Roger Catlin | TV Eye

The 'Studio 60' Series Finale

Unlike, say, “the Sopranos,” here’s a series finale nobody will be talking about.

That’s because the audience for “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” fizzled long ago.

So nobody got to see a fairly satisfying end not only to the weeks-long maladies tied up, neatly capped by Bradley Whitford’s Danny Tripp shutting off a light on the set like it was the end of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Yes, the kidnapped brother of Nate Corddry’s Tom Jeter got rescued, D.L. Hughley’s Simon Stills made peace with network boss Jack Rudolph (played by Steven Weber in what his one breakout performance he finally got to squeeze in).

Amanda Peet’s character, the missing in action  Jordan, not only lived but actually came back to the show (I never thought she would be seen again). The baby was born, looking all angelic and never crying; she was quickly adopted by Danny (who lent her his name). Matthew Perry’s character Matt Albie seemed to drop drugs and take up Sarah Paulson’s Harriet at the same moment. His moment thanking god for things turning out well seemed to be some sort of vindication for Harriet’s Christian character and the end of their needless religious wars.

Aaron Sorkin got to write a couple of speeches about the war and the misguided direction of the country that led to war in Iraq. The thing that they were leading up to in the flashback was not a firing of Matt and Danny because of drug use but because of principle. The constant flashback to just after 9/11 would have been confusing to newly arrived audiences but no use worrying about that: there were no new people tuning in for the first time.

Indeed, because of the comparative freedom of writing a failed show to the end, Sorkin seemed to have fun these last few episodes. Things seemed more relaxed, the humor came a little easier, and the writing still about the best on TV, even at the end, when it proved a better series finale than the one for “The West Wing.” Mostly because, at that time, Sorkin was already long gone, because of drugs or principle or both.

Yeah, I already miss the thing.

Stalling Before the End

“Studio 60” is spinning its tires in one of those multi-week story arcs that kind of beg for some new element, some new excitement to make the stalemate quit.

D.L. Hughley's character Simon is being pressured to making amends for a comment he blurted to the press last week (“No wonder those guys want to kill us; I live here and I want to kill us").

Brad Whitford’s Danny is still at the hospital, hearing about worsening condidtions for his fiance, now in critical condition (it means we may never see Amanda Peet again in the show, which only lasts one more episode). The brother of Nathan Corddry's character Tom is still being held hostage; a plan is still being hatched to spring him.

There is one nice piece of flashback, though, to the post 9/11 time when comedians were under immense to make no jokes about the government so as to show a solid front no matter what. Even Bill Maher’s comments that cost him his job at ABC are dredged up again.

But some of those other storylines could use some tying up, if not now at least before the whole enterprise fades to black for ever next week.

Excellence in Failure

If there's an Emmy category for burned-off episodes of a canceled series, the current three-episode arc on "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" would be a leading contender.

Now, as last week, Aaron Sorkin has found his footing, adeptly handling bright and funny dialog with heavier issues on just about the only series on network TV to deal with the effects of the war on television -- both now and when the invasion just began.

Of course one of the storylines is the fictional network's attempted censorship of a skit about Karl Rove, from the news story that he had been meeting with Hollywood to encourage more pro-U.S. movies. The other has D.L. Hughley's character lashing out at the press and America about the war and the attention span of the media.   

There is drama, too, at the hospital where between last week and this Jordan, who is in surgery, delivered her baby girl via C-section. Danny is going a little nuts there while another foreshadowing is told: If he gets too close to the baby, he's in for disappointment since being a fiance doesn't guarantee him any rights to her should something happen to Jordan.

Yes, part three comes next week. But instead of seeing any previews for it we got to see yet another plug for "Age of Love," the terrible new romantic reality show starting Monday.

Forget Emmys, this poor show can't even get a 30-second promo at the end of it.

Sparkling in the Dark

Nobody’s watching it, but “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” is starting to reach its stride.

On another one of those three-episode arcs that mostly allow stories to go on too long (possibly to stretch budgets by keeping the same sets and costumes for weeks on end), Aaron Sorkin’s show, while tanking in the ratings, is hitting on something real – certainly real enough to set it apart from the rest of what looks to be a dreadful summer TV season.

Finally the show has hit just the right tone in the romantic couplings that have heretofore been either cloying (Danny and Jordan) or annoyingly testy (Matt and Harriett). Now, they’re both working well, with some urgency in the D& J pairing as they get engaged just before she goes in emergency C-section, and M&H doing a splendid montage about their ongoing argument over the existence of God that they should have done months ago.

The subplot about Tom Jeter’s brother being held hostage abroad kept from being too emotional (I even started to believe he’d get all that attention from the Air Force because of what happened to his brother).

What was great is that Sorkin added footing to the whole episode by flashing back to a day all of us can remember, though it’s not as often referred to as 9/11. It was the day later that month that the Emmys were canceled for a second time as America began the war in Afghanistan. It’s been nearly six years since then and I can’t recall another TV episode that has referenced that day.

In addition to reviving actual conversations that occurred regarding TV those days, some discussed openly  – how could comedy shows be funny? – and others a deep industry secret – wall to wall commercial free war coverage meant networks couldn’t promote its new fall shows.

There are sad jokes imbedded in those flashbacks. Tom’s brother had enlisted on Sept. 12, we are told, but he’ll be back in no time the network exec Jack says since “this thing is going to be over by dinner.”
Six years later and held hostage, Tom is a little angry at how things have turned out. And Matt is trying to help by trying to contact mercenaries willing to do a rescue mission.

The addition of world events suddenly gives the show a pulse as well. Sorkin’s back in the realm of world events and is invigorated by it the way he often was on “The West Wing.”

At the end Matt is giving God a chance, to the sturdy strains of John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith in Me,” and he’s making jokes to Tom about the insert they put in the show regarding his brother and how their prayers were with him. “I figured since nobody’s watching the show any more anyway,” he says with a smile.

Unaware of the Ratings

At least the lead actors were back in action for the second burned off episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” Thursday. Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford and Amanda Peet were all missing from last week’s episode when it returned after being officially canceled.

Death and dying and discussions of ratings have long since started to infuse the show though. Or maybe, since this is a show about television, they would have been there all along; they only seem to stand out more in the show’s current situation.

From the start of the episode, though, Whitford’s director character Danny Tripp is urging his cast of late night sketch players not to worry about ratings in a speech that’s pure Aaron Sorkin, writer and creator:

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about ratings around here this week and I want it out of your heads. Ratings are the business of the network and the advertisers. Our customer is the audience and they are right out there, so let’s eat ‘em up.

“Ratings are cyclical,” Perry’s character Matt Albie says later. “Who the hell knows why anybody watches anything?”

He says this while chatting with Steven Weber’s executive character, Jack Rudolph, talks about computer software that can create sketch comedy – automation may make them all obsolete.

“This is about the ratings,” Danny says to Peet’s character Jordan McDeere who is mad at him. “I asked you not to open with the war,” she says.

Opening with the war on the show within the show may reflect on including talk (or satire) of the war on the doomed series at hand. “It was in the news,” Albie says later, before it becomes a major story thread because of its connection with a cast member.

Critics are still behind the show, McDeere says.

"Critics don't pay our bills," Rudolph shoots back.

Kari Matchett, sexy and untrustworthy on any number of shows, from “Surface” "Invasion" to “24,” was on the show again – as the lawyer defending the network for a sexual harassment suit who herself was being a little too flirtatious to be very professional.

There were longer running stories emerging too – a possible complication in Jordan’s pregnancy, Tom’s soldier brother being kidnapped by extremists overseas, the wider discovery of Matt’s drug usage -- the latter of which may well reflect Sorkin’s own history in TV.

At least this provided a dramatic reason the sketches on “Studio 60” aren’t funny – the main writer is all hopped up.

Disaster Show

“Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” snuck back into the NBC lineup Thursday, the day after sweeps ended, a time when its likely lowly numbers won’t mean anything. Already unceremoniously canceled, the Aaron Sorkin series with so much promise now almost has a stench of failure to it.

The return episode featured none of arguably the show’s three biggest stars Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry or Amanda Peet – I mean not one frame of them. They were out trying to smooth over a dispute with the propmen’s union supposedly. And the conflict created a big problem in the live show since not only were props booby-trapped or lost, they also couldn’t use the cue card people (same union).

The name of the episode was “The Disaster Show” for crying out loud and one storyline had to do with a bomb threat. Bomb? Disaster? Sorkin is taking the loss of the show kind of hard.

Still, it was a pretty entertaining episode, so self contained there wasn’t even a need to do a “previously on” introduction. It’s like they didn’t care what happened before, time to wipe the slate clean for the third time in its only season and get to the action.

As such, guest star Allison Janney carried the episode just as she did the sketch show within a show, working opposite Timothy Busfield as if they were back on Sorkin’s masterwork, “The West Wing” one more time.

Because the episode concerns what happens during a live broadcast, we saw more glimpses of actual sketches that were even made funny by Janney and the fact they were all booby trapped to go wrong (bullets from one sketch don’t go off until the next). They initially thought the bomb threat was in response to a sketch called “Mohammad the Thin-Skinned Prophet.”

Against reruns and bad reality shows, “Studio 60” looks awfully good. But its loud admission of failure may tamp down any pleasure we few fans may have in watching the remaining episodes run out.

Goodbye for Now

If this is the last episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” for a while ("The Black Donnellys" take the slot next week) at least we can say it’s a better one than usual. But there’s hardly any resolution in the story that has Harriet coming back to Matt late at night and giving him a peck on the cheek.

Danny and Jordan by now are like an old couple, able to banter back and forth and fumble with a practice baby that provides the only comic possibilities for the episode (or maybe the last couple of episodes).

There’s another storyline lifted from recent TV lore – a harassment suit from a female writer that’s a lot like the suit filed by a woman in the “Friends” writing room (and alluded to previously in Lisa Kudrow’s incisive “The Comeback”).

That story line, of course, wasn't resolved either. And now it won't be for a couple of months, if at all.

Flashing Back

“Studio 60” is learning from “Lost” – when all else fails, go for the flashback.

So as the seconds count down to putting out their live show, the show’s Matt Albie, played by Matthew Perry, goes on a reverie about his early days on the show – way back in 1999, when he first met Harriet Hayes, with whom he’s been having particularly bitter fights lately. To show youth, he wears a backwards baseball cap.

It was a fertile time for writers in those pre-Y2K days – just about every recurring sketch for Harriet began back then, from “Crazy Christians” which just finally got on the air this season, to “Singing Teacher” which apparently has been running seven years – longer than things like “Debbie Downer.”

And speaking of downers, show writer Aaron Sorkin is picking up on his own pharmaceutical past by showing Albie as a bit of a pill popper (although what kind is never displayed). It’s having an affect on him though, as a fired writer he recalls that nobody else can seem to remember is a figment of his own imagination, he learns in an artful manner that’s been missing in the frenzied last few episodes (at least in this self-contained story, the whole snake story has finally been dropped; but so have a lot of other concerns – Steven Weber’s character doesn’t appear at all).

Something else “Studio 60” will learn from “Lost” is the effects of a long hiatus – the drama “The Black Donnellys” take over the time slot starting March 5, with “Studio 60” returning to air “on a date to be determined.”

I Think I'm Even Done with This Show

Another week of “Studio 60,” another week of a lost snake, one relationship that’s untenable (Matt-Harriet) followed by another one that seems even less tenable (Danny-Jordan).

Then in a flurry of activity, the dad agrees on the Macao deal that will allow the management team to continue, Tom doesn’t lose his date with Lucy after lying about having to be a waiter for the TCA, and Matt Danny and Jordan are suddenly a kissing couple.

It’s such a whirlwind, the Pretenders are summoned to sing their Christmas song, “2000 Miles.” (No, I didn’t understand why either).

But that freakin' snake is like Sorkin's mojo: Still missing.

Losing the Snake

The writers’ room for “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” must be as tiny as the one in the show within a show.

There may be two or three people in there, but ultimately the show is almost solely written by creator Aaron Sorkin, just as Matthew Perry’s character Matt Albie is almost the sole writer on the fictional sketch show.

What both men really need are strong personalities to bounce ideas off of, particularly editors, in the case of Sorkin.

As the show shifts into a series of romantic stories with only a background of the TV industry, someone has to say to him: curb these stories! Give them an end! Don’t make the smallest of side stories go on and on and on.

When the series picked up for the new year last week, Albie was betting on an online auction so he could be the date of his ex-girlfriend Harriet Hayes at a dinner honoring her. When action picked up this week, he was still bidding! That running dog stopped hunting seven days ago.

There was an idea Fruit of the Loom ad parody being batted around last week; this week, it’s being rehearsed.

The fate of the network president centers on Nate Corddry’s character Tom Jeter meeting with the daughter of a Chinese businessman, by this week it was still being arranged; his date with Lucy Davis’ character, suggested last week, had yet to occur this week.

It was getting so bad that when a snake gets loose in the studio this week, I thought to myself, they’re not going to find it until next week and, incredibly, I was right.

“To be continued,” the title card said, as if this were “24” or something.

To those who say “Studio 60” is still too much inside-baseball, I will have to admit it may be the first network show to mention the TCA twice without explaining what it is. As a proud member of TCA, I know it stands for the TV Critics Association, though when they talk about “the TCA,” where Corddry’s character lies that he’ll be a waiter as a network gimmick, they’re really referring to the TV Critics press tour, where you know from exhaustive reports, I have recently returned. But in none of those reports would I shortenen the name of the event – or the organization – to TCA, knowing that nobody outside of TV would know or care what it stood for. Yet here was Sorkin, spitting out the initials as if it was either something everybody knew or was an accurate sounding detail along the lines of those diseases and drugs nobody has ever heard of (but sound good) on the medical shows.

But the main thing is the editor. Get the guy an editor, would you please? The romantic entanglements may couple and uncouple as the series goes on; we expect that.

But catch the damn snake the same episode it gets loose, would you?