I’m kind of light on ideas right now and I’m in one of those weird moods to boot. You know, the type of mood where I end up writing something in the hope that it sounds dark and mysterious but in reality is just a bunch of petulant whining from a guy who is leading a blessed life except he just hasn’t realized it yet. And I’m not in the mood to write that piece tonight either. Instead, I’ll write a quick review and analysis of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Basically, this is the one new show that I have begun to watch regularly. It hasn’t hit How I Met Your Mother status yet, which is good because I don’t need to be involved in any more internet discussion groups on whether or not two fictional characters should remain a couple (though for the record, I fall in the Robin should end up with Barney camp). It’s a behind the scenes look at SNL essentially done in the West Wing format. This might not sound like the most interesting thing in the world but they do some parts of the show remarkably well.
First of all, Matthew Perry is doing a great job in making me forget that a) he’s Chandler and b) I hate Matthew Perry. He’s now gone from the annoying guy on Friends to a really solid actor. Plus, his character is a writer and they’ve gotten a lot of the writing parts correct. I like how they explain that he didn’t learn to write for television so he can’t work with a team of writers. And, they have given him the Death Clock, maybe the best background prop ever. It is a clock in his office that counts down the time until the next episode. For a writer, that is the most intimidating thing in the world, to know that you have limited time to be funny. My favorite scene so far is when the show starts, Matthew finally breathes a sigh of relief, only to see that the clock has already started the countdown to next week’s show. That’s why I have a huge amount of respect for the guys who write those shows or things like The Daily Show, to be consistently funny on a daily or weekly basis is incredibly hard. If I’ve learned anything from the blog, it’s that writing comedy consistently is incredibly hard.
One weird part of the show is the skits that they show (as part of the show within a show) are incredibly unfunny. As in worse than anything that I would write. Now part of that doesn’t make sense since they have one of the guys from The Kids in the Hall consulting so they should be able to write funny. But I think they are intentionally doing this so that the comedy doesn’t take away from the plot. It’s kind of like Sports Night where they would talk about sports but you would notice that the events they were talking about and the plot never lined up (most notably, a discussion of the Duke-Carolina game over Thanksgiving.) Though I will have to say the Juliette Lewis impersonation was spot on and you have to wonder what actress thought that having a Juliette Lewis impression would be useful for her repertoire.
Finally, there was one scene from the pilot that has really stuck with me. Matthew Perry was continually explaining that his girlfriend dumped him because he didn’t watch her sing the national anthem at a baseball game. When the girl finally called him out on this he admitted that it was completely untrue. I like this scene because that is exactly what I do and I think it is something that all guys do. We know why relationships fail, hell I can usually point to the exact moment where things screwed up. But none of us want to admit the truth so we come up with brilliant stories to cover ourselves. As someone who admits that 25% of everything that I say is false it’s scenes like this that really make me want to keep tuning in.
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