Studio 60
I’m not entirely sold on Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip yet. The whole idea of a drama about the goings-on of a sketch comedy show is intriguing, but seems like the story department could run dry quickly.
The cast is decent (hey, Bradley Whitford handed me my BBA) and the behind the scenes of television perspective draws you in, but the sketch comedy part doesn’t have me sold. It seems like group A at NBC decided that SNL was such an awesome show (and it was) that it deserved to have spinoffs. And then group B decided Aaron Sorkin was such an awesome writer that he deserved to have another show after West Wing. Then group A and B got together and decided that AB is better than A or B by themselves. (They also ended up with a group Z which were those cast off of SNL and not cool enough to get a slot in the SNL spinoff so they created a sibling spinoff: 30 Rock).
The distanced similarity of Studio 60 and SNL also has me bothered. They air on Friday night, the network is NBS and they’re in LA. How much more of a one-off could they possibly be? I thnk that by making such an effort to not be NBC/SNL they made it even more tempting to compare the two. Why not just call it SNL: Behind the Scenes and call it a day?
What’s going to be really sad is the day when Studio 60 becomes more humorous than SNL – and I don’t think that’s too far away.