10 Random Thoughts on the Pilot Episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”

Photo Credit: NBC

Welcome back to me and my random thoughts. I did this with Perfect Harmony and then never finished it, but we are sticking with it this time.

This time, I am stepping into the world of Aaron Sorkin’s sketch comedy show within a show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I will be posting three episodes a week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. We’re doing this because Studio 60 is a traditional 22 episode network television season. As much as I would like to do episodes just on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it simply won’t work.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip aired in 2006 and 2007 for a single season on NBC. Bradley Whitford, fresh off his turn as Josh Lyman in The West Wing, joined up with Sorkin to play Daniel Tripp, a famous film director, and recovering drug addict, who is roped into returning to the sketch comedy show that launched his career after failing an insurance physical. Matthew Perry joins him as Matthew Albie, a writer who’s also gone on to become famous four years after being fired from the show. He and lead actress Harriet Hayes (played by Sarah Paulson) are said to be modeled after Sorkin and one-time girlfriend Kristin Chenoweth. Is that true? I don’t know, but I could see it.

Now that we have a little background on the show, let’s dive into my thoughts and mini-episode review. There will be spoilers. Be forewarned.

1. I love the opening tracking shot through the studio. It invokes the famous walk and talk from The West Wing only without walking and talking. It gives the audience a behind the scenes look at what goes on in a studio that houses something like, for instance, SNL, which is what Studio 60 is based on. This is like crack to me. I was a backstage person in my fair share of musicals in high school and there is something so enigmatic yet revealing about it.
2. “Alright, tell the writer’s room they’re gonna have to stretch it another twenty-five seconds and I’m sure that making it longer was the missing ingredient to making it funny.” Words can’t describe how much I love Timothy Busfield. I loved him in The West Wing and I immediately love him here. He’s always funny, witty, and just sarcastic enough that he has a bite but doesn’t turn me off.
3. This is without a doubt the single best monologue in television history. Right behind Martin Sheen’s monologue in The West Wing season two finale and right in front of Jeff Daniel’s first monologue in the pilot episode of The Newsroom. Aaron Sorkin is the best monologue writer period. Hands down. Don’t believe me? Watch the clip and tell me that he doesn’t have it right on the nose. It’s brilliant and poignant, even fourteen years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky_MlTQOb40
4. Only Sorkin could reference the film Network in a show about a sketch comedy show.
5. “I don’t find you charming.” You know what, neither do I, but that’s neither here nor there. I love Amanda Peet but Jordan, as a character, feels a little forced to me. She almost feels like an answer to all the critics who said that Sorkin’s female characters were poorly written in The West Wing. They weren’t, but that’s another opinion for a different time. I’m not saying that Jordan isn’t well written, because she is, it’s just this quick out of the gate, she’s grating.
6. Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford have remarkable chemistry and comedic timing. Sorkin knows how to write witty dialogue and Whitford and Perry, both veterans of The West Wing, inhabit this dialogue well. Their characters are fully-fledged and fully fleshed out right from the get-go and it’s obvious from this very first conversation that that’s the case.
7. A part of what I love about Sorkin’s writing that is obvious in the scene in the hotel room with Jordan and Danny is the fact that he never tells us what’s going on. He speaks around the topic and expects his audience to pick up what’s going on with context clues. What’s great about that is that the ensuing conversation feels more natural and not prose-y. A lot of writers could learn from watching Sorkin films and the pilot episodes of his shows.
8. “Do you think television is bad?” Matt and Danny both like, we’re about to produce and write a show for you that’s on television and you’re asking us that question? Is it a trick question? Should we answer? It feels like a trick question. We probably shouldn’t answer that question the way you think we should answer that question.
9. My question is (okay my questions are): what made Danny relapse? It’s obviously a very sensitive subject and, yeah, threatening him wasn’t a great thing to do on Jack’s part, but it’s also obviously deeply personal, especially as Danny doesn’t tell Matt about it. Does that mean it involved Matt somehow? I need to know these things. I don’t know why I need to know but I need to know. Probably because it’s Whitford and I love how he portrays every character he plays and probably because Danny’s reaction to Matt as they talk about it is to blow it off so something was up. And it’s still obvious that whatever made him relapse is still bothering him.
10. Was this the strongest Sorkin pilot in the world? No. Narratively, though, I love how it was set up with the three big plot threads hanging around at the beginning, as opposed to the end, and then Sorkin wove them together to bring everyone together at the end. I don’t know. I don’t see that done that way very often. Not with an ensemble cast, but doing it that way gives a chance for each individual person to have their moment in the spotlight and people like Sarah Paulson and Amanda Peet deserve that, especially in this show.

I’ll admit that I’ve seen this episode more than a few times. Sorkin has this fantastic way of building a pilot that leaves the viewer not only guessing but also satisfied in terms of narrative and characterization. We get the full breadth of these characters almost immediately, so when he starts to build the show and continues to expand on it, we learn more and more and are constantly surprised by their reactions and their motivations.

From the get-go, we learn that Danny and Matt are best friends. Matt is the crazy one. Danny is the sane one. Harriet is a Christian who is open about her faith but doesn’t let anyone push her around. Jordan is sure of herself and also doesn’t let people push her around and she has her own demons and flaws. Jack (Steven Weber) is, to put it bluntly, harsh and unforgiving. Tom (Nate Corddry) is small of stature, bad with the ladies, and soft-spoken but has a big heart. Simon (D.L. Hughley) is the only one who feels a bit one-note right now, but I have no doubt that’ll change as the episodes progress.

Having these characters written in such a way makes me, as an audience member, believe the story more because the characters are so fully fleshed out already. They have a backstory with each other, they have history, and that’s intriguing. Jordan is the odd woman out and seeing her come into the mix is probably why her character feels so forced. The audience isn’t sure what to make of her, or maybe that was just me. Jack, at one point, tells Jordan that she hasn’t “won the trust of anyone” in this studio, meaning NBS. As such, she’s not won the trust of the audience either. Again, from a writing standpoint, that is intriguing. From an audience standpoint, it makes me want to get to know her character and see how she gets along with this diverse cast.

Of course, all of this is just buoyed by phenomenal performances across the board. I might be wrong, but I think this was Paulson’s first starring role on a network TV show and wow, does she nail it. It does not surprise me that she’s gone on to do great and wonderful things and win awards. I love Harriet. I love how Paulson has this great chemistry with Perry. It’s believable that they’ve had a relationship that’s gone sour. Perry is great in this pilot as well. I’ll admit that I’ve yet to see Friends in its entirety but it’s a shame that he’s typecast for his role in the sitcom. From what I’ve seen, there are shades of Chandler in this performance, but Matt is an entirely different animal. He’s brash and, yes, a bit crazy, but there is already something soft and kind peeking through the bravado. Perry handles it well.

I couldn’t talk about Perry and not talk about Whitford. Whitford is such a multifaceted character actor and this is no exception. At first, I felt like he was attempting to shove Josh Lyman into Danny, but no, his performance is more than that. While he and Matt have great comedic repartees in the episode, nothing hit me harder in the gut than Danny and Matt’s conversation in the back of a prop taxi cab on set. That was the moment I knew that this wasn’t Whitford shoving Josh into a new character. No, this was Danny. Danny who relapsed and couldn’t tell his best friend. Danny who has struggled with cocaine addiction. Danny, a living breathing person who loves his job and loves his friends and feels immense guilt over his relapse. Man, did it hit me. I love Whitford.

Overall, this was a solid pilot episode. More drama than comedy, it straddled a fine line that, obviously, not a lot of people understood, but as a fan of Sorkin and the way he writes, it was such a fun episode and I hope the rest of the episodes prove to be just as interesting and captivating.

(Previously posted at 4ye.co.uk.)