Studio 60: Week 3, Still Weak

The short version: episode three of Studio 60 on Sunset Strip is "all over the place." Still overly wordy (no duh!) and preachy, particularly in its anti-religion kick. And still missing the spark that made The West Wing watchable: actors who can deliver Sorkin's tongue-twisting mini-soliloquies without sounding well, silly. Case in point, in one particularly dramatic moment, Steven Weber's character randomly throws out lyrics from the Stephen Sondheim musical, Merrily We Roll Along: "[It's called] thieves get rich and saints get shot.... and God don't answer prayers a lot." Huh? (And yes, I had to look it up.)

The episode did have some good bits -- in particular Evan Handler getting some real screen time as show writer Ron Oswald. But otherwise, this episode was a whole lotta smoke and mirrors, with an excess of montage, and a particularly self-indulgent "victory" ending. Sorry, Aaron, but getting high fictional Nielsen ratings just doesn't have the emotional resonance of say, winning the White House.

I'm not the only one who's soured on Sorkin: David Poland, a former writer for the real SNL, posted last week, on the HotBlog, "Why Studio 60 Sucks":

The truth of the matter seems to be that Aaron Sorkin is making a show about making an hour long drama and not really about live TV or SNL or anything else. Not surprisingly, Sorkin doesn't seem to have the slightest grasp of how live TV works, aside from a few trips to 8H in New York on fact finding missions

Speaking of the Nielsens, I'll be interested to see how Studio 60 does for its third outing. For reference, the pilot episode had 10.3/16 in its overnights, 13.39 million viewers and a 5.0/13 among adults 18-49 at 10 pm -- but lost 15% of the all-important under-50 crowd during its second half. The second episode had bit of a fall: 8.8/14 in the overnights with 11.21 million viewers and a 4.4/12 among adults 18-49, and again, with an 11% drop-off after 10:30 pm. Going up against the world's most watched show, CSI:Miami, I'm predicting further erosion of Studio 60's audience.

Studio 60 Tries Really, Really Hard…

At being clever. And clever is the antithesis of funny.

On The West Wing, the "walk and talk" tracking shots and spit-fire dialogue provided gravitas when dealing with dramatic issues like nuclear proliferation and the Middle East conflict. But when figuring out the teaser opening for a sketch comedy show, it just comes off, well, overdone.

The great weakness is that Studio 60 takes its attempts to be "funny" too seriously. Sorkin juggles too many simultaneous ideas, too many people and too many scenes to allow the humor room to breathe. And there's the rub: the backstage show-within-a-show is an inherently pretentious conceit, one that's darned difficult to transcend, particularly for the oxymoronic drama about a comedy. The closest parallel was the Larry Sanders Show, but what may have worked there just doesn't play here. This is territory that series creator Aaron Sorkin has tried to mine before, in the short-lived semi-sitcom Sports Night. It didn't click for audiences then, and I've got a feeling that it still isn't an interesting enough concept to keep viewers' attentions.