.
Studio 60 is about the behind-the-scenes action at a show exactly lik Saturday Night Live. If I'd thought about this premise I might have had the sense to give it a miss. Is there anything the public doesn't know about SNL at this point? The drugs, the feuds, the coups, the giant egos, blah blah blah.
The stupidest thing of all is that Studio 60 starts from the premise that the SNL-like show has become stale and insipid, which the real SNL has too. So they're going to revive it, led by the uninteresting and mono-noted Amanda Peet as the new president of "NBS." Ooo! I just realized this has some of the same starry-eyed idealism that was the formula for the enormously successful West Wing. Only, has anyone noticed something infinitely less interesting is at stake, namely the fate of Saturday Night Live?
The show is presented in the kind of suspensful, fast-moving style Sorkin has patented, and everyone runs around like something exciting is at stake. Which if you were working on the show, maybe it would feel like. But it's hard enough to watch SNL these days -- are we now going to watch a TV show about its mediocrity? Is American culture finally disappearing up its own asshole? Or did that happen a long, long time ago?
posted by La Misma at 3:50 PM
2 Comments:
It definitely happened a long time ago.
There is nothing TV finds more interesting than TV.
Gag.
12:37 PM
I watched it again last night. Why am I drawn to it? Anyway, the show was a super-fast, poker-faced affair -- no one finds the matter of ratings for late-night comedy shows funny. For the bulk of the show the characters argued about which sketches should be in the show and where they should be placed. In the last quadrant, at the after party, suddenly it emerges the show got really good ratings and the new writers are triumphant.
The creepy thing is the tone of the show changed completely during this section. Romantic music played, characters smiled, embraced and slapped hands, and there was a feeling of euphoria. This must be how Aaron Sorkin felt when he smoked crack, I thought. This is a drug high. It seemed perfectly analgous -- there just was nothing good, nothing to smile about, until success was achieved.
The message seems so reprehensible. What about doing something you believe in, no matter how people respond? It seems so American to stress success like this. I started to wonder if the whole show is a sour, sarcastic, poison pen letter to the TV community from Sorkin whose drug problems probably landed him in some hot water in his industry.
5:24 AM
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