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Thursday, October 19, 2006

A little more on Studio 60

I've been told that my criticisms of Studio 60 miss the point, and that the unconvincing backdrop against which Sorkin's characters scurry about bantering doesn't matter that much. But I'm not alone in my basic assessment:
Every other scene seems to be Matthew Perry or Bradley Whitford congratulating each other on their genius or talking about the genius of Sarah Paulson's character. Paulson is fine in the role, but the sketches just aren't there. It's like a movie that spends all its time talking about the genius of a painter who only draws stick men. The Onion A.V. Club, October 17, 2006
Exactly! It's too bad the Sorkin crew couldn't do a better job. It's obviously possible (granted, there's an element of parody to the underlying show there), though layering drama over comedy presents different challenges than layering comedy over comedy.

And no, writing new lyrics to the ur-clichéd Gilbert & Sullivan number simply does not qualify as brilliant humor in the underlying show. For one thing, much of the humor comes from seeing the Major General's old corpse trundled out onto the boards for one more clumsy dance. For another, more inspired (and funnier) examples of retooled lyrics come to mind from my own personal experience. The "Law Revue" show's Billy Joel homage "We Didn't Build the Toaster" is one (". . . Kendall Thomas is inane." Classic!). Then there was the tremendous Lewinsky-era reworking of Pink Floyd's "Have A Cigar" by the deceptively innocent-seeming calling-misser CLD ("And by the way, what's your name?" Poetry! You're not fooling me with that "mom who loves Polish pottery and berry desserts" routine, missy.)

Anyway, because I'm a positive kind of guy, I'm going to offer a suggestion to the Sorkin team, free of charge. After the Studio 60 experiment is over, chalk those 13 episodes up to experience and move on to a new challenge: a contemporary one-hour comedy-drama reimagining of M*A*S*H. It would be the perfect vehicle for the Sorkin treatment, with a built-in high bar he likely could actually clear, plenty of room for political commentary, etc. Think about it.

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posted at 12:04 AM

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps I *did* miss my calling... I sure had a lot more fun rewriting that song than I ever did drafting M&A documents at good 'ol B&G! ;)

October 23, 2006 12:02 PM  

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