Newsflash: Studio 60 still sucks
Not that I want to beat a slowly-dying horse, but NBC's Studio 60 continues its streak of suckage. In the bizarro world of Aaron Sorkin, where a fifth network exists with apparently only one show -- exactly like Saturday Night Live, but even less funny-- the public's sense of humor is shall we say, not too well developed. See, the premise of the latest episode ("The West Coast Delay") is that there's this supposed fresh material, so good it gets "The Room" of 16 comedy writers to crack up, and makes it on the air. Only problem is it's hacked. (That's comedyspeak for plagiarized.)
Here's the complete "bit":
At schools today all the kids are diagnosed with stuff like dyslexia, hyperlexia, ADD, ADHD... in my day you were just stupid. What's wrong with my son? Oh him, he's just stupid. Next!
America's the most overweight nation in the world. We've got so much food here, we drop it on people along with bombs. If you really want to mess with somebody's head, drop a cruise missile and a couple of tons of Hot Pockets on their ass!
(artificial laughter ensues.)
Um, wow, the comedy never stops.
Worst part? As if we weren't tortured enough by it initially, we get to listen to the lamest joke ever three-and-a-half times... and it keeps getting unfunnier!
The storyline appears to be based on an actual event: Jay Mohr's hack of another comedian's material back when he was on SNL. Mohr revealed the story in his book Gasping for Airtime -- but in that case, he lied about it at the time, and NBC had to duke it out in court.
NBC Deathwatch
"Studio 60 Tumbles" says MediaWeek:
9/18/06 - Overnights: 10.3/16; Viewers: 13.41 million; A18-49: 5.0/13
9/25/06 - Overnights: 8.7/14; Viewers: 10.83 million; A18-49: 4.2/11
10/02/06 - Overnights: 7.2/11; Viewers: 9.05 million; A18-49: 3.5/ 9And, to make matters worse, erosion in the second half of Studio 60 continued, with a loss of 8 percent in the overnights (7.5/11 to 6.9/11), 650,000 viewers (9.38 to 8.73 million) and 5 percent among adults 18-49 (3.6/ 9 to 3.4/ 9). Both CSI: Miami and The Bachelor: Rome did not lose steam at 10:30 p.m.
Source: Nielsen Media Research data
Ouch. A loss of a third of the audience already -- how do you think they're gonna spin these numbers for advertisers? Studio 60 costs $3M an episode to produce, and was supposed to be the savior of the network. NBC better have an impressive mid-season replacement lined up. Look for those calls for network chief Jeff Zucker's head to come to fruition. (Check out: FireJeffZucker.com)
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.
