Lance Mannion

Studio 60: Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is officially kaput but it's ghost still lingers in the form of six unaired episodes that NBC was probably saving in hopes of bringing in boffo ratings during the May sweeps but which the network's now just going to burn off over the next month and a half or so, Thursday nights at 10 PM EDST, starting tonight.

I wasn't planning to watch any of them.  Thursday nights aren't good for me, usually.  And I certainly wasn't planning to live-blog them.

But old live-bloggers never die, they just lurk away.  I've had lots of calls for some wrap up live-blogging for old time's sake.

I can't do it tonight and I'm not sure about next week.  Ken Houghton, who despite having lived through the ordeal once, has volunteered to handle the guest hosting chores again but later on in June.  No one else has stepped up to offer their services...yet?

Any takers?  Email me if you're cra---

Email me if you're willing and able.

Probably won't get anybody for tonight at short notice so what I'll do is set up an open thread.

It'll be there at the top of the page waiting for you if you can't bear the thought of watching Studio 60 without commentary.

Shed no tears for Aaron Sorkin, but let us mourn now famous live-blogging

Shakespeare's Sister passed on the news to me yesterday.  Aaron's Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip isn't on NBC's schedule for the coming fall.

Sad news for me because it means there won't be any more Studio 60 live-blogging. I had a great time with all of you who took part in our Monday night Snark on Sorkin parties.  But it's possibly good news for Sorkin himself because it frees him from a show his heart was apparently never in.

The premise of the show, the backstage drama of putting on a cutting edge sketch comedy show very much like Saturday Night Live, was promising---what would Sorkin do with a Belushi or a Chris Farley or a young Sarah Silverman?  The answer, it turned out, was ignore the fact they ever existed or that any larger than life or difficult and brilliant and creative people had anything to do with putting on a show like Saturday Night Live.

August J. Pollak, some guy with a website, quotes a poster at Television Without Pity who says in a paragraph what a lot of us were observing week in and week out here during the live-blogs.

Sorkin has no clue how Saturday Night Live was and is made. If you read the book Live From New York you can see there IS a story there. It's a fascinating one (and rarely a funny book, BTW), and a page turner: full of egos, battles with the network, fights and love amongst the cast, tragedy, redemption, comeback stories. For God's sake how do you make that boring? If you're Sorkin, you ignore how a weekly sketch show is written and performed so you can take out all the stress and tension that goes into making it. You cast bland and unfunny actors playing bland and unfunny actors, rather than actors playing out of control writers or young comedians straight off the improv stages at major cities getting their first taste of fame. Instead of the reality of a hard-ass creator/overlord who was the inspiration for Dr. Evil overseeing it all, you replace him with two smug, bland head writers who do nothing but mope. Instead of a shark-like network executive you turn a professional woman in a simpering little girl who has nothing better to do than pine about her sex life and take naps on her boyfriend's couch.

That last bit up there refers to the way Sorkin utterly wasted the talents of Amanda Peet, the only one of his two female leads who had a talent for comedy.  I'll get to his other, unfunny, female lead in a bit.

Not only did Sorkin seem to have no interest in the real history of Saturday Night Live, he didn't seem to have any interest in what made it funny either.  In fact, he wasn't at all interested in comedy either as something worth creating, or as an effect of someone's writing or acting, or as entertainment, something audiences might be tuning into his show in hopes of enjoying.

Sorkin didn't appear to care about television in general, period.  Not as a medium for art or communication, at least.  In fact, and this is something that impressed us live-bloggers every week, based on his ludicrously dated pop culture references, it was a good bet that Sorkin had given up watching television when he was in college and never gotten back into the habit.  As Tom Watson observed, Sorkin's idea of a celebrity was anyone who had been a regular guest on the Merv Griffin Show.  I think the only reason Tom tuned into Studio 60 week after week was that he was hoping to catch the inevitable Charro joke.  Other than what he'd watched when he was a kid, Sorkin didn't care what had gone on in television after about 1982, a bad year for him to have unplugged his TV set, something else I'll get to in a minute.

Sorkin was overly-fascinated with network television...as an asset, a cash cow a multi-national corporation could milk to fund billion dollar deals in Asia (and thank God I'll never have to hear Ed Asner growl the word "Macao" again, except in my nightmares) which gave him an excuse to treat us to long lectures cribbed from a college-level intro course in macroeconomics.  But the only fact about television that truly excited him was that it was the business that treated the world to that great literary and creative genius, Aaron Sorkin.

Sorkin loved writing about Sorkin.  Studio 60 was his autobiography.  The first half-dozen or so episodes had as their main theme what a brilliant writer Aaron Sorkin was and how badly television needed his brilliance to save it from itself.

The other main theme, the one that continued through all the episodes, unfortunately, was also autobiographical, and that was how foolish Sorkin's former girlfriend, Kristin Chenoweth, had been to give him up.

After the early critical lambasting the show took, most of it pointing out that Sorkin had created a show about comedy that wasn't funny, he began to describe Studio 60 as a romantic comedy.

The problem here was similar to the problem he was having with comedy.  His comedy wasn't funny and his romance wasn't romantic.

Week after week, the romantic leads, Matthew Perry and Sarah Paulson, struggled mightily to convince us that they were passionately in love with each other and week after week they barely managed to convey the sense that they liked each other enough that each one was glad the other one wasn't dead.

And now, here I am at last, at the points I promised to get to, Sorkin's unfunny leading lady and the importance 1982 should have played in the writing of Studio 60.

A big obstacle to Sorkin's making his romantic comedy romantic and funny was that Sarah Paulson was neither romantic nor funny.  This wasn't entirely her fault.  She was badly cast.  Good as she may have been in other things (and she had her fans among the live-bloggers here who remember her as Deadwood's proto-dominatrix, the duplicitous and sexually manipulative nanny, Miss Isringhausen), Paulson didn't have it in her to play the kind of character Sorkin needed his leading lady to be.

And that leading lady wasn't Kristin Chenoweth, although Paulson couldn't approximate her or her talents either.  Chenoweth is a Broadway musical star.  What Studio 60 needed, and what Matthew Perry's character would have fallen in love with, was a brilliant comedic actress like...

Shelley Long.

Long, remember, came out of Chicago's Second City.  If her career had taken a different turn, she could have wound up where a lot of Second City alums landed, on Saturday Night Live, where she'd have been terrific,  if the writers at the time happened to know how to use her talents (No guarantee of that.  See below.), or she could have wound up her generation's version of Elaine May.  I don't know if she'd have even needed her own generation's version of Mike Nichols.

What's more, Long's real life backstage paralleled her character's life on stage. Diane Chambers and Shelley Long had a lot in common, including the fact that when they both left Cheers, they left behind a lot of very mixed feelings.

Long occupied a place on the Cheers set very much like the place Paulson's character, Harriet Hayes, was supposed to occupy on the set of Studio 60.  Long was a brilliant comic actress, the star of her show---it took a little while for Ted Danson to come into his own and for the first two seasons, Long was carrying him.  Danson knew it, and didn't mind it, and went along with it, and learned from her.  But that's another post.  Long was an audience's favorite and an object of erotic fantasy as well as a great talent.  She was also, onstage and off, one of the gang yet not one of the gang.

Long was often temperamentally at odds with her castmates and with Cheers' writers and producers.  In her case the temperamental differences stemmed from Long's artistic perfectionism, while in Harriet's case the differences were supposed to be caused by Harriet's religious views, which Sorkin, true to form, treated as an excuse to lecture his audience and not as a part of Harriet's emotional make-up.

Now, the reason 1982 is important for Sorkin is that it's the year Cheers premiered.

It was also the year another romantic comedy about a pair of Can't Live With You/Can't Live Without You lovers went on the air, Remington Steele.

Another hit show in this vein, Moonlighting, premiered in 1985.  And Northern Exposure appeared in 1990.

From all their influences showed up in his writing for Matt and Harriet, Sorkin might as well have not watched a single episode of any of them, and like I said, based on his pop culture references, he very well may not have.

At any rate, the very first lesson Sorkin could have and should have learned from Cheers and the rest is that casting matters above all.  Writing is secondary.

I'm guessing he cast Matthew Perry first, so he had it somewhat easier than the creators of Cheers had it, because they had to find both their romantic leads.  Sorkin just needed someone who could spark off of Perry.

Once you have two leads who can start a fire together, then you need to give them interesting things to say to each other.

But this puts the formula exactly backwards in the Sorkin view of the universe where writing, particularly writing by Aaron Sorkin, is the be-all and end-all.

Sorkin could never let go of the idea that he could write Harriet and Matt into sexual combustibility.  In fact, he seemed to believe that the only reason we cared about their romance was all the great Sorkinisms they would spout at each other in their verbal foreplay.

This actually applies to all of Sorkin's characters on Studio 60 and the whole cast.  Sorkin was only interested in his actors and characters as mediums for channeling the voice of Aaron Sorkin.  Week after week the only reason any given character had to speak was that he or she needed to tell us what Aaron Sorkin was thinking or that he or she needed to prompt another character into telling us what Aaron Sorkin was thinking.

Instead of creating an entire television series, maybe Sorkin should have just started a blog.

Changing the channel:

Bill Nothstine sent me word last week that May 7 was the 20th anniversary of Shelley Long's last episode of Cheers.

And up above where I speculated about how Shelley Long would have fared on Saturday Night Live and said it would have depended on whether or not the writers knew how to use her, I was thinking of Julia Louis-Dreyfus who was so wasted on SNL that I never suspected she had a tenth of the comic ability she showed on Seinfeld.

But when she was on SNL only one of the writers had an inkling of what she was capable of.  Unfortunately, that writer was kind of an odd man out on the writing staff.  The producer at the time, Dick Ebersol, never got any of his jokes or saw anything remotely humorous in any of his ideas.  He didn't last with the show long.

But one day he got a chance to create his own show and he remembered Julia and brought her aboard.

This guy.

Soon to be cross-posted over at newcritics, but not today because there's a whole of good new stuff by others up right now for your viewing pleasure.

Studio 60: Pen-Elayne clears the barroom floor to make room for The Black Donnellys while live-blogging on the Sunset Strip

Top of the Marnin', laddies and lassies.

Well, it's nearly dawn in Ireland and to celebrate the departure of Studio 60 from NBC's Monday night schedule to make room for the network's apparent attempt to cash in on the success of Scorsese's The Departed, The Black Donnellys, it's Irish Stereotype Night here at Clan Mannion's Little Bit O'Erin Pub and Grill!  Join in the merriment by punctuating your comments with inapporpriate Begoras! and Jaysus, Mary, and Josephs!  Give yourself a phony Irish name.  Pick a fight with one of your favorite commenters and invite him or her to step outside.   Live-blogging will be interrupted at regular intervals as fisticuffs break out or patrons spontaneously erupt into song.  Lyrics to Danny Boy and The Rose of Tralee are printed on the backs of your menus.

House specials tonight are bangers and mash, shepherd's pie, and corn beef and cabbage.  Our freckle-faced barmaids will be pulling the taps exclusively on the Harp and Guinness.  Anyone caught saying the word "scotch" will find themselves boiling with the overalls in Mrs Murphy's chowder.  The only whiskey served here is Irish, Jameson preferred.

Now, before we drag her away from the bar and make her begin her live-blogging duties, our guest host tonight has asked me to read a little something telling us about herself.

Ahem:

Elayne Riggs is proud on this Presidents Day to pay homage to Sorkin past and present.  She wants to live in Aaron Sorkin World, not only because the acronym matches her daddy's initials but because it's a darn swell place to be; even if people in it say stupid stuff and act like petulant fourth graders sometimes, they do it by talking really fast whilst walking down corridors, and she admires the cardiovascular workout that Schlamme gives his actors and camera people.  She wanted to be the Mary Sue Maloney character in ASW, until she realized everybody was the Mary Sue character in ASW.

Still, she has to admire Sports Night, which made a boring subject matter (look, there's baseball then there's everything else, deal with it) fascinating because of Felicity Huffman and where you rooted for Robert Guillaume to get better after the stroke because even two minutes with him crackled more than the performances of most of the actors whom I've since forgotten (Josh Malina was in that too? really?).  And The West Wing, where sanity in the White House went hand in hand with characters who made way too much money to be whining the way they did all the time, and where every coincidence was Fair and Balanced!

Which brings us back to the ASW of broadcasting, this time a faith-based comedy show in more ways than one.  Not only do you have to take it on faith that the late-night SNL equivalent is actually funny even though the only stuff you ever see from it is mostly gratuitous musical performances and a few lines of tepid and mostly safe amusement (although, the Gilbert & Sullivan bit? that rocked); but you have to have faith that the character of faith will realize (and start acting like) she's way smarter than both guys currently lusting after her and just say no to them both except there goes Sorkin's pet fantasy bit; and you have to thus have faith in Sorkin to make his characters start acting like grown-ups again which will take more to accomplish than throwing around cultural refs from The Days When They Wore Their Baseball Caps Backwards.  We know he writes smart and gruppy.  He just hasn't done so lately, and he's being punished for it by being shown the gates to the fabled Land of Hiatus.

Yes folks, this could be the last Studio 60 episode for awhile, as NBC has shelved the show until further notice.  So settle in and feel free to make up your own Aaron Sorkin World in your head while you watch -- an ASW where men are men, women are women, studio executive are studio executives, and comedy is -- well, ironically seriotragic, you gotta cut him a little slack.

Yes, Elayne's starting with the end of Heroes.  Even though she doesn't watch that show regularly, as the news editor for ComicMix she feels some sort of nerdly obligation to at least keep up with now and again.  (You can also find her at her own blog, whose very name is a pun of a doubtless outdated cultural reference that would be right at home in ASW. But she prefers to think the Beatles are timeless.)

Herself according to herself folks!  So now, her she comes, with her tin whistle, her wheelbarrow, her streets broad and narrow, and her dancing Irish setter, Seamus, laddies and lassies, a warm Irish welcome for Miss McElayne McRiggs!

Sod that, I'm married to an Englishman.  Although I will say we live in a very Irish neighborhood, without which my husband could not easily procure so many tasty treats at the local Irish food market.  Which doesn't, alas, carry Marmite Guinness.  Erm, thank goodness.

McMannion: Sorry, McElayne, tonight everybody's Oirish, even your Limey husband.  Please, continue.

Be, um, gorrah.  All righty, then.  All times PM and Eastern, although I believe the time stamp is Pacific:

9:50 - Heroes still on.  Gah, I hate this Syler character.  Even the actor who plays him.  No subtlety, even when he was pretending to be a good guy.

9:52 - Where's Stan Lee?  I needs me my Stan the Man cameo!

9:54 - "Two all new Law & Orders."  Still sounds like it should be "Laws & Order."

9:57 - Woo-hoo, there he is!  Stan, Stan, Stan!  Sorry.

9:58 - The painter guy's apparently adopted a manga style.

9:59 - "You couldn't even save yourself!"  Couldn't think of a better segue into Studio 60.

[Ooh, two women dead and one in a coma.  This show doesn't like women that much, does it?  Maybe Jeph Loeb is paying homage to Miller's Daredevil...]

10:02 - Depo prep.  Isn't that a hair gel?

10:04 - Why should we care about this lawsuit exposition?

10:05 - I really like Matt's assistant Suzanne.  We assistants don't get nearly enough credit.  I also like that Matt compliments her on her beauty, because I think she's pretty too.

10:06 - Suzanne is right, glasses is "costume."  Just ask Clark Kent.

10:10 - Nobody told him Mary Tate (and Ashley) was coming.  Nobody told us she was coming either.

She wants to hang out in the writers' room that's completely different than the writers' room when this Karen person was a writer two years earlier.

10:11 - Jordan knows Matt's type.  Scary... ooh, first corridor walk!  ASW drinking game, or too easy?

10:12 - See?  Different people two years ago.

10:13 - I can't be bothered waking up and writing anything at 4 AM.

10:14 - Okay, the Star Trek reference got us both laughing out loud.

Oh, snarl snarl snarl about Luke.  Please grow up, Matt.  (There's your drinking game.)

10:15 - "Did I say it in the same creepy voice?"  Oh most probably, Matt.

10:16 - See what Sorkin did there?  Matt says they're off snorting coke and there they are in the movie snorting fake coke!  It was like blowing our minds, man!  Not.

10:17 - I like Paulson doing this scene.  Except a professional would never ask a question in the middle of a scene, but wait until after the scene was done.

10:18 - "Could you just 'fake it' with him?"  Ick.

So there's your theme as we go into the nex ad break.  Not only does Heroes diss women, but Studio 60 somewhat more subtly shows us what women are up against even from men who think they're not being creepy and sexist.  Luke asks Harriet to ignore biographical fact for the sake of the movie, Danny asks her to ignore her own feelings and history for the sake of the show.

And that's our Secret.  We're strong like a woman.  *sigh*

10:22 - Death banter.  Always lots o' larfs.

10:23 - If I had kids, I'd totally want to stop them with that remote.

I swear I thought she meant $5.99 for the practice baby.  I'm living on a totally different income scale than these characters.

10:24 - Ah, the Silly Baby Bet.  Which sitcom plot cliche is this?  Oh, and chicken noises and everything.

10:26 - "I've had other men say that to me."  Heh.

10:27 - Again, gotta agree with Luke, Harriet's timing sucks in a very unprofessional way.

10:28 - I'm glad Mary brought up the lack of writers situation.  That's one of the real stretches of disbelief in this show.

10:29 - "I've never seen anyone here behave unprofessionally."  Ooh, ooh, Mista Kot-ter!

10:31 - Oy, awkward exposition from a character we've never seen before.  I have no idea why this show is on the chopping block.

10:36 - Talking to Danny does not take a lot of mental energy.  Unless you're Jordan, I guess, for whom everything seems to take mental energy.

10:37 - Oh, finally, Hughley and Corddry.  Now I'm awake.  Loved the exposition!

10:38 - Dang, ruined by Danny and the "baby."

10:40 - "Harriet -- I don't care."  I didn't realize Luke would wind up speaking for the viewers.

10:41 - Oh no, don't tell me, "baby"s head in mini-guillotine, right?

Yep.

I hate when I call it.

10:44 - Not a really Key Moment, the "wanting to have sex with Harriet" so-called revelation.  I mean, I don't think anyone gasped outside of Matt.  Wasn't it already established by Hughley and Corddry that the whole "good girl Christian" thing was a turn-on for guys?

10:45 - For the record, my reaction to Vista is much more "oy" than "wow".

10:46 - Is it just me, or does this have like no character-driven suspense to speak of?

10:47 - Well, that was good, they actually acceded to Harriet's request that the biopic be a bit more historically accurate.

10:48 - Excellent, Harriet has ovaries!  And is actually complimenting Matt's relative professionalism.

10:49 - So the guilt passes on to Matt for not defending Harriet because he didn't know these guys were speaking that way of her.

10:50 - That was a cute moment, "a lot of time and energy wasted on nothing."  Nothing but the only real scenes at which this viewer smiled.

10:51 - So you praise a guy's character and then give him your phone number.

YES, WE ALL GET THE IRONY.  Oy.

I mean, wow.

10:52 - Oh good, exposition analysis from the two main characters.  But some nice tenderness from Matt.

10:53 - Okay, this new "baby" is going to have everything wrong with it, it was set up too well.  Oh yeah, it's the google-eyed one, right?

10:54 - Darn those previews, anyway.

10:55 - "I'm not going anywhere."  Funny thing about that, Mr. Whitford...

10:56 - It's so very, very wrong for Harriet to offer to "unstick" Matt.  But it actually rings true.  So does the kiss.  I actually liked the way that wrapped up, so sue me. That was the 4 AM miracle, and it's not a bad moment by which to remember the series.

Thanks to Father O'Mannion for his typical Irish hospitality, thanks to everyone who bore with me this last hour or so, and thanks to Aaron Sorkin for at least going out on a nice note, albeit with a somewhat tepid episode leading up to it.  And I'm outta here!

O'Mannion:  Ah, twas a grand job of live blogging, she did, wasn't it?  A grand job!  I'm only sorry I am that Studio 60 appears headed for a flush down the loo so we can't have Elayne back for another go round.

Thank you again, Elayne.

So Sorkin goes out with a whimper not a bang, eh?  He goes two weeks in a row without writing a line for Steven Weber?  The man deserves to fail.  And what was Kari Matchett there for?  Not for her sex appeal, which by the way she displays more of in just a toss of her head than Sarah Paulson managed in her lingerie shots last fall.  Her purpose was to talk about Matt and get Matt to talk about himself.  Half the show was about telling us that Matt is really worthy of Harriet's love despite the fact that he never showed himself to be in a single episode so far.  What you can't do by dramatizing, you can always do with lots exposition, I suppose.

One good thing about the show ending.  We won't have to watch Amanda and Brad kiss anymore.  Let's face it, those two just don't mesh at the lips.

I would like to know if Simon gets to keep his Navigator.  And with that one line?  DL Hughley explained to Aaron Sorkin why it was a shame that Sorkin wasted his character all season.

That's it for the live blogging tonight.  But the pot boy won't be putting up the shutters and the landlord's not calling time.  The pub is staying open all night.  It's an Irish wake for Studio 60.  Fist fight in the pool room in ten minutes!   Pints all around, on the house!   Now, while we're waiting for the donnybrook to begin, let's all sing one of the old songs together.

Black Velvet Band!

Her eyes they shone like the diamonds,

You'd think she was queen of the land

And her hair hung over her shoulder

Tied up with a black velvet band...

C'mon, everybody!  Sing out now!  Sing it so all the Black Donnellys hear ye!  Make the boys proud!

Her eyes they shone like the diamonds

You'd think she was queen of the land

And her hair hung over her shoulder

Tied up with a black velvet band....!

Programming note

Pen-Elayne will drop by tonight to take on the guest hosting duties for the last installment of Studio 60 live-blogging before the show goes on hiatus so that NBC can try out The Black Donnellys, which looks like yet another attempt to foist a show about lunkheaded, sentimental, borderline alcoholic Irish-Americans with ethnic stereotype anger management issues onto the public.  Every few years the networks take turns failing to make this premise interesting.

At any rate, tonight's your last chance for a while.  Stop in to jeer or cheer or to offer that one piece of creative advice that will make the lurking Aaron Sorkin---you know he sneaks in here every Monday night and hangs on our every word---slap his forehead and declare, "YES!  That's it!  That's exactly what this show needs, why didn't I think of it myself."

Or just come by to say hi to Elayne and root her on.

Live blogging begins at 9:50 PM, Eastern.  8:50 Central.  Be there or be square.

Studio 60: The Jack Rudolph, Action Executive Fan Club gets out their secret decoder rings to live blog on the Sunset Strip

Previously on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:  Jordan realized that what her life needs while her job hangs in the balance and as she heads into single motherhood is a recovering coke head who has apparently replaced his craving for drugs with an addiction to her and has been wooing her with the single-mindedness of a junkie chasing a fix.  Meanwhile, Harriet has decided that Matt is a selfish putz whose only interest in her is as some sort of trophy so she's broken it off with him once and for all until the next time she breaks it off with him once and for all.

Isn't it romantic?

To untangle the twisted psychology of the principals and explain their self-destructive and childish approaches to love and sex, I invited several prominent psychoanalysts to guest host tonight's live blogging.

Unfortunately, they were all busy meeting with their divorce attorneys.

Fortunately, in their place I was able to rope in---I mean, I was able to prevail upon an...investment banker.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome regular commenter here and blogger in his own right at the group blog Marginal Utility, Ken Houghton, who will not, I repeat, will not answer any questions about your retirement portfolio.

Let me read to you a short summary of Ken's impressive resume, written by Ken himself:

"Ken Houghton is old. His electric piano has vacuum tubes, and he plans to maintain his (decaying) 8-track collection at least until the first Herbie Hancock/VSOP album is released on CD. He has had a desultory writing career, having been paid to write for The Great American Baseball Stat Book, The Washington Post Book World, various reference works (examples include articles on Harlan Ellison, Kaye Gibbons, John Fletcher, and John Hollander, as well as a survey piece on The Holocaust in American Literature), and Publishers Weekly, where he was one of those anonymous reviewers for a few years until they caught him at it. His not-for-pay work includes contributions to The New York Review of Science Fiction (a paying market, but he was a staff member at the time), The Scream Factory, Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction , and, most recently, an appreciation of Jorge Luis Borges for last year’s Readercon 17 program book.

"And, as noted here previously, he sullies Tom Bozzo’s normally-ultrachic, smart, hip blog Marginal Utility with ramblings on topics economic and otherwise. He lives in NJ with his wife and two daughters, the youngest of whom is sung to sleep with his (off-key) renditions of old Neil Diamond songs, and makes a living by day hassling other people to do work."

There you have the man in a nutshell, folks.  So, as Steve Kuusisto and his All Girl Kazoo Band play their rendition of "Sweet Caroline," let's welcome to the stage a man who needs no introduction because I've just given one and there's no need to repeat myself, ladies and gentlemen, Kennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.....

HOUGH-TON!

Studio 60 should be familiar to those practicing pattern recognition. Just as Harrison Ford made two movies whose plots turn to some extent on questions being answered late, and Bruce Willis made two films that depend on his inability to recognize a voice, so Aaron Sorkin has created his second series in which people are producing a television show and almost no one cares about the product. (In between, he created and wrote a show in which Everyone Cared Very Much.)

Since I prefer to treat “The Harriet Dinner” as an attempt to repair the damage done the week before (Danny-as-stalker becomes Jordan-as-Almodovar-heroine; Matt-may-have-been-an-asshole becomes Matt-is-an-asshole, etc.) with comic relief (if one can call snakes, ferrets, coyotes, drunk 20-year-olds, and dolphin sounds comic; YMMV), let us instead describe a few of the central characters:

Matthew Perry, a talented comic actor and recovering drug addict, plays Matt, a comic writer and recovering drug addict.

Amanda Peet, a pregnant, Ivy League alumnae, plays Jordan, a pregnant, Ivy League alumnae who runs programming for the network on which Studio 60 airs. She doesn’t appear to be very good at it.

Sarah Paulson, Lance’s bete noire for this series, plays a character who is not Kristin Chenoweth. Even though she made one appearance on The 700 Club while dating Matt, just as Chenoweth did. Even though she has a squeaky-clean reputation, just as Chenoweth does. Even though she has a history with Matt, even as Chenoweth has one with Sorkin.

Timothy Busfield, who has directed several episodes of Studio 60, plays a director of “Studio 60.” He should not be referred to as Elliot or Danny Concannon.

TO THE LIVE:

9:43 - I have now watched enough of Heroes to almost understand some of the characters, but rather prefer the art direction.

9:48 - "Like Nature or G-d," spoken by a man wearing a Ramones t-shirt.

"New characters and insights from the graphic novel"; cross-marketing r us.

"Are you in love with her or are you stupid?"  Is there an option for All of the Above?  (we know he's cool, cuz he wears his hat backwards.)

"All we can do is run."  Should this be taken as advice?

Are we following yesterday?  (And what live-on-Friday show allows its starts to have Thursday off?  Did Sorkin learn nothing from Gasping for Airtime?

Oh, this is the dress.  Anyone recognize the musical act?

"write on both walls at the same time"  -- isn't that directly from Mohr's description?

Didn't I see this on TWW with Josh (Bradley "not in Aerosmith" Whitford)?

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0478834/">Gina La Piana</a>, if you care.

An American won the TdF in 1986 and 1989 (Greg LeMond). And 1990, iirc.

10:15 - Ah, Tim Batallie. The drama-missing has a name.

So the "slaughter" is 28 minutes from a show that should run 66.  Cutting the musical guests.

We're now hearing Smash Mouth.  I'm more inclined to 1999.

Now we know she's Not Kristen.

We got Nivea during Heroes; it's Jergens now.  Does that qualify as downmarket?

Now that, as we learned last episode, is what a writer does.  Goes to people with sketches to write.

Am I the only one who has trouble with Matthew Perry as The Jewish Character?

I chose to skip closed-captioning tonight; is there something profound in the song?

Nate:Rob::Jim:John -- but that's probably an insult to Jim.

How many angels fit on the head of a pin? (If the answer is anything but infinite, it implies angels have mass.  If the answer is 10,000 x 10,000, we have a distribution problem.)

Should we see The Departed or Venus first? (Have SAG screeners of both.)

Presumably local commercial (for Mohegan Sun): "I'm fakin' it until I'm makin' it."  Did they need to remind us?

Jordan fails to work again. (Side question, since I'm bored of her: how much did they spend on sets and tech for that roughly 30% of this week's show that needs to be cut?  Was it more than Timothy Busfield cost them in tearing up the <s>series</s> stage?

I'm trying to avoid checking the time; there appear to be hours left.

<a href="http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2007/02/studio_60_the_j.html#comment-60363408">Thank you, Lance</a>; I didn't want to mention it.

We went on vacation a few years ago and met one of the people who was in the original Yale production of Sondheim's adaptation of The Frogs.

"moving in circles, won't you dilate..."

Is he from Eureka, or am I just dilating? The co-writer, that is.

The mention of Celebrity Poker allows me to mention that this is, so far, the only Sorkin  show on which <a href="http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0539651/">Joshua Malina</a> has not yet appeared.  At least HE denied killing JC.

Damn. Jordan knows the days of the week.  (Of course, so does my five-year-old.)

NOW I know what's wrong. (I'm slow) We haven't seen Steven Weber Action Executive!

10:50 More Mohr coming now.

Home stretch.  Gosh, gollee, gee: Bad Singing Teacher is In.

10:54: Last Thursday night.  So this is a week later?  Metric Conversion is In.

1055:  "Because I can't live without her."  Oh, sorry, no.

Fight Club!

Recap:  Hmmm. Even without SWAE, things moved forward!  Hallie is evil, but not clever enough for the hormonally-challenged Jordan; Matt is preparing for a downfall; we have a Disney artist who knows all about pills; and--best of all?--they didn't TRY to be funny.

After so much optimism, is it wrong to be optimistic once more?

Let's look for a moment at <a href="http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2007/02/studio_60_the_j.html#comment-60364742">Dave MB's comparison of this ep to Two Cathedrals</a>. The problem is that that led to major changes in the dynamics of the series. What can we change here?  Get away from the romantic comedy (or leave it to Whitford and Peet, the Wesleyan and the Columbia graduate)? Deal profoundly with Matt's relapse? Give more sketches to Nate Corddry?

I am cautiously optimistic that we have not wasted this hour.  But we have been here before, and I wish to thank Lance for his continuing attempt to make The Scarsdale TV Doctor's current show more interesting.  (Someone with a watch, Come On Down!)

I'm going back to Tom's place, eventually to post the outline of the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which may or may not be accurate).  We now return to our regular host.

Thank you, Ken.  Wasn't he wonderful, folks?  Let's give him a big round of applause.  Make it loud enough and maybe it will bring him back out on stage to sing I Am I Said for us.

Ken?  Ken?

Must have had a car waiting.  You can't catch a cab out front of here that fast this time of night.

Oh well.

I agree with Ken.  We have reason to hope after tonight.  Although as MA Peel pointed out early, tonight's episode wasn't written by Aaron Sorkin himself.  Which ought to be a clue, AARON!

Trouble is that I think they've used up Jay Mohr's book and apparently nobody's been reading Live From New York which is where the real action is.

That's it for now, gang.  Next week our guest host is going to be the ever lovely, ever-loving, everlasting Elayne Riggs of Pen-Elayne, who is going to have to tread lightly around me because next week's guest star is going to be Kari Matchett, the love of my life now that Diane Lane and I have broken up.  Matchett, by the way, for those of you who don't know her from the many characters she played on the Nero Wolfe TV show of a few years back, is what Studio 60 keeps trying to tell us Harriet Hayes is, multi-talented and sexy.  I don't know her religious persuasion and whether or not she knows it's Revelation not Revelations, but she will burn up the screen.

And she can do voices that aren't cetaceans or barely remembered starlets whose last important movie, unless you count Starsky and Hutch, was released in 1995.

Although...Juliette Lewis was pretty funny when she guest starred on My Name is Earl last season.  Maybe if Sorkin had hired her instead of Sarah Paulson...nah...he'd just have had Lewis doing Sarah Paulson impersonations along with dolphin girl.

Also, next week, once again our musical guest will be Sting.

Next week he promises to remember to bring his lute so he doesn't have to borrow a kazoo from one of the girls in the band.

Ok, I'm going to go pop in one of my Nero Wolfe DVDs and watch Kari Matchett flirt with Timothy Hutton's Archie Goodwin.  I'm undecided though.  Should I watch her flirt as the brunette Lily Rowan or as one of the many blonde femme fatales she played on the series.

I suppose I could watch the episode in which she appeared as both Lily Rowan and as one of the blonde femme fatales.

Goodnight, kids.  You can leave the dishes till morning.  Just make sure somebody puts the cat out.

Studio 60: Saving the cheerleader while live-blogging on the Sunset Strip

For our cetacean viewers, tonight's live-blogging will be simultaneously translated into dolphin.

Welcome back.  Let's get right down to business by asking the question that's on everyone's mind.  Will Aaron Sorkin be able to get Danny and Jordan off the roof in fewer episodes than it takes Jack Bauer to defuse a nuclear bomb?

9:56.  Sulu is guest starring on Heroes.  I've got to start watching this show from beginning to end.

Now there's a blonde trapped inside a mirror while her reflection is taking over her life.  I can't tell you how many fantasies of mine this is playing into.  I've got to start watching this show.

9:59.  Also to be worked out in tonight's episode of Studio 60.  Just how many women will ignore Simon, the man Shakespeare's Sister calls hotter than hot, to throw themselves at the puppy dog-like Tom.

10:02. Harriet lays out the history of their romance in a way that is not the least bit flattering to Matt, who is now reacting in a way that proves her version of events are true.

He is cruel.  I like this as a storyline.  Matt the self-destructive, women-hating asshole.  But does Aaron Sorkin know it's the storyline?  Does he know that Matt's disturbed?

He knows Danny's disturbed but he seems to be treating this as a reason for us to root for him to win Jordan.

10:07.  Lots of throwing in field hockey, I didn't know.

I do like the snake wrangler.

Tom's learned his lesson.  He lied to Lucy and that got him into trouble so he's telling Kim the truth.

I hope Jack at least tries to kill Tom with his thumbs.

10:11.  If I was Aaron Sorkin, I'd want people to forget the baseball bat/stripper's boots episode.  But, nope, we're rehasing it here.

The worst lie Matt's ever told is that he and Harriet would be shopping for pre-schools right now if they hadn't been a rotten couple who fought all the time and couldn't spend five minutes alone without blowing up into a serious argument?

Let me get my head around this.  What is the lie?  That they were a rotten couple or that if they hadn't been a rotten couple they'd have had children together?

10:16.  It's her fault, I knew it!  Women!

Oh yeah.  Natalie Cole's singing.  This is developing into a signature of the show.  Bring on a musical act we all want to listen to and then let the main characters talk over the song.  Edgy.

Name one woman who would have found being stalked charming?

Got one.  Jordan, apparently.

The coyote's afraid of the snake, the ferret's afraid of the coyote, Cal's afraid of the Humane Society.  "Mother Nature's an inscrutable force."  Heh.  Indeed.

"The Animal Kingdom Axis of Evil."  Timothy Busfield sold that line, I think.

10:23.  Jack Rudolph, Action Executive, springs into action.

He's decisive.  He's stupid.  But he's decisive.  They're taking her back to Tom's dressing room?????

"She's Courtney Love, Jack."  Terrific!  A cultural reference that post-dates Hollywood Squares.  Lindsay Lohan might have been better, but at least we're into the 21st century with Love.

Matt blows a joke because he's jealous?

Matt blows a joke because he's jealous?

Matt blows a joke?????

Wouldn't it have been enough if he'd just had a little trouble getting the speech started?  Man's a pro, he has an audience, he has Harriet depending on him, and he can't get his mind off the fact that she's attracted to another man?

Nah.  Complete adolescent behavior is Sorkin's idea of manly charm.

Danny stalks, terrifies, and humiliates Jordan.  He spends the better part of two episodes making a fool of himself up on the roof top.  He insults her with every other line.  And she wants to know if he finds her physically appealing even though she's pregnant.

Matt picks a fight with Harriet in public at a dinner honoring her, makes an idiot of himself in his speech, ruins her entrance, all because she's hurt his feelings by not adoring him for the prick that he is, and we're supposed to root for him to get the girl that none of us even likes to begin with?

Works for me.

10:31.  Simon has the makings of a prairie oyster in his room.  Jack asks, "What are you?  Sinatra?"

I'm serious here.  Sinatra references are always hip.

Calling a Sinatra reference hip is never hip.

10:35.  We're back on the roof with no hope of rescue.

I'm confused.  Wasn't Jordan just flirting with him?

This is going to go on for twenty more episodes.

Who's this brunette?

Wendy.

Oh, it's the girl with the boots.  Sorkin must think he'll get an Emmy for that episode.

10:38.  Ad for Best Buy.  Do I need to upgrade to Vista?

10:41.  We're back with the clinically depressed comedy writers.

You know, it's arguable as to whether or not the show within a show actually needs to be funny for us to accept that it is funny.  Well, I don't think it is arguable.  Some smart people I respect argue that it isn't necessary.  My feeling is that it wouldn't take very much effort to make it funny, but more important to me is that I believe that the writers and the cast are capable of writing and acting funny.

It's not just that I don't believe Darius and Lucy can write a joke.  It's that I don't believe either one of them knows what a joke is.  These two deciding to become comedy writers is about as likely as someone who faints at the sight of blood becoming a surgeon.

How can DL Hughley stand to be the spokesman for Aaron Sorkin's white guilt?

10:44.  "How long you going to keep this up?"

"As long as it's funny!"

Wow.  The irony there is breathtaking!

How can the entire cast stand to be the spokespersons for Sorkin's authorial hubris?  No, Aaron, it's not all about the writing.

Tom is another one who expects that behaving like an asshole should be rewarded with sex.

And in Aaron Sorkin world, he at least has hope.

10:49.  Timothy Busfield and the Snake Wrangler should get their own spin-off.

10:51.  Darn.  They're getting off the roof.  They haven't milked the situation for all it's worth yet.

She was flirting.

See.  This was my mistake when I was dating.  I never got stuck on a roof with a woman I'd been stalking and insulted her all night.

That was about the least sexy kiss in the history of network television, and I'm counting the time Sammy Davis kissed Archie Bunker.

Hah!  Aaron Sorkin isn't the only one who remembers the 70s!

I feel worse for Matt because Wendy's going home to her fiance than because Harriet is going to string him along for a few more episodes before she lets him kiss her again.

10:56.  When you don't know how to close a show, go with a music video.  Hey!  It worked for Homicide all the time.

Next week Harriet and Matt break up again?

Oh.  We're going to see the day they met, so we'll know they were really made for each other.  Most writers would have gone for the obvious and tried to show that through dialog in the first three or four episodes.  Sorkin saves it for halfway through the season and does it in a flashback.  The man just loves to break ground.

11:00.  Wow.  That was amazing.  Last week Sorkin set up three situation comedy gags---Danny and Jordan on the roof, the deadly viper under the floor, and Tom out with the wild girl who wants him naked but whom he can't touch without risking death---gags that real situation comedy writers would have set up, built, and brought to their punchlines in 22 minutes, that is, in about 7 minutes of screen time for each, and Sorkin couldn't finish them off in an hour, he had to continue them for another hour, and he still couldn't give any of them a proper payoff?

There's a discussion in a comment thread on one of Ken Levine's posts---I'll drop in the link later.  (It's later.  Here's the link.)---and somebody there asked the question why so many people who seem to hate Studio 60 keep watching it.

I don't hate the show.  I hated being disappointed week in and week out by the show.  But I always expected that it would get better.  Or if it didn't that it would get worse and then it would be fun to hate.

But it's done neither.  It doesn't get better or worse.  It doesn't do anything.  Sorkin keeps writing the same show over and over and over again.

Nothing has happened to these characters since the second episode.  They are in the exact same place, saying the same things to each other.  It's not just failure we're watching here.  It's willful failure.  Sorkin must see that he's stuck.  Don't you think?  After writing the same script for the third time, didn't it all seem familiar to him?  Why doesn't he do something, anything to get himself out of the loop?  Hand off the show to another writer?  Kill a main character?  Have Matt wake up in bed next to his wife Harriet and say, Honey, I had the weirdest dream.  I dreamed I was a comedy writer and you were a born again Christian starring on the show we both worked on and we were really, really boring together?  And she could say, Not now, honey, I'm late for my first day working at the White House for President Matt Santos?

Then after an episode or two of that, we find out that that's all been a dream, and Matt wakes up in bed next to Jeannie the sexy brunette who inexplicably and inexcusably has disappeared from the show and says, Damn, I'm late for my first day back at work on Studio 60.  But you know what I'm going to do first thing this morning?  Fire Harriet.

Goodnight, folks.  I'm going to bed now.  If I'm lucky I'll wake up tomorrow next to the brunette who plays Wendy and I'll say, I had the weirdest dream.  I dreamed that I was a blogger and I had got myself into the habit of live-blogging every Monday night this really boring TV show about a comedy show that wasn't funny.

And she'll say, Nevermind that now, dear, we've only got an hour to make mad passionate love before you have to rush off for your first day at the White House working for President Matt Santos.

Studio 60: Aaron Sorkin can breathe easy tonight because live-blogging on the Sunset Strip has been pre-empted

Have to go out and shoot some hoops for charity tonight and since I may not make it home in time for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and I don't have a guest host lined up this week, there will be no live-blogging, and that may be a good thing.

About a quarter way into last week's episode I began to feel a terrible sense of deja vu.  "I've written this all before," I told myself.  Sure enough, everything I typed had an echo.  I think I've said all I have to say about Studio 60 and after last week's show I'd say that Aaron Sorkin doesn't plan to give me anything new to write about...except for his leading men's very strange and juvenile ideas on how to impress the women they love.

Is it me, or are Danny and Matt bordering on the creepy when it comes to Jordan and Harriet?

If you're watching, feel free to use this as an open thread, but I have to tell you...I'd rather you answered my questions at the end of the post below.  I have a feeling it'll be a heck of a lot more fun to write about the good movies you've seen this year than about Sorkin's feeble Snakes on a Plane jokes.

10:45.  I'm not here.

Ok.  I'm here.  But I'm not staying.  But I can't resist.

Tom:  I have to remind you that the legal age for drinking in California is 21.

Tarted up Kim:  What's the legal age for taking you back to my hotel room and dancing for you?

Simon:  Eighteen.

Simon????

Why doesn't Simon have his own date?  This is the second episode where he's pimped for Tom.  At least this time he isn't handing the girl over to him.

This is all Sorkin can think of to do with DL Hughley?  Have him play blacker than thou with Darius and Leering Sidekick to Tom?

Ok, I'm done.

Except I got to say I love the guy with the snakes and the ferrett.

Also I knew the other bidder for the dinner with Harriet was making a George Lucas reference with his handle Luke5858.

That is all.

Studio 60: Live-blogging the aftermath of the Kiss while denying I'm attracted to any girl on girl thoughts involving Sarah Paulson

Actual Studio 60 live-blogging will begin at 10:00 EST, 9:00, but the bar and the thread are open now.  Feel free to start leaving your comments and getting snockered as soon as you arrive.  The management is suggesting that opening comments should focus on the big events from the Christmas episode, THE KISS and Danny's announcement that he's going to start stalking Jordan, but go with your gut.  You may have some things to say about Ken Levine's post on Aaron Sorkin or you may want to talk about which character is most likely to be rooting for the Colts in the Superbowl.  Knock yourselves out.  Meanwhile, our host for the evening is...me, and I've got something serious on my mind.  You can tell because I'm wearing my red tie.  When I wear my blue tie I'm in a mellow mood, but when I'm wearing the red one...hoo boy!  Watch out.

Ok, here I come.  Ladies and gentlemen, right here on our stage, live and in person, the man who owns not one but two ties and a pretty decent suit to go with them, if only he'd remembered to wear a shirt...Laaaaaaaaance Maaaaaanion!

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the return of Studio 60 live-blogging.  I hope you'll all forgive me if I don't appear to be in the mood for the usual jocularity and hijinks these sessions are famous for.

Those of you who have been a part of our live-blogging before and those of you who have dropped by to lurk know that I usually begin these posts with a few jokes and gentle witticisms.  It's all in good fun and meant to put us all at ease and, I hope, we never intentionally hurt anyone in the process.  At the end of the day, we are all just fellow creatures of God, denizens of this little rock, three in from the sun, we call home and which I like to call, "Earth."

But tonight I have something important on my mind and I would like to get it out of the way.  Clear the air, as it were.

I received an email today.  The email was from a person I thought of as a friend, a person whose intelligence, insight, perspicacity, wisdom, and fashion sense I have always admired.  Often this person has sent me joshing, almost---how shall I say it---teasing notes, kidding me about things I've written on my blog.  I've usually taken it in stride.  It's all in fun and the fact that this friend of mine has had several nervous breakdowns and spent three years in a Mexican jail excuses much.

But I think this note was out of line, and I can't help it, I have to share it with you, because I have no doubt that some of you may be thinking the same thought as my friend.  Possibly you too have had several nervous breakdowns and spent time in some godforesaken third world hellhole being tortured daily by your guards.  I don't know and I wouldn't presume to say.  Nevermind.  Let's get on with this.

My friend wrote---and forgive me if I can't read this without getting a little red-faced and angry---my friend wrote:

"Oh come off it, Lance.  It's time to stop pretending.  We all know what's going on.  All this obsessing over Sarah Paulson and what a liability she is to Studio 60?  You don't fool us.  All your going on about how it's not her but her character, how it's Sorkin's writing?  Pretending it's the show itself you care about?  I call bullshit, buster!  It's Paulson herself you're obsessed with!  You're crazy in love with her!  We all know it!  And we all know it's the fact that she's gay that's really gotten under your skin.  You're all hot and bothered by the thought of her and Cherry Jones getting it on backstage at the Golden Globes!   When Matthew Perry planted the big one on her in the last episode, you were thinking, Wow, I bet she really wishes it was Amanda Peet right now!  You're a sick, twisted man, Mannion, and we're onto you.  Seek help.  I'm including the private phone number of one of the best shrinks in Beverly Hills.  Call him now, before you embarrass yourself any more.  Best to the blonde.  Hugs and kisses.  Your old pal and fellow fan of hot girl on girl action..."

I'll refrain from giving you the man's name.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you are as appalled by this as I am.  As I hope you are aware, we try to maintain an objective, fair and unbiased, professional distance from our subjects.  Sure, our criticism can be tough, biting, and sometimes downright harsh, but it's because we care, about you.  We want your television watching experience to be the best that it can be and we see it as our job to stand up to the Aaron Sorkins of the world and demand that for you.  But we try---I try!---to keep our personal feelings out of this.

I swear to you that Ms Paulson's sexual orientation is absolutely of no interest to me.  If she and Ms Jones are involved in a consenting and mutually satisfying Sapphic relationship, I say God bless them.  It's their business and we should all just butt out of it.  Love is love and it's all we need and if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.  My friend was wrong to imply any prurient interest on my part, and he was even more wrong to imply that my judgment is clouded by thoughts of Ms Paulson and Ms Peet and a hot tub and baby oil and Ms Peet''s car breaking down on a cold winter night outside Ms Paulson's secluded house in the country where she lives alone except for the company of a handful of young, French maids all of whom...

...

...

What was my point?

Oh yes.  I'm sorry I had to start out on such a serious note.  But it was necessary.  And now that we have that out of the way, let's focus on this week's live-blogging.

If you remember, when we last saw them, Danny had just announced to Jordan that he was "coming for her" in tones more appropriate to John Wayne announcing he'll meet the bad guy on Main Street at high noon than for a no longer young man and recovering drug addict announcing he'd fallen hard for a much younger woman completely out of his league.

Meanwhile, Matt, apparently just to mess with Harriet's love life and screw up her movie deal, catches her backstage, backs her up into a wall, and, without even the benefit of mistletoe, smooches her until her toes curl.  Then he strolls off.  Sarah Paulson is left trying desperately to make Harriet look like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief just after Cary Grant kisses her in the hallway outside her hotel room, probably getting herself in character by imagining what it would have been like if Amanda Peet...

Um...

Nevermind...

Let's just get on with the live blogging...

9:58.  Heroes winding up.  "Nobody sees me!  I'm invisible!"  I've felt that way too.  I'm not always as angry about it.

9:59.  Did they save the cheerleader or not?

10:00  We're off.

10:01  Amanda Peet really is adorable with that bite of sandwich in her cheek.  Can somebody save her from Danny?

10:02.  Siren!  Quick.  What's Ray Milland doing on the TV behind Jordan?  Is that a Hitchcock movie?  Is there a comment on Studio 60 here?

(MA Peel comes through.  Jordan was watching Dial M for Murder.  What is Sorkin telling us about Danny then?)

10:04.  My God!  He is stalking her!  Is this what Sorkin means when he says he'll be going for more romantic comedy?

10:09.  The Ed Sullivan Show was reality TV?  Does anyone in the world of network suits seriously make that argument?

Jordan has Elvis and the Beatles at the forefront of her brain.  She's a male baby boomer's dream of a third wife, isn't she?

10:10.  Here we are at the Depressives Anonymous Support Group meeting.

10:11.  Sorry.  It's the writers room.

You know, comedy writers aren't all sweetness and light.  Many of them are miserable human beings.  Not you, Ken.  But there can't be many who have absolutely no sense of humor.  Matt Albie has an entire staff of humorless depressives and Sorkin doesn't seem to be treating this as a joke.

10:13. The ebay gag has promise.

An entire writing staff of chronic procrastinators strikes me as too realistic.

10:15.  How does Rudy Giuliani have time to do a character bit on Studio 60?  Really.  Doesn't that board member look like Rudy?  Imagine him in a blonde wig and an evening gown.

10:21.  What rachel says about Steven Weber.

10:22.  Macao again.  Ed Asner saying Macao is a sound that's going to haunt me to my grave.

10:26.  An organization that encourages people to have sex?  "We're in LA.  Should be able to throw a rock and hit one."  Good.  I'm buying a plane ticket to Los Angeles on travelocity later.

10:27.  Look!  Another pretty Gen Y-er who knows her Baby Boom icons and lore.  I love this show!

Is it clever, too clever by half, or just an accident that Jordan and Hallie have the exact same hair style?

10:31.  Can I just say something?  The way Sorkin has been underusing DL Hughley is criminal.

Can I say something else?  No way in the world will I ever start watching The Medium, but I think it's great that there's a hit show starring an actress who looks like an actual human being.

10:35.  Characters rehashing conversations we've heard them have has become something of a signature for Sorkin on Studio 60.  I would be ok with it if the rehashes weren't so much instant replays.

10:37.  More Danny and Matt.  Less...everybody else.

But Danny is stalking her.

10:38.  The Husky Gymnast sounds like something they'd really do on Saturday Night Live.  One of those bits they do over and over again that nobody understands why they do over and over again but which become fan favorites just because they're unfunny and nobody understands why they do them over and over again.

TOM IS BORING!!!!!!!!!

Why is the Brit Chick so wowed by his asking her out?

10:41.  Mac commercial.  I thought Apple fired the Mac guy?  Must be Accepted was a bigger hit than I thought.

By the way, I hope everyone noticed that during that scene between Sarah Paulson and Amanda Peet I did not mention French maids.

10:47.  I liked what Weber did with the speed-teaching himself Chinese.  I didn't like the sitcom resolution of the problem.  Oh you speak English!

The viola player is back.  That reminds me.  She was supposedly crazy for Tom too.  What is it about Tom that makes Sorkin think we'll think he's loaded with animal magentism?

It's that puppy dog quality isn't it?  Girls just go crazy for guys who remind them of puppy dogs.

10:53.  "Is this dinner with Harriet and Ava Gardner?"  Ok, Ava was something, but am I supposed to believe that the first sexy movie star who pops into the mind of a jealous 35 year old television writer who might actually date sexy movie stars is one who's been dead for 17 years?

This is something that's been driving me nuts since the beginning of Studio 60.  All the pop culture references would have been stale on a Bob Hope Christmas Special.

And how stale was that reference, Lance?

10:57.  Restraining orders are a regular feature of great romantic comedies.

Actually, both Danny and Matt have very strange ideas about how to win the love of a good woman.

11:02.  Ok, we're out of here, and what have we learned that we didn't already know?

Darius doesn't want to work with Simon.

And....?

Studio 60 has become the TV Drama equivalent of old Big 10 football.  A lot of standing around, then a big collision at the line of scrimmage, a cloud of dust, and when the refs pick the last player up out of the pile-up to find the ball, they discover that the home team has lost half a yard.

Fifty minutes and Sorkin managed to move the ball five yards down field.

But there's hope for next week!  Snakes on a Soundstage!

And maybe this new blonde clone of Jordan will be evil, pure evil.  The show needs some evil.  Steven Weber's character was supposed to be evil, pure evil, but he's turned out to be a force for goodness and niceness.  Which is fine by me.  But I still want to see some evil, pure evil.

I'm out of here, gang, but don't leave on my account.  Stick around.  Enjoy the sounds of the loons calling to each other across the lake.  There are marshmallows in the cabinet, Hershey bars too.  Someone run down to the 7-11 and get some Graham crackers and you can toast smores over the grill while the fire burns down.

Those of you coming in from the West Coast, leave you comments, but please.  Don't feed the bears.

Good night.  I'm off to talk to the blonde about French maid costumes.  I only hope she's not busy reading her copy of The 48 Laws of Power.

Best Actress Completely Unsuited for the Part

Shows you how much influence I've got.

Sarah Paulson has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.

Paulson, it's generally agreed by critics and fans alike, is the second most annoying thing about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the first most annoying thing being the show's creator Aaron Sorkin's "comedy as a serious business, like periodonture," approach to writing a TV show about writing a TV show, and in a just, or at least tasteful, world she'd have been written out of the script by now and not up for any awards.

Yes, I know the awards Hollywood incessantly gives itself are fairly meaningless as artistic judgments, and the Golden Globes are the biggest joke of the bunch (although at least the people behind the Golden Globes seem to know they're a joke), and yes, I'm about to write yet again about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and I have heard from many of my readers that I've already written way too much about that show.  To those readers I say, Patience.  This post isn't just about Studio 60.  It's also about Cheers, M*A*S*H, and The Unit, and it includes discussions of nudity and sex.

Paulson plays Harriet Hayes, the inexplicably popular fan-favorite and class sweetheart of the "cast" of the fictional sketch comedy show that's at the center of Studio 60.  The character, a conservative, evangelical Christian with a bad habit of letting everybody know it at inopportune times, but who substitutes lecturing and scolding for praying in public, is said to have been based on Kristin Chenoweth.

Chenoweth, now wowing them on Broadway in The Apple Tree, is bubbly, brassy, sexy, and funny.  Harriet Hayes is none of those things and Paulson captures that perfectly.

As I've said before, Harriet's blandness is not all Paulson's fault.  Sorkin hasn't given her much to work with.  All her best qualities are assumed by the scripts; as if we have no real interest in seeing Harriet's talents as an actress and comedienne on display, we never get to see her shine, we're just told that she does.  And her worst qualities, her sanctimony, her self-righteousness, her instinctive desire to be a wet-blanket, aren't portrayed as bad qualities.  They are seen as intrinsic to her being a conservative Christian, and since Sorkin is using Harriet as a kind of noble savage---"Some of my best friends are Indians and Evangelicals, now let's get on with exterminating the brutes"---vices that Christ himself preached against repeatedly are allowed to pass as virtues, proof of her sincerity and therefore shielded from irony, satire, and contempt.

I imagine Paulson could have a whole lot of fun with the part if she was allowed to play Harriet as annoying scold, whose sanctimony was really a hysterical expression of repressed sexuality---the church lady type who is usually found at the end of the play with her heels up, her crinoline around her waist, and a red-faced church deacon on top of her, huffing and puffing away, on the verge of a heart attack as he tries to satisfy her suddenly unleashed libido.

Of course, a leading lady who's an annoying hypocrite would violate the Prime Directive of Network Series Television:  Main characters are not allowed to be unlikeable, and how Boston Legal gets away with breaking this one week in and week out is beyond me, except that it suggests that the rule is all in the minds of the Network suits and timid writers and producers and actors and not all that important to viewers.

But Paulson could still approach the part as if Harriet wasn't the saint she, that is, Harriet herself, and Aaron Sorkin think she is, and even come close to making her that sexy church lady, by playing her as one of two types---the Good Girl with a Naughty Streak or the One Time Bad Girl Determined to Repent.

I've written about the Good Girl With a Naughty Streak before, when I wrote about Lilith on Cheers being the Schoolmarm type.

There's something of the Schoolmarm about Harriet, but a true Schoolmarm type has to be in a relative position of authority, at least in regards to the other characters around her.  Schoolmarms have a good reason for holding themselves sexually aloof and not becoming one of the gang and not joining in the fun.  Lilith has a professional reputation to uphold, plus she is a wife and a mother.  Diane Chambers, who acted the part of the schoolmarm, has no good reason to be so superior and standoffish except her own snobbery, which is why she was so annoying and why her character's ultimate exile from the bar made dramatic sense.

Actually, in many ways, Diane was the Sexy Church Lady type, but her "church" was the church of her own intellectual pretensions.  Another Sexy Church Lady was Margaret Houlihan on M*A*S*H.  And currently one of the wives on The Unit is presenting an interesting, and dressed-down, variation on the type.

Thanks to J. at the Armchair Generalist for calling my attention to this show.

Tiffy Gerhardt is a good and loving mother, a dedicated and even heroic high school teacher, and in most things that count a loyal wife---she's devoted to her husband's "church," the Delta Force Unit and the Army, and she sings in the choir, so to speak, energetically and enthusiastically taking part in the base wives's social activities and self-support work.  And she's cheating on her husband regularly with his commanding officer.

The Unit's backstory gives her an excuse.  Her husband, Mack, is a good solider but a bad husband, negligent, withdrawn, emotionally stunted, unable to express any feelings around her except anger---he's lost control at least once and beat her and the scripts so far don't give us any reason to think this was out of character and likely to be a one-time mistake.  Tiffy is lonely, afraid, deserving of much better from life but bound to her husband by love and a sense of duty.

On top of everything else, she seems to love the commanding officer, tragically, because part of the reason she won't leave her husband for him is that she knows it would wreck both men's careers if the affair ever became public.

Her situation is such that we ought to forgive her and root for her and be glad she has at least something of her own in her life and we do and we are, but, and this is something I admire about The Unit, it's more complicated than that.

As she's written and as she's played by Abby Brammell, Tiffy is sexually eager, even demanding, and there's a definite implication that while she loves the colonel, love isn't everything or even the main thing.  She likes, wants, and needs sex, not just because she's young, horny, and lonely, but because she's good at it.

She is vain, proud of her body and proud of what she can do with it in bed.  She's also reckless and she enjoys the threat cheating brings to her life.  In fact, in many ways she is very like her husband.  Sex is her talent, the way combat is his.  They both enjoy expressing their competence and love the thrill and the danger that goes with it.

She is without guilt too.  When the colonel, harried by his conscience and concerned about the way his own bad behavior is jeopardizing the Unit's cohesiveness and therefore its security, tries to break it off with her, Tiffy demands and gets a last meeting in their usual motel room.  There, she listens to him try to explain himself, scoffs, sneers, dismisses his guilt and his concerns, pushes him down onto the bed, strips off her shirt, and leans her perfect belly into his face, absolutely confident of her power over him, but also angry and insulted that he would even think about giving up the possibility of seeing her naked.

So, like the Sexy Church Lady, Tiffy is vain and sexually adventurous in private and a goody-two-shoes in public.  It isn't just the case that she needs to protect herself with a public reputation for being a good girl.  It's also that she is as vain of being a good girl as she is vain of being a sexual dynamo.  Which makes her a hypocrite by choice not just by necessity.

As I said, I'd find it more interesting if Harriet Hayes was a variation on the Sexy Church Lady type---and for those of you who think I'm just wishing for more scenes of Harriet in her underwear, there are plenty of ways for Sexy Church Ladies to backslide without their always landing on their backs---but that's not in the cards.

It's also a little late to start presenting Harriet as the Bad Girl Determined to Repent.  Harriet's past could be full of many episodes of backsliding, but it's really not necessary to the type that she actually be a Bad Girl, only that she think of herself as one.  Christianity does a good job of convincing lots of good people that they are in fact bad just for being themselves, so this wouldn't be at all a stretch.  It's just that Aaron Sorkin is determined to make Harriet a sunny, romantic heroine type, and not a neurotic mess of a realistic protagonist.

So it would seem that Paulson's best and only option is to play Harriet as the Good Girl With a Naughty Streak, which, based on the way she lightened up in the last two episodes, seems to be where she's headed.  Trouble is that her idea of naughty appears to be loving a Jewish Hollyweird atheist comedy writer.  This is "trouble" in the usefully dramatic sense.  It means that her love for Matt Albie is a serious problem for her in that it means she has to reject or betray her sincerely held beliefs in order to be with him.  This makes her very much like Diane Chambers, who could never completely give in to her love for Sam because in her mind it meant she was rejecting her "church" of Art and Culture.

For each woman, then, having the man she loves requires her to compromise herself, no big deal as far as the audience is concerned, because neither Harriet nor Diane is devoted to an attractive belief, in fact, they are both devoted more to their own self-image as a Good Girl than to actually being a good girl.  But giving up a cherished and self-flattering opinion is very difficult for most people.

Shelley Long's leaving Cheers saved the writers from having to decide whether or not Diane was capable of changing and what to do with her if she was. 

Things will be more interesting on Studio 60 if it turns out that Harriet can't change or has a lot of trouble changing.  (There is no reason for Matt to change for her, because he doesn't need to in order to love her or let her be herself, and because he's right.)  But it would be even more interesting if it turns out that not only can't she change, she doesn't want to change, because to change would take away what she likes about being in love with Matt---that in loving him she is being naughty.

This is what makes Good Girls With Naughty Streaks dangerous in real life, if you happen to be the object or occasion of their naughtiness.

For one thing, Good Girls With Naughty Streaks are in fact good girls.  Being good means being able to resist or give up being naughty, which means that once they decide they don't want to be naughty any more, you're out the door.

But it also often means that what they like about you is that you are what allows them to be naughty and so they will resist any attempts on your part to make your relationship with them less naughty.  The Sexy Church Lady can be an extreme variation of the Good Girl With A Naughty Streak and Tiffy on The Unit is a good example.  When the colonel tries to break off their affair, he's attempting to return their relationship to more proper terms.  Not at all naughty.  And Tiffy won't put up with that.

Good Girls With Naughty Streaks can be extremely manipulative then.  They will have things their own way.  If you mess with them by trying to be something other than they need you to be, they will put you back in your place in a violent hurry, even if it means breaking it off with you in a fit of self-righteous indignation.  "How dare you think I am that type of girl, you cad!"

This was the way Diane kept Sam in line.  Whenever she threatened to or did break it off with him, she always made sure he understood that it was because he was beneath her.  She played on Sam's insecurity and vanity and that way made sure he danced to her tune.

This was also an element in the perpetual threat Margaret used against Frank on M*A*S*H.  She always made it clear that he was the cad and the seducer who had taken advantage of her in her loneliness, she was his innocent victim, guilty of nothing more than loving not wisely but too well, and she made it even plainer that if he ever did her wrong this is exactly how the world, and his wife, would see things.  She'd make sure of that.

The Good Girl With a Naughty Streak is always one step away from becoming a villainess or at least the antagonist to her former lover's or the rival for her former lover's protagonist.

I wouldn't mind seeing Harriet Hayes being taken by Aaron Sorkin and Sarah Paulson in this direction, especially since Matt and Harriet just aren't clicking as a couple.

But as things stand, and as Paulson is currently playing her, Harriet is one of literature and life's most annoying types.

The Prude Who Wants to be Thought of as Fun.

Studio 60: Dreaming of a white Christmas while live-blogging on the Sunset Strip

Live-blogging will begin at 9:55 PM Eastern.  But somebody goofed and turned on his spotlight and his microphone too early, so Mannion's already out front, delivering what he thinks is a funny opening monologue.  Feel free to ignore him and scroll down.

Hello, out there!

Wow!

What an echo.

Good evening, folks and folksettes.  Lance Mannion here, blogging to you from the ballroom at the Camp Ho-ki-po-ki Restaurant high atop Mount Killimontarack in the beautiful Catskill Mountain Resort Region.  Behind me, Steve Kuusisto and his All-Girl All-Kazoo band are playing the haunting and enchanting overture to Lucia di Lammamoor, so that's that godawful squawking you hear in the background and you don't need to adjust your radio sets.  When they're done the girls will go table to table asking you to donate as generously as you can so that they can put some gas in their bus and get the hell out of this one-horse town and on to their next gig in Merrillville, Indiana. That's where they make the big bucks.

I'm your host tonight.  No guest blogger.  Just me to take you through tonight's very special holiday episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  Emmy-award winner Ken Levine will tell you how much television writers look forward to writing very special holiday episodes.

The nice thing about being the sole host is that I don't have to appear here in italics.  You can't rent a good italics like you can a tux---and, by the way, what do you think of mine?  I like the line here, but I'm not crazy about the velvet lapels.  At any rate, appearing in italics is tiring.  You have to spend the whole night leaning thirty degrees to stage right like a novice mime practicing the walking in a windstorm routine.  You probably didn't notice, but the last couple of times I leaned too far and lost my balance and fell over on top of a busboy.  Same busboy both times.  Both times he was carrying a full tray of china.  Amazing how fate likes a joke like that.  That ironic part is that both times I was aiming at the cigarette girl.

So tonight I get to stand up straight while live-blogging, although if the cigarette girl passes within range during a commercial don't be surprised if italicize myself all over the place.

Quick rundown of some good stuff from last week's episode.

1.  There was a story.

2.  The subplots had something to do with developing the characters and didn't bother with trying to teach us the economics of running a network or the history of television.

3.  I got a good joke I can tell at parties.  Jewish guy calls up his mother, says How ya been, ma?  His mother says, Not so good, sonny, I haven't eaten in 38 days.  Guy says, 38 days?  Ma, why haven't you eaten in 38 days?  His mother says, I didn't want to have to talk with my mouth full in case you called.

Harriet told it better.

4.  Aaron Sorkin finally realized Jordan is not serious about doing her job and wrote her part accordingly.  The scene where she self-destructs in an interview with a reporter for TIME was clunky, a bit too obviously staged---the reporter seemed to have come into the room expecting exactly what he got and sat there waiting for it to happen, very much as if he was in an audience watching a play he had seen before and he made no attempt to actually conduct his interview; he just fed her questions that were designed to help Jordan get from Point A.)  Pretending to take the interview seriously to Point B.) Aware that she's gone too far.  At some points along the way, the reporter seemed to be coaching her on how to go from bad to worse, but he didn't come across as manipulative, just as scripted.---but the follow-up scene with Danny in which she realizes what a gigantic mistake she made was good, right up to the point where she faints and reveals she's pregnant, as if we didn't see that one coming.

Sorkin, though, did a nice job of setting up that moment while keeping in mind that the moment was not going to be a big surprise.

5.  I say Sorkin did a nice job and Sorkin realized Jordan's a twit, but Sorkin had a co-writer on the episode and as I said last week one of the things I think Sorkin needs to do is call in outside help to write the show.  So the co-writer is a promising development.

The meta-scripting is still at work though in that last week's episode written with the help of a co-writer was about Matt Albie bringing in a co-writer to help him write...that week's episode.

6.  The two young writers, Darius and the girl from the British version of The Office got more screen time.  Unfortunately for them, most of their screen time was spent playing straight man and straight woman to the hired gun Matt and Danny's brought in to teach them how to write.  Fortunately for us, the hired gun is a compelling character, although with Darius and now this guy Aaron Sorkin has created a writing staff for his fictional show that includes two comedy writers who have no sense of humor.

Maybe three.

Brit Girl's sense of humor has yet to be demonstrated.

Apparently their ability to write killer comedy is akin to an infant prodigy's ability to write a symphony without being able to read a note of music.  Some part of their brains that they cannot connect to except while writing is tuned into the quantum humor of the universe.

7.  Harriet and Matt played several scenes together as if they actually liked each other.  The problem is that that's exactly as it came across---they like each other.  A couple of pals who haven't spent a lot of time together lately.

Previews suggest that Matt and Harriet smooch under the mistletoe tonight.  Let's hope the previews are misleading.  As many of you know, I hate mush.   The sight of the two of them swooning into each other's arms will just boil my brisket.

Unless I manage to fall on the cigarette girl.

Then I'll feel more kindly towards all young lovers.

It's 8:31 by my watch.  I'll just stand here and practice leaning until she wanders by or the show starts.

9:52.  Heroes is looking less interesting.  "We're going to take you apart, Gabriel.  Just like one of your little watches.  Sorry.  Timepieces.  We're going to take you apart and find out exactly what...makes...you..."  Tick!  Dammit!  The word you're working towards is Tick! "Tick."  Phew.

9:54.  "Tell me, Claire.  Can you keep a secret?"   Melodrama.  I think I like this show better when I watch it with the sound turned down.

9:57.  I also like it better when they get all surreal and don't have any dialogue.  What's the bike wheel spinning symbolize?

Here come all the heroes!

Oh oh! It's true.  A hero will be lost!

10.01.  Macao again!  Why does Sorkin think we care?  Maybe he just likes having Ed Asner say Macao.

10:02.  I knew the father would turn out to be nobody interesting.  I'm glad.

10:03.  Roz Russell and Cary Grant, I'm telling you.

What was the beer Danny was asking if she and the boyfriend got drunk on and forgot there are like 500 types of birth control of which I can think of only 4 off the top of my head?

I think it was gentlemanly of Danny not to ask her why she didn't have an abortion.  Or do we know because of the 12 years of Catholic school Jordan suffered...went through?

10:08  Charlie Brown joke coming in the door with Matt.

10:08:10. LINUS?????

Good grief.

Linus did not pick out the tree!

Aaron Sorkin, you blockhead!

10:10  First walk and talk.

I should move to LA.

But I love Christmas.

I can't live in LA if I love Christmas.

10:12.  By the way, Sorkin wrote this episode alone.  Explains Steven Weber's totally unrealistic swearing just now.

This is why they need to be able to say fuck on network television.  Because that's what Jack would be saying.

10:15.  Ad for Blood Diamond.  What accent does Leonardo di Caprio think he's doing?

10:16.  By the way, Matt's being Jewish and loving Christmas reminds me of the novelist Fred Busch.  Fred was Jewish and he loved Christmas.  Loved it.  He wrote a preface to the Signet Classics edition of A Christmas Carol.

10:19.  Jesus looks like one of the Bee Gees in the paintings.  Good line.  But is Simon going to be nothing in this show but Tom's sidekick?  Isn't that a complete inversion of the talent ratio?

10:23.  We're getting humor out of opening a coconut.  About as easy as actually opening a coconut.

Matt and Danny.  Boy, they're good together.

I'm not hip enough.  I don't know.  Would Harriet be right for this part?  Sarah Paulson?

10:27.  Is Danny going to say it or punch her desk?

They've got chemistry.  They may even have body heat.  But I still hate mush.

I'm in terrifc shape too.  I'm a nut about exercise as well.  I'd walk across the street to talk to Amanda Peet and wouldn't have to stop to rest once.

I probably haven't mentioned it, but my high school girlfriend looked just like Amanda Peet only prettier.

Ok, the drill press to open the coconuts?  Cute visual bit.  But is there really only one place in southern California where all the TV shows and movie theaters get their fake snow?

I knew that about Luke and the shepherds and Jesus being born in the spring.   I learned it in Catholic grade school.  I won a bar bet on that once.  I think that one of Aaron Sorkin's objectives with Studio 60 is helping all of us win lots of bar bets.

The unsmiling writer was more fun last week.

10:41.  I thought they fired the Mac guy.

Is it me or is Will Smith looking more and more like Jesse Jackson?

I have to tell you, folks.  I've been watching more of this show than usual.  I'm attributing it to Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford because that's all that's going on.

10:45.  "Why is it that young people have no sense of the past?"  Yes, everybody needs to know when Caruso died relative to the birth of a fictional character played by Ed Asner.

Besides winning us bar bets, Sorkin wants us to have a sense of the past.  Generous guy.  What middle school does he teach at again?

10:49.  THE KISS!!!!!!!!!!!

And no mistletoe.

10:50.  If Steven Weber leaves the show this will be the last live blog.

Hooray!  Ed Anser's a hero!

Jack's a hero!

He meets the grandkids.

Can't Aaron Sorkin just let the musicians play?????

Jordan's eating a sandwich sloppily.  Amanda Peet has no vanity.  Good quality in a comedienne.

The full cheek is a nice, cute touch too.

10:56  Show would have been pretty good if Sorkin had just let the musicians play.  The slideshow overwhelms them.  The moment should have been about the music.  Instead it was about how Aaron Sorkin's heart is in the right place.

11:02.  Time to call it a night, gang.  Steve Kuusisto and his All Girl All Kazoo band snuck out during the first commercial break without paying their bar tab.  The cigarette girl went home with the busboy I fell on.  Matt has kissed Harriet, Danny's SAID IT!  They're making pina coladas with the burnt coconut shavings.  It's Christmastime in LA and did I mention how the novelist Cynthia Ozick, who is Jewish, used to call Fred Busch up at Christmastime and ask him if he had a Christmas tree and when he said he did she'd yell at him for being a bad Jew?

It's not just Aaron Sorkin who can teach you things.

Clear the room, people.  We've got another party coming in from the West Coast.  What they're going to dance to now that there are no kazoos, I have no idea.  Art the Bartender can play Lady of Spain on wine glasses.   Art?  You want to get out the crystal?

I'm done, folks.  Wrap up in the morning.

Goodnight!

Studio 60: Let's live-blog the living daylights right out the show, by Jingo!

Buenos noches, mis amigos y mis amigas.  Mannion aqui, showing off all the high school espanol he remembers.  Before we get started and I bring out our guest host for the evening, I have to get serious for a minute.

Kids, there are lurkers among you.  We know you are there, lurkers.  The cleaning lady has found your peanut shells, candy wrappers, and crushed cigarette butts under the bleachers in the gym.  Now this has got to stop.  Not the eating of peanuts and candy and smoking cigarettes under the bleachers.  That's where I go with my butts, nuts, and Three Musketeers myself.  I mean the lurking.

No more lurking, you here me?  Chime in, why don't you?  Give us your insight.  Let us know you're there!  I realize some of you have outstanding warrants and may not want to call attention to yourselves.  Use an alias!  Wear a mask!  Pull your hat down low and turn up your collar.  The cops who come in here are off-duty and five months from retirement anyway.  They won't bother with you.  So comment, dammit!  Let's get that comment number up over 150 tonight!

Now, without further ado, I want to introduce to you a man who should need no introduction, but who will get one anyway because certain illegal practices in his misspent youth have left him with a tendency to forget his own name.  You may know who he is but he may need reminding.  So, ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome like he's never been welcomed before, the one, the only, the insulted, the injured, the possessed, that raw youth, a man who is a brother to all the world, a crime in his own right, and his own punishment, Neddie Jingo!

Ned start here.

Why, yes, yes he do, don't he. Except on those occasions when he start over there-->

Mannion: Buenas noches. Una noche. Noche takes the female gender, as any fule kno.

All righty, then. Comfy room, a fine young vodka-and-soda at my elbow (a weak one, as it's a weak night) a cackling friar on the grate -- sorry, check that, make that a crackling fire -- and Rosie Fahrleit playing about my features. (I'll stop with the Perelman schtick in a minute, I'm just nervous.) The rest of the Mannion Checklist: Ah! I had the rose rolled up and the socks in my teeth! I thought that was a little uncomfortable... That's why we do these pregame warmups!

Hey! Anybody read any good books lately? Tipplin' Tommy Pynchon's got a new doorstop out, "Against the Day." This Work of Literature Is Sold By Weight, Not By Volume... I'm 100 pages into it, it's flippin' great, but I've had to start a running list of characters -- now Darby Suckling, that's the "mascotte" on the airship Inconvenient? Or is he the haunted Pinkerton with the heart of gold...?

Ah! Studio 60! Yes. Right.

Having seen only last week's episode of this deathless classic of the televisual arts, I feel in need of a bit of a primer. So I guess the thing to do at this point is to look up this Aaron Sorkin character Mannion's always on about. What's he, some sort of actor or something? Mmm-kay, Wikipedia... Ah! The West Wing! So Studio 60 is The West Wing, but, you know, funny. Right. I'm now officially Caught Up. I note with some sobriety that Sorkin is six months my junior. Depressing? Nah!

Hey: Here's something I betcha didn't know: Allison Janney was in my class at Kenyon. No, seriously! The 18-year-old Allison was pretty much indistinguishable from the 46-year-old edition, all gangly limbs and dusky voice and huge black eyes that invite comparison to limpid pools in the undereducated. She was also about 6'2" and a Dramanoid, which more or less put her out of my league -- but I did OK in the Kenyon Alumna department. (Hey! There's a Kenyon Pun in that last sentence! Go Lords!)

OK, OK, the show... NBC.com... "As one of the funniest actors of his generation, [Matthew] Perry has impressed critics and made audiences laugh in his Emmy-nominated role as Chandler Bing on 'Friends'...." Hmm. "As one of..."? Bit clumsy, that. I guess they don't hire the Thomas Pynchons to write the website copy down at NBC.... Bradley Whitford -- Jowly McSmirkface from The West Wing, OK... That Nathan Corddry, he looks like somebody, can't think who.... Timothy Busfield -- what's he got on Sorkin, I wonder? Must be something Deep and Dark and Dreadful, otherwise he's a script boy.

Ooh! Quickly, before the show starts! I hit a deer on my way home from work tonight! Yikes! I stopped at a stop sign at Ryan Road and Evergreen Mill, and there it was, just grazing by the side of the road, so I hopped out, cooing endearments, and as soon as I got close enough, blam! A right cross to the jaw! No, seriously, the thing leaped out of the woods right into my path. I was only going about 35, and I was able to slam on the brakes -- I might have been going 15 when it came into contact with my truck's front bumper. It stood back up, looking dazed, and after a very brief but anxious few seconds, it hippity-hopped back into the woods. I was never so happy to see Bambi leave. I'd be a guilty wreck, else.

OK! On with the show!

10:04: Refresh my mammaries, someone: flu shots?

10:05: Who's Blondie? Dang, I should've actually watched this show, shouldn't I?

Jeeze -oh-squeeze-oh, is this Typepad client buggy on the Mac!

The chick from the Ricky Gervais "The Office" sure does clean up nice, don't she?

10:15: I'm completely lost: A commenter said this is a clip-show. Is that right? Otherwise, this is sure confusing.

And now: The Live-Blogging of the Commercials!

I'd rather have an iPod on my ever-changing clothes than a ev-Pod on my chang-clo on my oh screw it.

And isn't it wonderful to have the fragrance of frack-a-snackin' scented candles fill the room immediately? I mean IMMEDIATELY!!!

10:21: I'd KILL that Norah Jones clone. KILL her, dig? A hard right cross to the jaw!

10:27: The Ominous Weather: Betrays a distinct ignorance of the Gern Theory of Disease... How fast does a virus travel?

Jesus Christ, this goes fast!!!!!!

10:34: Boy, I bet we are in for some Vomit Humor, damned soon...

10:36: Matthew Perry has ENORMOUS bags under his eyes. Richly deserved.

10:37: I AM DILBERT27!!!!!

It can now be revealed. I'm glad the vodka is having its intended effect.

10:39: Woo! Contemporary Politics! Sorkin! You are a GOD!

PLAVIX! Those little animated doohickeys just wash away from your aorta! Gimme some o' that!

Please forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of the idea of "Peace, Love and the Gap./"

10:46: "Solid double up the middle": THIS SHOW SUCKS. All I'm sayin'.

10:49: Boy, that bit with Harriet unable to tell a joke is COMEDY GOLD. Also, the Grosse Pointe thing is Seriously Cheesy.

10:53: There goes that Germ Theory of Disease problem again. And Norah Jones Clone needs to DIE...

We're supposed to melt to the music. Only problem is, what happens when the music makes you want to throw up? And Amanda Peet is preggers. Like I care?

COMMERCIAL LIVE BLOGGING: Boy, I'm sure impressed by that homosexual holding that Stratocaster. Yes, indeed. Whaddya got? I'll buy it!

Oh. It's over. Goodness gracious.

Folks, this show seriously sucks. Get a life. Oh, hey! I've just noticed, I've got two -- count 'em, two! -- episodes of "House" on the TiVo. Let's do them now, OK?  Dag-flaggin', sacka-a-frackin' Aaron Sorkin polesmoker... "House".. now there''s a TV show...

Ned?  Ned?  Come back, Ned!  Come back!

Dang.

Just like the man.  When the masked rider's work is done, he vanishes into the night, leaving behind nothing but a silver swizzle stick.

Thank you, Lone Jingo, wherever you are.  I hope you get that deer that got your truck.

Ok.  I'm going out on a limb here.  I liked tonight's episode.  It wasn't flashy, but it was about what it needed to be about and not about Aaron Sorkin showing off.  And I'm going to be telling that joke Harriet couldn't tell every chance I get.  I can tell jokes.  I can't write them.  But I can tell them.  And I'm going to tell the kreplach out of that one.

Lurkers, I know you were there.  You've got to stop this.  Next week, I expect full class participation or everybody's staying after school.  You hear me, everybody!

Time to close up shop here on the East Coast.  I'm heading on over to the In-N-Out Burger to hit on Christine Lahti.  You kids out West, the place is yours.  Room service is good until 2 your time.  Don't take anything from the minibar, unless your company's paying for it.  I called the maids and they're bringing up clean towells.  Try not to frighten the neighbors.

Goodnight.

Saving Aaron Sorkin from himself

A guman takes the cast hostage on tonight's episode of ER...um...sorry...I mean on tonight's episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

This is how desperate Aaron Sorkin has gotten already?  He's reworking a plot ER must trot out at least once a season?

I was thinking of giving the Studio 60 live blogging a rest this week.  Fortunately, Neddie Jingo came along to give me a quick smack upside the head.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked solicitously, handing me an ice pack after I came to.  "Did you forget you asked me to do the live blogging this week?  Do you know what I had to go through to rearrange my schedule for this?  I actually had to figure out how to program my BlackBerry!  You'd better do the live blogging thing!"

And so we will.  Ned will sign on tonight at 9:55 to get the Snarkin started.

The fact is, however,  I don't know how much longer I can keep the live blogging going.

It'll depend on whether or not Aaron Sorkin can make the show into something worth talking about instead of something that's just fun to make fun of.

And there's a limit to how much fun can be had making fun.  The trouble is that Studio 60 isn't a bad show in the outrageous way the night time soap operas of the 1970s and 80s were bad.  It is bad in the saddest and most boring way possible.  It is bad by being not as good as it could be.

Pick an episode, any episode, and then choose a scene or a moment or a line that you disliked.  Lots to choose from, I know, but the odds are that whatever one you choose will be a scene or a moment or a line that could have worked "if only."

Go ahead, pick one.

During the live-blogging a couple weeks ago, commenter Katewyn, wondering if it was possible for the show to change direction and, given time, grow into something good, asked the group of us, "If you were going to nurture it - no, really, if you were in the business of caring about it -  what would you do?"

Discussion never got going, which is too bad.  But better late than never.

First thing Sorkin should do to fix Studio 60 is fire himself as head writer.

Sorkin makes his shows about the writing, about his writing.  The writing isn't the only thing that's wrong with Studio 60, but most of what's wrong with the show is the fault of the writing.  Sorkin's writing for Studio 60 has been bad because Sorkin is just the wrong writer for his own show.

Aaron Sorkin can't write comedy.  But that's not it.

Sorkin doesn't write for his actors; he writes for himself.  But that's not it.

He can't resist the urge to preach.  But that's not it either.

The big problem is that Sorkin has no idea how to structure a story and tell it in 60 minutes.

Sorkin has made some fitful attempts to construct story arcs that will carry through a number of episodes, but none of them is compelling.  The one involving Amanda Peet's character---will her sleazy ex-husband's tell-all book get her fired?---isn't plausible, but even more damaging, it has nothing to do with her job in the show or with the show within the show.  And the Will Matt and Harriet get back together plot, besides the problem of Matthew Perry and Sarah Paulson's lack of body heat, is just a variation on the old opposites attract chestnut that like all the other variations misses the point of the model they're all working from---Sam and Diane could never get together because they would wind up killing each other if they did.

In short, while Shelley Long was on the show, Cheers wasn't about getting Sam and Diane together.  It was about keeping them apart.

That's another post.

And for some reason Sorkin gave up right away on the story arc the series seemed to be premised upon---can Danny and Matt save Studio 60 and bring it back to its former glory?  Apparently that's been decided.  They can and they have.  Ricky and Ron?  No problem.  Stuck with the old cast?  Nevermind.  Jack wants to see them fail?  Water under the bridge.

But even if he could make the longer arcs more dramatic, this isn't going to be a show with a lot of action, adventure, and a high body count.  There isn't enough happening for every single episode to be about nothing but advancing the story arc.  Something else still has to happen within the individual episodes.

Sorkin has admitted to being weak on developing plots.  He's also weak on character.  The two weaknesses are inter-related.  Characters define themselves in two ways, through what they do---plot---and what they say about themselves to justify what they're doing.  Sorkin isn't Shakespeare or Dickens.  His characters do not speak in their own peculiar idioms.  They don't create themselves out of their own idiosyncratic word choices.

They don't reveal anything about who they are or where they're from or when they grew up by how they speak.  Whenever Sorkin's characters want to tell us about themselves they have a habit of reciting their resumes.

The only way we know Harriet is a born-again Christian is that she keeps telling everybody she is.  But if she's ever sung a hymn, said a prayer, read the Bible, or even gone to church, you can't tell it from her word choices.  She tells us she's a Christian using the exact same syntax and vocabularly Jordan uses to lecture about product placements, Danny does to lecture about the Hollywood blacklist, and Tom employs to give his parents a lecture on the history of television comedy.

Sorkin's characters all speak in the same cadences, they use the same vocubulary, they draw their references, metaphors, and analogies from the same set of cultural touchstones, and they all talk about the same thing---the issues raised by the storyline they're stuck in.

Which is how we get long conversations about the economics of product placement in which any line could have been delivered by any character.

I don't know if Sorkin thinks he needs to do this kind of thing because this is how real network execs talk to each other or if he does it because he wants to "educate" his audience or if he's just fascinated by this sort of minutiae himself, but the effect is that his characters sound as though they are cramming for exams all the time---and we can sense Sorkin himself cribbing as he types out a scene.

That's not writing; it's transcription.

One of the more insufferable qualities of Studio 60 has been the way Sorkin has used it as a vehicle for self-congratulation.   Sorkin has been telling us how television needs more good writing like the kind he's providing for us.  Besides the overestimation of his own talent, this boasting reveals a terrible and I have to think willful ignorance of what's been on television over the last 30 odd years.

Nevermind The Sopranos and Deadwood and other HBO series, the regular networks have produced dozens of shows that featured writing of the caliber Sorkin appears to think his own reaches.  Law and Order, when it was good, Northern Exposure, Seinfeld, Frasier, Cheers, Homicide, NYPD Blue, The Simpsons, St Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, Barney Miller, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, the list could go on and on (Go ahead, go on and on in the comments)---all of these shows were excellently written by writers who did well---did better---the thing Sorkin is most praised for.  Dialogue.

And they did far better the thing Sorkin himself says he's not that good at---plot.  They could tell a story in a set amount of minutes.

And most of the people who worked on these shows are still alive and working.

So if I were Sorkin the first thing I'd do tomorrow morning would be can my own ass and hire somebody like Ken Levine and his writing partner David Isaacs to be whatever title head writers hold these days.

It's an understatement to say that Ken and David know funny.  Having worked on MASH, they also know how to be serious while being funny and vice versa.  And they know who else knows these things.  They could put together a stable of writers who could make Studio 60 into something worth quoting every Tuesday morning if not live blogging about every Monday night.

Little while back Ken posted a short excerpt from a MASH episode he and David wrote.  It was the two-parter in which Radar goes home, called simply and directly enough, Goodbye, Radar.

FADE IN

EXT. COMPOUND – NIGHT

Tired and sullen, Potter, Hawkeye, and B.J. (still in bloody surgical garb) EXIT. O.R. and head towards “The Swamp”.

POTTER
Pierce, you were a good boy in there.  You only threw one instrument, and two tantrums.

HAWKEYE
Well, the finger’s improved.  It’s up to excruciating.

B.J.
(looking up) Warm night.   Maybe I’ll take a walk and unwind.

HAWKEYE
Sounds relaxing. I’ll get a couple of flashlights. You can look for minefields, I’ll check for snipers. (beat) Where do you think he is now?

POTTER
Doesn’t matter.  He’s away from here.

B.J.
I really miss the kid, you know?

POTTER
Yeah.

HAWKEYE
I’m going to name my first wife after him.

They reach “The Swamp”.

B.J.
Well, I’ve walked enough.

HAWKEYE
Me too.  Let’s see if the bar is open in this place.

CUT TO;

INT. “THE SWAMP” – NIGHT

Potter, Hawkeye, and B.J. ENTER.

B.J.
He’s probably halfway to Hawaii by now.

B.J. flops on his cot.  Hawkeye is at the still, fixing three drinks.

HAWKEYE
(yawning) I don’t want to think about it anymore.

Potter stops, looking down at Hawkeye’s bunk.

POTTER
Hey, boys…

B.J./HAWKEYE
Yeah?  What?

CLOSE ON HAWKEYE’S BUNK

Lying on his pillow is Radar’s teddy bear.

BACK TO SCENE

Touched, Potter picks up the teddy bear, hands it to Hawkeye.

HAWKEYE
(to teddy bear) Good-bye, Radar.

FADE OUT

There's a lot going in in that little scene, including the fact that in their very few lines BJ, Hawkeye, and Col. Potter is each very much himself and their self-ness is revealed not just in what they say individually but in the way their lines bump into and off of each other.  But the thing that's going on that Sorkin should recognize and appreciate is something that's supposed to be one of his trademarks, the characters are exchanging dialogue while moving.

It's a walk and talk.

It's all been done and done better and Sorkin should take advantage of it.

Studio 60: Trying to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, while live blogging on the Sunset Strip

Updated throughout show.  Wrap-up and smart reader commentary below.

9:45 Just tried to explain to the ten year old why I've been frustrated by Studio 60.

He watched the last season of The West Wing and he got to like Bradley Whitford as Josh and he was sorry to hear Studio 60 wasn't going well for him.  I told him that Whitford's fine.  He's doing an excellent job.  All the leads---except for Sarah Paulson, and she's trying---are doing fine work.  It's the writing, I said.

The scripts stink? he asked.

No.  No.  It's not that they stink.  It's that...It's like watching a good pitcher throwing a good-looking curve ball.  The pitches come in, breaking beautifully, hitting the same spot every time, pitch after pitch, except they're all six inches outside.

Every pitch is perfectly delivered, and every one misses the plate.

Anyway, good evening, folks.  Mannion here.  My special guest blogger couldn't make it.  He said it was due to work.  I think he thinks he has a chance to get laid.  Whatever.  He'll be here another night.  For tonight, I'm back on the bridge, and my plan is to try to find positive things to say about the episode.

The rest of you down in steerage can be as snarky as the mood takes you.

9:55 Heroes.  Doesn't look like they're doing a good job of saving the cheerleader.

9:58.  How many heroes are there?

Ok.  To be continued.  I wonder if this show is as interesting as the last few minutes of every episode have made it seem.

10:00  We're on.  Oh good.  Ricky and Ron are back.  Conflict.

Jessica Simpson's guest hosting.  Praying for peace in the Midwest to fill 37 seconds.

Ricky and Ron seem to have pretty low status responsibilities for head writers.  They oversee the cue cards?

Matt thinks the show tanked.  He's probably right.

That was it.  Harriet was naked.  It's over.  I'm turning it off now.  You guys go on without me.

10:07  I'm over it.  That wasn't all that sexy, was it?  Guess it wasn't meant to be.  It was meant to be cute.  I don't need any more cute in my life.  I wanted sexy.  Has there been a sexy moment on Studio 60 since it premiered?

10:09  She's still naked.

Now she's got a bathrobe on and is talking to sexy chick.  I think we should have seen sexy chick in her underwear.

Still cute, not sexy.

Thinking about it, has there been a sexy moment in anything Aaron Sorkin has written?

Macao again?  When are we going to get a plot that has something to do with the characters and the show they're producing?

Oh, layoffs are in the works.

Is this a show for business majors?

It is.  Aaron Sorkin wants to teach us how to run a television network.  There'll be a quiz later.

I'm beginning to think that Sorkin's mind isn't really on his own premise.

"Muncie State?"  Somebody couldn't bring himself to write Ball State but still wanted the inside joke about Letterman's alma mater.

Now we're going to examine contract law.

Hold it!  Hold it!  Simon and Tom are trying to talk her out of doing the lingerie spread?

No, Tom, there is no general interest in seeing Harry undressed.

Danny had a healthy feature film career in which he never had to think about product placement.  He was doing art films in Eastern Europe.

10:26  Danny and Matt.  They're the show.  Trying a little too hard to be Hawkeye and Trapper here though.

But if Ricky and Ron quit then there's no creative conflict.  Danny and Matt's victory is complete.  Where do we go from here?

Maybe the lawyers will interfere.  Suits on the march!  Now that's drama.

If Sorkin had been writing for MASH, he'd have given us scripts about the logisitcs of supply.

Brit girl is back.

Brit girl is gone.

If Sorkin wrote for Cheers, we'd have had episode after episode about the economics of brewing beer.

10:35.  Oh good, another opportunity for Harriet to get on her high horse.  Sarah Paulson is so appealing when she's self-righteous.

10:37.  30 Rock did a product placement show last week. It was funny and made the same points in three lines.

10:38.  Danny has great timing, doesn't he.  "You're about to be fired."  Commercial break.  How did he know?

This Ricky and Ron and Peripheral Man plot might be interesting if Matt's really acting out of spite and not out of artistic integrity.

Just for the record, I understand why Tom and Simon are tying to talk Harriet out of the lingerie gig.  What I don't understand is why she was dumb enough to agree to do it in the first place?

10:43.  Danny just recapped last week's episode.  The most dramatic moment of this week's episode is a recap of last week.

Tom and Simon are making it clear they are pro-female nudity.  I am too.  I am not pro repeating the same conversation we just had five minutes ago.

She's taking her clothes off to spite other Christians?  Couldn't she just want to show off?

Brit girl.  I like Brit Girl.

That kiss was sexy.

I don't want Ricky and Ron to go.  Don't go, Ron!

Damn, they went.

But Brit girl and Darius are going to get more work.  Will they get more screen time?

10:53  Busfield's back.  There can't be a fourth OT in that basketball game.

NO!  He's saving the day!

Janitor sweeping up for the last shot?  A Carol Burnett reference?

Ok.  We're done.

Sigh.

That one wasn't even a case of  Sorkin walking every batter.  He never came out of the bullpen.  He spent the whole show warming up.

They never got to the party.  Oh wait.  I get it.  They never got to the party.  The basketball game never finished.  Tonight's show was a metaphor for itself.  It was all about how things are going nowhere.  Lots of talk, lots of seeming activity, but at the end, the score's still tied, nobody's got a drink,  Amanda Peet doesn't know if she still has her job,  Harriet and Matt didn't kiss, and Matt isn't even sure if tonight's show really sucked.

A TV show can't go into overtime, and live blogging shouldn't.  So I'm done for now.   Thanks for stopping by.  Carol Burnett will be here in a little while to mop up the stage.

Wrap-up.  Four-thirty Tuesday morning:

Woken up out of sound sleep by the sudden realization that my baseball metaphor's all wrong for last night's show.  I'm now thinking football.  Sorkin played last night's episode without his passing game.  He threw for no long yardage but did still manage to move the ball down the field.

Ricky and Ron and their crew of writers are gone.  Now the show belongs to Matt, but more importantly opens up the way for Sorkin to introduce the new members of the writing staff , Darius and Brit girl, as characters.

We finally got to see Jordan at work being a network suit.  Sorkin still has her doing work that seems to me to put her about two boxes down the flow chart, but what do I know?  Harriet is turning into a character; she was much less of the stick figure Conservative Christian and more of an actually conservative person---conservative in her attitudes and behavior and not in her politics---and Sarah Paulson seems to be getting more comfortable with the character.  She's allowing Harriet to be not as "smart" as Sarah Paulson.   Harriet shouldn't be a dummy, but she can't be a thinker.  She's all heart.  In the first few shows, Paulson seemed to be afraid that if she made Harriet more emotional and reactive she'd be insulting the character and Christians by implying faith is only possible to have if you don't think.  But Harriet can only survive in show business and keep that kind of faith intact if she doesn't think too hard about what she's doing.

And Harriet and Matt, which is to say Paulson and Matthew Perry, finally had a scene together in which they managed to convince me that they liked each other.  I still don't believe that they have had or ever will have sex.  It was wrong for Sorkin to leave out of Harriet's decision to pose for lingerie spread any physical vanity on Harriet's part.  She was doing it to prove to Hollywood producers she had sex appeal and to get back at some Christian group she felt hat let her down.  She should also have been doing it because she wanted to see herself in a garter belt and because she wanted Matt to see her too.  She should want to be thought sexy for the sake of being sexy.   As it turns out she's not someone whose faith has her resisting normal human temptations.  She's just a prig who's also careerist with a wounded ego.

As for her being the star of the show within a show, that side of her may never get shown convincingly.  The character as Sorkin has written her and as Paulson has been playing her and as the other characters have been treating her could be the star of a TV show---a show like The West Wing or even a sitcom, where being an actress, as opposed to a comedian, carries the day and where the kind of stardom she appears to enjoy is more likely to be the reward for good work.

I had some more but Victoria says it all, with fewer words and more pith, starting with answering my question about the janitor shown sweeping up at the end of the episode:

Sweeping Janitor just means Very Late Night After Everyone Is Gone - and these three are still upstairs trying to clean up (understand) after their bad show, just like the janitor is cleaning up below.

Now, about finding positive things to say:

The two remaining rookie writers are both interesting and there's a lot they can do to take this cast in interesting directions by filling out the stable.

I thought the scene between Matt and Harriett was one of their best so far - I disagree that there's no chemistry there. Something about their mouths...there's a similarity that makes me believe in them as a potential pair. Now, if only the conversations coming out of those two mouths were a little more scintillating and surprising...

Whitford, Perry, and Busfield are working their asses off and I enjoy everything they do. Hughley is interesting to watch, too, with a lot of excellent tiny gestures. The Dylan character was pretty sweet in his Santa scene last week, killer smile. Plus Darius and the Lucy. And Weber has Perfect Pitch. That's a lot to work with.

Sorkin has been quoted in interviews as saying he does dialogue and character, but is weak on plot. Sports Night could slide without much plot in just a half hour. The White House gave him enough matters of import + plausible visiting outsiders to make it feel like there was more happening, even when it wasn't a whole heck of a lot. This show is a challenge in that regard.

Pray for the Plot Fairy.

Studio 60: Live-blogging the show that put Pahrump, Nevada back on the map

Good evening, friends, Romans, and contrarians, we come to praise Aaron Sorkin not to bury him, even though he's been doing a heckuva job digging his own grave on Studio 60.

(Rimshot.  Complete silence from the audience.)

But seriously, folks, Sorkin has spent a lot of time writing his own epitaph, eulogy, and obituary into Studio 60.  I can't think of another show that's such a memorial to the creator's genius.  Sorkin, we've been told in various thinly-veiled ways, is the man who is saving television.  I'm telling you, Donald Trump should take lessons in self-esteem from the guy.

(An even completer silence.)

Hmm.  Tough crowd.

Fortunately, last week's episode was mostly free of the usual self-monumentalizing.  It was free of a lot else too.  Like a plot.

(A silence like the dead hear inside their graves.)

Well.  Guess we proved Aaron Sorkin's not the only one who can't write comedy.  On to the business at hand.

Those of you who were here last week will remember that our guest blogger, Jennifer, kept trying to abandon her hosting duties by escaping down into the comments section with the rest of the riff-raff.  We sent her right back upstairs every time, mostly because the bar's up there and she had our drink orders.  Jennifer was happily relieved when the show was over and her live blogging chores were done, but both Aaron Sorkin and NBC pulled fast ones on her.

Sorkin made the show a two-parter to be continued this week, and NBC decided not to cancel Studio 60.  Which means that because she's the kind of obsessive personality who has to finish every single job she starts no matter how trivial, Jennifer's stuck with the live blogging again tonight.  So here she is, ladies and germs, back to wrap up, mop up, and sum up, the wonderful, the marvelous, the Jennifer, aided and abetted by her lovely husband, Grizzled!

Hello Mannionites, it’s Jennifer again from Saying Yes, ready to lead you through another gripping episode of Studio 60! Joining me this evening is my trusty sidekick, Grizzled! Grizzled would have been here last week, but felt being an election judge was more important than live blogging

But let’s get back to the endless fever dream that is Studio 60… last week’s episode was like Groundhog Day!   Every 12 minutes they put the needle back to the start of the album and started playing the same thing over… Matt and Harriet are supposedly going to heat up tonight… Why do I find this hard to believe? I was just watching a special on penguins. I am guessing the penguins had more heat that Matt and Harriet. You know what it gets down to? I don’t even care or want to see any heat. There is no spark as far as I am concerned and no matter how much they fan the spark, I will still not feel the heat.

Somehow I feel 73% of Part II tonight will involve re-rehashing of Part I, but let me rehash a little bit here so that we might proceed with all of our ducks in a row!

Tom is in jail (still wearing his Jesus Garb TM costume from dress rehearsal) for various charges in Pahrump, Nevada, including speeding, assault, possession of evil weed and wearing Jesus Garb TM after Lent.  Judge John Goodman is ticked off with smug Hollywood-types making fun of small town people and is not going to let Tom go without a fight, but Tom needs to get back so the show can go on!!! Simon, Danny, Jack, a Chinese investor and his Tom-loving, viola-playing daughter are there as well.

Apparently all of this started when our favorite religious comedian told a newspaper that she felt being gay was a sin. Of course they left out the part about her still thinking gay people are swell…Don’t ask… you’ll be reminded 20 times in the next 60 minutes.  Let's just get on with it.

8:59 CST... the excitement is palpable!!! Oh wait... we're still watching Heroes... never mind.

I think NBC got it wrong... it was save the cheerleader, not save Studio 60!!!

Pahrump is NOT funny!

9:05 OH!!! I KNEW IT!!! The show must go on! Cue Ethel Merman... Cue Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland!!! Gack.

9:07 G: Ooooh, I can feel the tension... Am I watching The West Wing??? I stopped watching that after awhile because it was like work. This is feeling like work. Why am I doing this???

J: Grizzled seems more enchanted with the flat screen from Radio Shack and less enchanted with Homophobe Harriet.

9:08 I am sorry, but I just can't get behind anything Sarah Paulson says... We know how she feels about the Bible... we know how she feels about... the Bible. Do we know how she feels about anything else???

9:10 Cheeses of Nazareth???

G: Carol Channing does have a nicer voice and is funny... where the hell is she???

J: Amanda Peet wants us to see the real Harriet. She's NOT Anita Bryant! She's NOT. Heck, I think Anita Bryant had more heat... hey, let's see Matt and Anita!!!

They're calling the gov on Tom's behalf... Jack has pull with the gov having given lots of moola. That seems to be the way it works. Will the gov same Tom? Will the gov save the show?

J&G: Jack trashes viola girl's camera thus ruining any proof of Tom in the hoosegow.

G: The Gov is not taking Jack's side. They are off to the restaurant with John for a slice of pie... mmmmm piiiiiie!

J: Hey! I make good pie! Maybe I should make one now. It might be more interesting than this...

J: Did I hear Mayberry RFD blogging??? I LOVE Ken Berry!!! Why isn't he on this? Where is he? And what about his wife...ex-wife, Jackie something or other!??!?!

We're back in Nevada... we've got pie!

Oh fer cry... we're discussing Simon's hair. It is the 21st century, right?

"no, I was in Reno... I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die..." THIS SHOW IS DYING!

I swear, the show is going to go on the road... they'll do it "LIVE! From PAHRUMF!"

New Afro-American writer questioning who gets called "Sir".  Oh wait, Harriet is practicing her weekend update. She's really bland... of course she looks stellar next to Tom's stand in.

Grizzled is so thrilled with the show that he just walked out to fill up his ice bag for his post-surgicalized hand... it's still more interesting than hearing Harriet and oops, Simon's stand in.

Oh, Harriet is having a crisis!! Can she be tolerant enough for showbiz yet not tolerant enough for her religion?!? WHO CARES?!?!?

I don't think this is Studio 60 anymore, it's Studio Harriet.

Commercial break... Grizzled has proclaimed this even more lame than the last time. I concur. I am trying to whip up some feeling, but... well, oh screw it. I'm going down to the comments!!! JUST TRY AND STOP ME LANCE!!!

The comments are discussing The Simpson's and Seinfeld... what the hell am I doing up here?  Grizzled??? Where are you going? Get back here!!!

Hey, they just broke in with a small plane going down in my hometown... oh crap, we're back.

J: Sixty Dahra??

Dylan seems to be a bit stage-struck. Oh, sneaking Matt, sending cute girl over to prop him up.

Ed Asner is creeeepy. Was he this creeepy last week? I want Mr. Grant back, not this blood-sucking business man.

He just said, "Make it stop!" I agree... he was talking about the show, right???

BUT HE DID NOT INHALE!!! A half-smoked joint does not mean Tom (or Simon) inhaled!

Alright! Jack is held in contempt! Contempt for this script!

Oh how sweet! Tom is going to be saved by his brother who is FIGHTING IN THE WAR... not pursuing lame comedy! Tom's father was right! Tom is NOTHING! Tom's brother is everything!

Tom is free in the interest of patriotism! Patriotism shall set you freeeeeeeeeeee!

What do you know! The Judge has a soft spot... he has suddenly lost the evidence and Tom is free. I am free... there's a commercial! Grizzled??? Where are you?!?!?

Was there a point to this show??? If so, someone please remind me because I've lost the will to blog. It's not even over. Weren't Matt and Harriet supposed to heat up? Did I miss it??!?!

9:45 Oops, I haven't been tagging the time. It's hard to keep track when it feels like infinity.

If they had to watch this show for a day they'd cry!

9:48 Tom, looking strapping in his Jesus Garb TM is wooing the viola girl to keep all gossip on the QT.

Hey! We've got heat! We've got a bit of heat between Brit girl and Matt! Or... maybe not. Maybe it's just  some female angst. Oh, look, Matt is being sweet. WHO CARES!

9:50 Tom makes it to LA and kisses the ground. Oh no! Viola girl has gossip on the dreaded Crackberry!

Jack is being a stand up guy and is telling Asian Man to take his moola elsewhere... go to Time-Warner! Jack's company has honor dammit!! DAMMIT!

Oh! The ultimate insult to the Asian man! He has insulted Jack! Oh! Silly them... it's the viola girl who has translated it wrong! What a nice, neat little package.

I just asked Grizzled for confirmation on something I heard, but Grizzled was too busy doing his finger exercises.

Oh wait... we've got the blubbering British girl writer...

Oh no... Harriet and Matt are in the same room and I feel nothing. Gads, she's preaching again. GACK!

The Bible says bad entertainment is a sin...

If they kiss, I'm leaving...

HE'S CRAZY!

Grizzled just said, "Bleck, I'd rather blog Heroes." I think I agree... I can't even think of anything slightly snappy to say other than, back to you, Lance...

Ok, kids, Mannion here to say that wraps it up for tonight.  I think we all learned one important lesson here, thanks to Tom Watson.

CPO Sharkey deserves to be released on DVD!

Thanks very much to Jennifer and Grizzled.  Heckuva job, you two.  I want you to do the live blogging for the remainder of my term in office.

Those of you out West who are just coming in, wipe your feet on the mat before you come in. 

I'm shutting down the grill now.  The soda fountain will stay open.  I expect you all brought enough quarters for the juke box.. 

Please leave your thoughts on tonight's show in the comments and don't play G19 if grandma's still working the counter with Uncle Joe.  Rhinestone Cowboy reminds her too much of her Vegas days with grandpa.

G'Night.

Studio 60: Warm-up act

Reminder:  Live-blogging begins tonight at 9:50 PM Eastern, 8:50 Central.

While we're waiting for Jennifer and Grizzled to show up for live-blogging, a couple of postive things about last week's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Last week's episode was about 15 minutes of plot and 35 minutes of characters telling each other what happened in that 15 minutes of plot.  (I'm figuring about 10 minutes of commercials.)  Included in the 15 minutes was a scene in which Steven Weber's character, network suit Jack Rudolph, tells Amanda Peet's too cute for a Network President Jordan that a sketch has to be cut from---what the hell is the name of the show within a show anyway?  Jordan's thinking she needs to placate Jack because his ego's bruised from her outmaneuvering him on a previous episode.  She goes to Brad Whitford's laid-back, recently drug-rehabbed producer Danny and tells him Jack is going to order him to cut the skit.  She asks Danny to cave, but not without a fight.  She wants him to put up a fuss first so that Jack will feel he's won a tough one.  Danny's cool with this because he's already decided to cut the sketch.  It isn't funny.

Few mintues later, Jack and Danny are alone and Jack tells Danny to cut the sketch, and Danny says...

Sure.

Just like that.  No fake outrage.  No pretend argument.  He just shrugs and says, fine.  He completely goes back on his promise to Jordan to put up a fight.  Not only that, but he tells Jack that the sketch was already on its way out.

Which infuriates Jack.

He's so angry at having the decision taken out of his hands, and at not being able to feel like he's Danny's boss, that he immediate one-eighties and orders Danny to put the skit back in the show.

Danny refuses and they fight about that.

I liked this because of what it says about the extent of Jack's and Danny's egos, particularly Danny's, since he comes across as a very modest, very laid back guy, almost a go along to get along type.  But he has as big an ego as anyone, including Jack.

Ego's probably the wrong word for what he has.  It's a professional's pride.  He won't put up with any suits, not even Jordan, making the creative decisions for his show.  What's more he wants it known that he's making those decisions himself and he makes them for the right reasons.

The sketch has to go.  It's going to go.  Danny's already made up his mind.  So what does it matter if he lets Jack think the decision to can the sketch was his?

It matters to Danny because Jack's making the decision for craven business reasons.  Jack thinks the sketch will rile the wrong people, sponsors and the office of standards and practices.  Danny wants the sketch thrown out because it's not working.  It's a case of opportunism and principle being on the same side for once but Danny insists on principle getting the credit.

What was good about this is that it was never explained.  There was no expository speech later in which Danny or Jack tells us what happened in that scene.  For once, Aaron Sorkin, who has too often felt the need to explain everything, lets the actors do the work and leaves it up to the audience to figure it out on their own.

Tonight's episode will probably start with Jack or Danny giving a speech detailing what Danny just did.

But maybe not.  Maybe Sorkin will leave well enough alone.

There's another interesting side effect of Sorkin's restraint.  We don't know that what I said was going on in Danny's head was what was going on in Danny's head.  I'm guessing.  I could be wrong.  Danny's already shown that he is a master of reverse psychology.  It's how he manipulates Matt Perry's character.  We might find out tonight that Danny wants the sketch back in the show and he's tricked Jack into "ordering" him to do what he wants to do anyway.

A variation on the old Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck argument.

Daffy:  It's rabbit season!

Bugs:  Duck season.

Daffy:  Rabbit season!

Bugs:  Duck season.

Daffy:  Rabbit season!

Bugs:  Rabbit season.

Daffy:  Duck season!

Bugs:  Suit yourself, doc.  It's duck season.

Daffy:  You said it.  It's duck season!

And Elmer Fudd blasts Daffy away.

Studio 60: Saying yes to live blogging with Jennifer

Good evening, ladies and gents, welcome to what we hope won't be the last edition of live blogging Studio 60.  The show's growing on me and I'm rooting for Matthew Perry but the real truth is I just have a lot of fun with this, especially now that I've discovered this guest blogger racket.  Our last episode of live blogging with Shakespeare's Sister turned into a party and so my plan is to have guest bloggers handle the controls for as long as Aaron Sorkin can hold off NBC while I just sit here and heckle from the cheap seats in the comments.

So, let me introduce to you a blogger who should need no introduction, not if you've been a regular visitor to these parts.  Jennifer was the kind of frequent and prolific commenter who before long has people nagging her to start her own blog, Goddamn it!  And Goddamn it, that's what she finally went out and did.  Her blog is called Saying yes... and like her comments it's witty, playful, alternately heartwarming and snarky, and full of passion and insight.  All of these fine qualities, plus her juggling, apple pie baking, and touch typing skills will be on full display here tonight.  So, without further ado, please put your hands on your keyboards and tap out a big welcome to the amazing, the astounding, the always affirmative...Jennifer!

Helloooooo Mannionites! This is Jennifer from Saying Yes… and I am tonight’s guest blogger! First of all, let me say a big thank you to Lance. I am honored to have been allowed access into the inner portals of Lance-dom! I must say that it’s really odd being inside Lance’s blog… it’s reminding me of “Being John Malcovich”. I am guessing tomorrow, I will remember nothing… having had my memory wiped clean.

It’s not quite what I expected though. I expected rows and rows and rows of card catalogs and reference books, but it’s actually closer to a room in Willy Wonka’s candy factory… there are plumes of purple smoke billowing out of the “Ideas in search of a post” room and fireworks going off in the “Mining the notebooks” room, but I digress… let’s get back to the point of tonight… live-blogging “Studio 60”.

I have watched “Studio Earnest” from the beginning. Sorkin said he was “not trying to change the world” with this show and yet it seems to be clubbing us over the head with its life lessons, attempting to tug at our heartstrings with its “deep” stories. I know it’s a drama about comedy, but I guess I’d like to see a little more comedy. I’ve been around enough people who produce comedy to know that even though there is plenty of drama … they can see the humor in their drama. I keep hoping for a little more humor and a little less preaching. Maybe this will be the week and maybe its only week!

When Lance asked me to live-blog this week’s show, my first thought was, “Can you live-blog a dead show??” But, I said yes… and being the kind person I am, I will try to take in what this dying show has to tell. I will be a witness to it’s final breaths. I will be the hospice blogger… I will acknowledge that the show is here and is still alive, although barely.

Okay, let’s get on with this!!!

8:55pm  The wonder that is Studio 60 is almost upon us! Do we all have our tissues? I feel overcome already.  You know, if they do pull the plug on Studio 60... Heroes might be a good replacement for live blogging.

9:00pm  Woo-hoo! Here we go!!!

9:05 Oops... looks like Tom's been bad. So... was he getting legal action or illegal action? At least he wasn't getting a massage in Colorado.

Enter John Goodman- small town sheriff with an attitude. I'm guessing he's not big on Hollywood folk.

Okay, my bad... he's a judge.

So, apparently Tom was busted with illegal substances, something Sorkin seems to write a lot about. They do say write what you know. I can barely wait to hear Tom's story! But first... a few political commercials... GO DEMOCRATS! DON'T STAY THE COURSE!

9:10 Is Tom wearing a hair shirt??? Oh... he's Jesus.

9:13 Wow, we're hitting them all! Drugs, fornication, gay marriage... My mind just went blank when I saw Harriet. If she goes on this road trip to retrieve Tom, I putting good money down that she starts singing "Dominique".

9:16 Viola prodigy has the hots for Tom.

Okay, that one got cut short... a large dog just got stuck between the doorway and the temporary placement of the television. I'm back though and listening.

9:17 I think Jesus would pimp-slap this show.

9:18 Ooooh! It's getting ugly! Harriet is paying the price of her beliefs. I still think Jesus would cancel the show and not because it's taking his name in vain, but because it wouldn't hold his interest. Hey, how many times can you fit Jesus into a sentence??

9:23 Holy crap, I'm back in parochial school only I think it was more entertaining! John Goodman could be Miss Doberstein.

9:25 Oh, how the warmth and fun of the comment section mocks me...

Hey! Can I post bond with my credit card and get out of here?? Lance?? Are you there????

9:34 Hey, if they can change format, maybe Sorkin can as well. I want to see a drama about the production behind Romper Room or Barney. We all know Barney is gay. I bet inside that costume he's saying Jesus Christ all the time...

9:40 Darius, while explaining to Danny where everybody was, actually pitched a funny sketch! Oh wait... he pitched what this show is about and it's not funny. Aren't farces supposed to be funny? Hey BG! Where's my wine??? Oh wait, I was supposed to get you some wine.

Hey Lance, do I get a box set of DVD's and a Lance Mannion tote bag for doing this??? Tom is giving some to viola girl!! What about guest bloggers?

I bet Lance thinks Amanda Peet is now trying to save the show with her own cuteness...

9:something or other... So when does viola girl go to Harrumph... Parumph... Nevada?

9:45 Tom, the dog lover is betrayed by his beloved. Fickle Bassett. Oh good commercial! I'm going back down to the fun!!!

9:47 Danny cuts skit about taking the Lord's name in vain as a favor for Jordan. Jack doesn't want any pity tells him to keep the sketch. I'd like some pity... Hello???

Ew! That Daisy doesn't like Hollywood folk either!

9:50. Shoot. Harriet's not on the trip... No Dominique sing-along!!

9:53 The entourage has arrived in Parump... the Hollywood powerhouses are attempting to free Tom. But wait, It's "Parumpty-Dumpty Day" and Tom ain't goin' nowhere show or no show!!!

Will Tom get out? Will the show go on? Will the cast and crew have to come to Parump and film on location!?!? Will THIS show go on!?!?!? Only time will tell...

Tune in next week, same Lance time, same Lance station.

Well folks, it's been a slice. I'm sorry I won't remember any of it in the morning. Thank you, Lance. It's been a trip to ride in your limo, but I have to say, I think I prefer the bus of loonies down in the comment section.

This is Jennifer signing off. Lance... back to you. :)

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jennifer for Saying yes to live blogging.  Wasn't she lovely, folks?  And she did it all without a script or prescription.  I think I speak for anybody with taste, though, when I say that tonight's episode made me think fondly of the old Saturday Night Live, in particular Dan Aykroyd's Leonard Pinth-Garnell who would have dubbed this one Really Bad Television.

Made me wish I'd been watching Brng Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia with Mr Wolcott.

But we're nothing if not gluttons for punishment here at the Lance Mannion Emporium of Health and Wellness.  Breadbox may be right and Studio 60 may get the ax before Part II runs.  But if NBC airs it, we'll blog it.  This I vow!

Good night, kids.  To those of you out West just tuning in.  I'll leave the lights on here, take whatever you want from the fridge, feel free to add your comments below.  Just remember to lock up when you go and try not to wake grandma on your way out.

Studio 60: Live blogging on the Sunset Strip with Shakespeare's Sister

Updated throughout show.

Mannion:  The blonde has yet to see an episode of Studio 60.  It's on past her usual bedtime.  "What you've written about so far hasn't made me want to stay up to see it," she told me tonight.

Now, because I get lonely here at night and want to share some quality TV time with my loving wife, and we've finished off Season Two of Deadwood and Season Two of House hasn't arrived from Netflix yet, I figure I'd better get some positive things written about Studio 60 pronto.

So I've brought in a ringer.  A fan of the show.  Someone I'm sure you all know and love, star of stage, screen, and radioactivity, ladies and germs, let's have a big round of applause for...

Shakespeare's Sister, her fans, her parrot, and her all-girl orchestra!

Hello, Mannionites. Shakes here, with many thanks to Mannion for giving me the keys to the Lancemobile for the evening.

As mentioned above, I find myself here only by virtue of having enjoyed Studio 60 so far, because I am otherwise patently unqualified for the job. I am a terrible watcher of TV, typically avoiding any series that forces me to pay attention to it on a weekly basis to retain some sense of what’s going on, that doesn’t have as its primary demographic "nerds," and/or that doesn’t give me at least as much pain as pleasure. Thusly, I admit to watching things like American Idol, mainly because I hate it, only to be told I have terrible taste in television—something I already know because television executives have been telling me for years, by canceling every show I like.

The mere mention of Freaks and Geeks can still bring tears to my eyes.

I’ve also never seen an episode of West Wing (grateful fans of which have applauded my decision to never tune in and thereby ensure its success), so the last time Aaron Sorkin and I were intimate was Sports Night, leaving me with expectations muted by the passage of time. I turned on Studio 60 more for Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford than I did for the man who created their characters.

And I certainly haven’t been disappointed. I believed, quite easily, from its start that Matt and Danny were old friends and loyal partners. Like Mannion, I’ve been less enthusiastic about the relationship between Matt and Harriet, for much the same reason. Harriet, I keep thinking, should be a little less easy to read; she should be…perkier. Every line should leave a question mark hanging in the air: Is she daft, or cunning? I’d prefer not to know whether she’s completely unaware that she’s tying Matt in knots, or glad of it. Her being evidently glad of it, and our nonetheless liking her, is predicated on knowing her better. Last week’s show remedied that a bit.

But forget Matt and Harriet. The real action is the developing relationship (not of the romantic sort) between Danny and Jordan (Amanda Peet). Last week’s subplot in which Jordan won that much more of Danny’s trust, and hence, a big favor, simply by showing a bit of integrity, was superb—and because Whitford and Peet are so fun to watch together, it nearly made me ignore the metawink of the scene, in which a fictional show bemoans the lack of precisely the kind of integrity so rare in television that it can be only be found on a fictional show designed to critique that lack of integrity.

Okay, enough of where we’ve been. Liveblogging where we’re going begins shortly…

9:02 - "Dome of pleasure?"  No one thinks the Fortress of Solitude is called the Dome of Pleasure.  Superman didn't hang out at a strip joint.

9:15 - "No, I want to put him on retainer."  Ha.

I like the idea of being at the cast party, although I'm already bored with Matt and Harriet again.  I have high hopes for the addled Sid Caesar fan to warm the cockles of my very heart, though, because I'm a sucker for shit like that.

9:30 - One of the things I like about both Matt and Danny is how they immediately respect anyone who calls them on their shit.  The reason I like this is because I can relate.  D.L. Hughley is shaping up to be one of my favorite characters in the show.

Jordan needs friends.  Oy.  I liked the exchange about Harriet's and her juxtaposed gossip nuggets in a celebrity rag, though.  "My father was thrilled to read that."  "I bet he was."  Ah, bonding.

Tom's dad is a prick.  And a cardboard prick at that.  Just push him over, Tom!  In front of a cat.  Cats like to chew on cardboard.

9:41 - I got ten smackers that says that baseball has a phone number on it.

Mr. Shakes says, "Simon needs to be a writer!"  Gee, ya think?

My cockles are very warm from Scarface. 

9:58 - New black writer.  Quite a night for this guy. 

I would have won ten smackers, if anyone had been foolish enough to take my bet.

Oh...my cockles were getting warmer, warmer...and then...why it's Matt, all growed up!  I've been left with cold cockles.  Smirking cockles.  Sigh.

Why do I like this show?  I ask the same question every week, because every week I gripe to Mr. Shakes about all the things I think are too much or too little, and everything seems to be one or the other.  It's the characters I like.  They're stuck inside this giant pendulum that's swinging way too wide, back and forth.  But it's in rhythm...and I think its arc will narrow, and then everything will fit.

-----------

Thanks very much to Mannion for allowing me to invade, and thanks muchly to the esteemed Mannionites who kept me laughing with co-live-blogging in comments!

Mannion again:  Thanks, Shakes!  Wasn't she great, folks?  And working without a net too!  And let's give it up for our special surprise guest star, James Wolcott, who unfortunately left his acordian at home tonight.  Maybe next time he'll remember and favor us with his trademark rendition of Lady of Spain!  Thanks for stopping by, Mr W.

Please, kids, remember to tip the coat check girl on your way out.

Folks on the West Coast tuning in late, you can still leave your comments too.  Bar's open until 2.  The band will be playing all night.

Studio 60: Warm-up act

While we're waiting for her agent to talk our Studio 60 Live Blogging Hostess into leaving her trailer and fulfliling the terms of her contract tonight (My lawyers are standing right here, Shakes.), a bit of Studio 60 backstory trivia.

Episode week before last, one of the plot threads involved a bit that had been stolen word for word from an obscure nightclub comic's routine.  DL Hughley's character, Simon Stiles, delivered the monologue during the news.  At the end of the broadcast, Bradley Whitford finds out from Christine Lahti who has discovered the rip-off via the wonders of the Internet and YouTube.  This sets up a mad scramble to pull the bit from the west coast tape, interrupt their own show with a live broadcast, and cover the now dead airtime with an apology and some new jokes.

This is all very breathtaking and exciting because no one has ever done a live feed before, apparently.  (Meanwhile, the network's entire news department's rolling on the floor laughing.)  And it turns out not to have been necessary.  They find out the material was stolen by the guy they stole it from and he stole it from a guy who used to write for Studio 60.  The bit was written for the show but it never aired.  This means the network owns the material.  Lawsuit averted.  Phew.

So.  Over the weekend I'm reading Gasping for Airtime: Two Years in the Trenches of Saturday Night Live by Jay Mohr.  Mohr---Last Comic Standing Mohr, Action Mohr, voice of Christopher Walken on an episode of The Simpsons Mohr, Go Mohr, which is my favorite Mohr---was a featured player on SNL for two seasons in the early 90s.

He hated the gig.

It literally made him sick.

The schedule was and is a killer and not everyone's cut out to handle it, which I think is a knock on producer Lorne Michaels' stubborn commitment to tradition not on anyone who can't handle it.  As Mohr points out, the schedule for producing the show was set during its first couple of seasons when everybody was coked out of their minds.  But what really got to Mohr was that he couldn't get his material, or his face, on the air.

Weeks would go by when he had nothing to do.

Other weeks he would write a sketch that made it over all the hurdles, the pitch, the table read, the first rehearsals, the dress rehearsal, only to see it killed before showtime on Saturday night because there wasn't enough time or someone decided that another sketch worked better or had Chris Farley in it, which in everybody's mind at the time was the same as a sketch that worked better.

Other writers weren't putting Mohr in their sketches, which is how performers get on a particular show.  The writer of the sketch casts them.  That's why it was good to be a writer/performer...or to be Chris Farley.

At any rate, Mohr was growing desperate, watching himself disappear from the show, watching, he thought, his career disappear.  He was frustrated, scared, at his wit's end, and he was beginning to doubt himself to the point that he couldn't follow through on any of his ideas.  He couldn't write because he couldn't see the use.

Mohr was still doing stand-up while he was working for SNL.  One week, just to have something to say at the pitch, he wrote down word for word a routine he saw another comic do at a nightclub.   It wasn't a Weekend Update bit like on Studio 60.  It was about an Irish bartender who insulted all his patrons.  At the pitch, the meeting with Lorne Michaels at the beginning of the week where all the writers tell Michaels their ideas for the upcoming show, Mohr did the bit.

It killed.

Mohr was shocked.  He'd expected it to die like everything else he'd been pitching lately.  But he wrote it up and submitted it for the table read on Wednesday.  He figured, given his track record, no way the bit would make it out of there.

Guess what.

And it made it through rehearsals and it made it into the final dress and it made it on the air.

In the early 90s there was no World Wide Web so there was no immediate shout of outrage from the comic.

But the comic eventually heard about it and SNL's producers eventually heard from the comic's agent.  He was threatening to sue.

I'm not telling tales on Mohr here.  This is from Mohr's book.  Mohr's telling on himself.

Three weeks later the SNL's supervising producer, Ken Aymong, led Mohr into a meeting.

On top of a cabinet was a television and a VCR.  Sitting in front of the television was Lorne Michaels.

Ken asked me if I knew a guy named Rick Shapiro.  I told him I did not.  Ken then pressed play on the VCR, and in front of me on the monitor was a video of Rick Shapiro doing his act.  On the tape in the VCR, he was doing the Irish bartender sketch.  He was doing it exactly the way I copied it.  Ken let the tape play a while.  Finally Lorne asked me, "You've never hear of this guy or seen his act?"  I replied that I had not.  Lorne nodded his head and Ken Aymong turned off the VCR.  Lorne looked at me for a second and said, "Okay."  And I walked out of the room.

Mohr wasn't fired.  And he still doesn't understand why not.  It's doubtful Michaels believed him.   Nobody else believed him either.

...the reputation for being a thief followed me for quite a while in the only place I had ever felt comfortable: the comedy clubs.

The comic did sue.  There was a settlement.  Mohr doesn't know its details.

No point to this.  Just found it interesting.  I wonder what Mohr thinks about the story of how he stole a routine for Saturday Night Live being stolen by Aaron Sorkin for Studio 60.

And I wonder what the comic he stole the sketch from thinks.

Law and Order makes me want to apologize to Sarah Paulson

Sarah Paulson, who plays the born-again and inexplicable audience-favorite Harriet Hayes, the too wholesome Beatrice to Matthew Perry's neurotic Benedick, on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, has taken a lot of flak here, from me and most of my commenters.

It's the general feeling that Paulson's too cool, too self-contained, and too "smart" for the character she plays---you can see the wheels turning behind her eyes, and Harriet's charm has to be that she is spontaneous, even impulsive, and just can't help letting her feelings show.  If she's at all calculating, then her faith is just an excuse to scold her castmates and bully the writers and her romantic longing for Perry's Matt Albie comes across as manipulation.  Both were the case in the first four episodes.

The report from our roving correspondents is that she was marginally less annoying on last week's episode and even managed to be almost as charming and winsome as her character's intended to be.

Part of Paulson's problem has been the way her character's been written.  I'm not as big a fan of Aaron Sorkin's writing as a lot of people are, Sorkin himsef included.  But I think he is definitely at his weakest when he is writing for women, a weakness he shares with just about every American male writer.

But, finally, I think she's just miscast.  If Studio 60 was an opera, it would be as if Sorkin had given a soprano the alto's part. Harriet simply isn't in her range, and she doesn't seem to have any idea how to approach the part except to try to change the key.

What I'm saying is that Paulson is not a bad actress, so watching her play Harriet isn't embarrassing, just frustrating.

Watching Milena Govich as the new detective on Law and Order is embarrassing.

Govich is bad.

Really bad.

She has no control over her voice, she doesn't know what to do with her body, and she has one facial expression, which is half a scowl, half a smirk.

She's not just stiff in front of the camera.  She seems terrified of it.  You can almost hear her telling herself, Don't look at it, don't look at the camera, pretend it isn't there...OH NO!  I looked!  Turn away!

It's a rare actress who knows how to play a cop anyway.  Kathryn Erbe, who plays Eames on Law and Order:Criminal Intent, has it nailed.  She succeeds mostly by underplaying Eames' toughness and by handling Eames' wisecracks with the deadest of deadpans.

It's as if Eames long ago figured out that the way for her to get by in the boys' club is to call as little attention to herself as possible and focus her male colleagues' attention on the case at hand which also focuses them on her detective work.

Eames is something of a tom-boy, but Erbe's method for playing a tom-boy comes from her understanding the secret of tom-boys, which is that tom-boys are not boys stuck inside girl's bodies; they are girls whose natural exuberance and physicality can't be contained within the bounds of traditional girls' play.  They don't dislike playing at tea parties.  They just get impatinet sitting still that long.  A tom-boy doesn't climb a tree to be like the boys.  She climbs it because she wants to.  She doesn't play a sport like a boy.  She plays it as herself, as well as her talent allows.

Tom-boys are attractive to a lot of guys, but not because a tom-boy can be one of the guys.  What's beautiful about them is that they are so much themselves, which because their selves are female, often makes them more feminine at the same time they are acting most "masculine."

Erbe doesn't make Eames one of the guys.  She makes her a woman doing her job well.

Erbe also does such a good job of downplaying her looks that it's surprising and disconcerting when in an odd moment when she lets her guard down and smiles broadly or when an accidental camera angle reveals that she is in fact beautiful.

S. Epatha Merkerson's Lt Van Buren is another gem of understatement.  Merkerson found the key to Van Buren in the fact that Van Buren's a longtime mother and wife and she infuses her with a motherly practicality---I'll kiss your boo-boo after we stop the bleeding and get a Band-aid on it---and a wife's resigned amusement at the ways grown men can act like little boys.

The rest of her cop persona is simply a steady professionalism.

Govich is making the mistake that most young actresses playing cops or soliders or any part that's usually a tough guy role make.  She mimics a male actor playing a tough guy, forgetting that most male actors playing tough guys are mimicking Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry or Yul Brenner in The Magnificent Seven.  Basing your perfromance on someone else's pale imitation of a caricature is almost never the best approach to a part.  But it's definitely a bad idea to play a caricature in a show that's main virtue over the years has been its realism.

Govich doesn't understand this, but I doubt that even if she did she could play the character another way.  To talk tough all she can do is bark, and to look tough she just barks louder.

On Studio 60, Sarah Paulson might very well get better and better because she's a good enough actress that she'll find a handle on the part and because Sorkin and his co-writers are smart and will start writing the part of Harriet so that Paulson can play to her strengths.

Ironically, on Law and Order, Govich might seem to get better as the writing and directing continue to get worse and the show descends to her level.

For years now, since even before Jerry Orbach left, Dick Wolf has been hiring writers and directors who don't seem to know what show they're working on.

More and more Law and Order is beginning to remind me of another NBC hit, and it is not one of the other Law and Order franchises.

It's ER.

To be continued.

Important reminder:  Live blogging of Studio 60 Monday night at 9 PM EDT with special guest hostess, Shakespeare's Sister!

Studio 60: Tears on the Tivo

Even though I made Karen Karbo cry by not live blogging Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip last week, I'm giving it the skip again this week.

There's a baseball game tonight, folks.

But there will be live blogging next week.  I just won't be the one doing it.  I asked Shakespeare's Sister to handle the typing and she graciously consented.  She's a fan of the show so the enthusiasm level should rise.  So should the number of wisecracks.

Update:  Drat.  A rainout.  Still no live blogging though.  I'm bushed and I think I'll tape tonight's episode and watch it tomorrow.  But feel free to use the comments as a Studio 60 open thread.