Never thought I'd write about Studio 60

[sistermagpie]

I sort of watch this show, though until this week I always missed the first half because of Weeds. I've also been watching Heroes and while I mostly like it I can't read anyone's thoughts on it because I barely know any of the characters' names.

Anyway, I was wondering something about

Generally, the show annoys me, though there are people on it I like. I agree with the article that musefool linked to here, that it's unbelievable as a show about a comedy show, because nobody cares about comedy at all, and the atmosphere isn't right. And of course, the sketches we see are awful. Someone had once pointed out that a lot of SNL sketches, even the classic ones, might look bad taken out of context, but I think the thing is those sketches wouldn't look bad so much as weird or silly. It's a slightly different thing. The show might do a lot better if you saw people saying strange things like "More Cowbell," because we'd get it was supposed to be funny and we just didn't get it. Instead all the sketches are obviously low-level SNL stuff where the whole sketch is clear, but just lame. In fact that joke thing with the credit protection actually was done better on SNL when it was a takeoff on a commercial current at that time.

Anyway, I'm pretty tired of what seems to be the pattern of every week I have to listen to Harry have some dumb opinion on something so that Matt can complain about it but then it ends up we feel badly for her and it turns out he was too harsh. This week we of course also got the judge also there to make remarks about African American hairstyles and then shame everyone for not respecting the red states. Which again was bizarre, because why was the judge saying that he found their show smug? We've seen the sketches...what's smug about it? They're not doing political humor. Do people find SNL smug?

Anyway, so Harry. I've accepted that she's supposed to be really talented even though she isn't. I'm not an expert on SNL but isn't the idea that the people who do well on the show do so because they are writers? Like, wasn't Gilda Radner presumably responsible for creating Rosanne Roseannadanna and Judy Miller etc.? At some points yeah, people would presumably be cast in others' sketches, but I always got the impression that being a comedian on those shows meant being able to write jokes as well as act them well, that you had to fight to get yourself on. Not that I think everyone necessarily did that, but if Harry is supposed to be the star of the show, shouldn't she have some talent for comedy instead of just being a blandly pretty blond who's able to not mess up an obvious joke? It's like doing a show about SNL's classic years and making Larraine Newman was the standout star.

But okay, I actually do have a question. Poor Harry was being "censored" by being told that she shouldn't do her Women of Faith concert because she shouldn't be associated with anti-gay marriage groups after her faux pas of saying that "The Bible says [homosexuality] is wrong, but it also says judge not lest ye be judged," with the press cutting off the second part of the sentence. My question is first of all, would that really be such a serious thing for her career? I mean, as I understand it (missed this part) the harassment she encountered was by gay men. It's not like there was some big outcry against her words, she just made herself known as a homophobe...is that really something that would scare people so much? Is her fanbase really supposed to be mostly made up of people who feel really strongly about that issue? I seem to remember Mel Gibson being known as a homophobe without its being a problem (again, went along with him being an outspoken Catholic). It seems like it sort of played into the myth that the country is being taken over by people pushing gay marriage when, uh, her view still seems to be pretty popular. In fact, she didn't even say anything about gay people herself, she said the Bible says it's wrong, with which many people would disagree but still, it's hardly a radical interpretation and the woman has a known second career as a gospel singer.

And that was the thing I wondered. They seemed to say she should cancel her concerts because she shouldn't be more linked to people against gay marriage. I'm not a publicist, but I thought that would be a fine thing. That way you're just making her understandable. People who have trouble with her being against gay marriage can just file her away under "religious fanatic." What good does cancelling concerts do? Isn't the cat kind of out of the bag about her religious connections? Would somebody think cancelling a few concerts would make the gay community forget she's got a whole career as a gospel singer and oh yeah, is the kind of Christian who thinks homosexuality is wrong? It just seemed like as usual it was there to make Harry the victim so that after lots of ranting against her beliefs there was still the predictable ending of Matt being the bad guy. Even the publicist was there as a symbol of the liberal police who would instinctively play down her religious life instead of working with it.

Comments

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I think we're supposed to think that Crazy Christians (which we never saw) and Science Schmience (which was middle-school level humor, if that) are cutting edge and no doubt the Commedia dell'Arte reference is supposed to make the show seem intellectual, so I think yeah, we're supposed to think the show within the show is doing cutting edge political satire instead of old gags that weren't very funny the first time around.

I also think the 'smug' was a more metatextual comment - that Sorkin was hitting out at people who think *his* shows are smug.

I just... the racial things going on in last night's episode baffle me - how am i supposed to take this judge seriously when he keeps calling Simon "Sammy"?

As I've said before - if the show can't sell me on a prejudice I already share - that this country between the coasts is made up of hicks and sticks - then it's failing in a big way.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I also think the 'smug' was a more metatextual comment - that Sorkin was hitting out at people who think *his* shows are smug.

That's totally how it came across to me. I didn't even think to apply stuff like "science schmience" to cutting edge political humor, but I think you're right. The smugness seemed a lot more about Sorkin's shows--including the one I'm watching.

So yeah, I think I have the same kind of problems. Or also when Harry says at the end that Matt has to "give people time" to get used to gay people since unlike black people they haven't been "living openly" for 400 years...but not only does that just leave the question hanging of what exactly it means to give people time, that judge in Nevada didn't seem to have caught up with the black people yet either. "How do you get your hair to do that?" WTF?

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just don't even listen to Harry anymore, because she's just SO GRATING. Gah! I think half my problems with the show would disappear if he just dropped the whole Conservative Christians Are People Too! schtick, because he's not doing it well at all.

I mean, Jed Bartlet was a pretty devout Christian (well, Catholic - I know in some circles that doesn't count, and I say that as a Catholic *snerk*), so it's not like Sorkin's incapable of doing it, it's more that he seems to think he doesn't have to, that he can have us get Harriet by authorial fiat because he's the Great Aaron Sorkin. Bah.

And yeah - I mean, I always enjoy John Goodman, but I was going WTF? during a lot of that stuff.

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, another iteration of the meme that conservative Christians are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO oppressed by us whiny coastal liberals. Gosh. If they repeat it enough, maybe I'll actually feel bad for them some time.


waiting.....

waiting.....


nope, not feeling it.



(I do kind of feel bad for people who are manipulated by cynical exploitation of their sincerely-held religious beliefs into supporting their economic and social oppressors, but trust me, I'm too busy sipping Chardonnay to be doing the oppressing!)


In real life, being 'the conservative celebrity' IS kind of a niche marketing decision; you end up playing the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond or something. But the harm to this character's career would be more likely to have to do with gay writers/actors/potential guests not wanting to work with her (which would be entirely within their rights), not viewers tuning out en masse because she stated a position that seven more states just enshrined in constitutional law.

On a tangent, perhaps the reason that they aren't able to portray her realistically as a comedian is because there are so few conservatives who are genuinely funny. P.J. O'Rourke on his very rare good days, that's about it. I mean, look what happened to Dennis Miller.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's funny you should say that because Dennis Miller was exactly who I was thinking of. And it's not like people just refuse to find him funny anymore, it's that he genuinely isn't. I think probably because to be funny you need to be the one commenting on the truth. If you're going to say, completely without irony, that Abraham Lincoln was one of the most criticized presidents in history, and so that probably means Bush is another Abraham Lincoln...you're not the comedian, you're the joke.

Or like on the show when Harry tries to defend herself about the gay marriage thing she pulls out the stock conservative defense of "You don't get it because you live on Mulholland Drive, but in other places marriage matters." Only instead of being a snappy comeback it's actually just a pathetic slur on people on the coast yet again: you hippies on Mulholland Drive who want to destroy marriage even though you're arguing that your friends should be allowed to do it! She seems incapable of spotting the funny, so she's always got a big target on herself.

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

It almost seems like both of those are the set-ups for the jokes: the punchlines are an animated Abe Lincoln falling off a scooter and a graph of the Alabama-vs.-California divorce and out-of-wedlock birthrates, respectively.

[wordplay.livejournal.com]

What really bugged me last night was the horrible, faulty logic at the end, when Harry convinces Matt that he's being as ass by saying that people didn't realize gay people were living among them until 30 years ago, whereas they'd been aware of black people for 400 years. O RLY? And Matt actually engages with that like it's a convincing argument, while I sit by and grumble at the television.

It's tough, because people on the left genuinely don't understand any kind of anti-gay-marriage position - it's just gobbledygook to us. Sorkin clearly doesn't get it, so I'm not sure why he's so bound and determined to try to write it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought that was just bizarre--especially since, as I said above, in the other storyline we had a sheriff sort of treating the black person in front of him like an alien. And what exactly was one supposed to go about "giving people time?" Obviously 400 years isn't enough!

I've had a lot of discussions with people who genuinely believe gay marriage is wrong, both the people who think homosexuality should be outlawed and punished by hell and those who just don't like the word marriage applied to people with relationships that are different from their own. And I admit their arguments are no more logical than Harry's and they often feel like denial (I've yet to meet anybody who said something was wrong "because the Bible said so" who wasn't really happy the Bible did say so), but I doubt they'd understand Harry's pov either. It was like they were trying to have her argue from the middle, saying, "You just have to give my people time, and then of course they'll come around to your correct pov!" Even her "I can't be the one to judge!" was ridiculous--of course she can be the one to judge. Based on what she's said she's perfectly comfortable judging homosexuality as wrong with the Bible for her defense. So why was she telling Matt she was going with the politician's answers of "I don't know." Isn't it understood that politicians say that to avoid losing votes rather than because it's their sincerely held belief?

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind me jumping in with something possibly tangental to all this.

Studio 60 bugs me less politically than it does just... coherently. Although, I have to ask: Is LA overrun with gangs of homosexual street toughs? Maybe I'm too old, but I've never seen this.

Here's what bugged me about last night. We sit through two hours of banter, banter, banter in Pawrump, Nevada, while what's his name in the Jesus suit sits there, refusing to say why he was going 120 miles an hour (and Simon is prodding him to just explain it).

So, we never do get that explanation. Instead we get John Goodman seeing the guy's brother's bracelet, magically deducing his brother's entire wartime record and their relationship, concluding that he's too noble to use his probably soon-to-be-dead brother as an excuse to get out of a speeding ticket--and then using exactly that as a reason to let him off.

What's the point of that?

And the biggest thing of all is that these people just aren't funny. No, it's not that... they don't have a sense of humor. They only seem to want to work with irony and dry delivery. Where's the absurdity of something like Samurai Deli? Or Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.... ?

When they read the sketches, they read like it's--not even Chekhov. Chekhov can be funny. It's more like they're reading Clifford Odets.

I've heard and read a lot about Monty Python, and what intrigues me the most is the process they used to create their sketches. It was quite political, with Cambridge on one side of the room, Oxford on the other, and Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam in the middle. One story told is about John Cleese and Graham Chapman writing the "Cheese Shop" sketch. You really can't imagine two people more likely to be writing in suits and ties than Cleese and Chapman, but, as Cleese tells it, he was protesting the entire time, pleading with Chapman to stop writing--that the sketch was going nowhere. Meanwhile, Chapman (probably smoking a pipe and drunk) kept saying, "No, no. We have to keep going!" like they were on a forced march through enemy territory.

My point being, if you were to put a camera in that room, you'd see some drama. Funny drama. Two men wrestling to the death over whether or not to keep writing a scene while simultaneously trying to come up with new types of cheese to put in.

That would be way better than watching two people trying to convince us that they're in love by re-hashing the issue of gay marriage without one person in sight. (They're all out on the street apparently, ripping off hub-caps.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Studio 60 bugs me less politically than it does just... coherently. Although, I have to ask: Is LA overrun with gangs of homosexual street toughs? Maybe I'm too old, but I've never seen this.

Heh! It made me think of that couple on Seinfeld who were always pushing people around.

The brother story was indeed bizarre. Even if John Goodman could look up the brother's history, it's still kind of a leap to deduce that the kid's making a sacrifice to avoid using his brother to get out of a parking ticket.

And the biggest thing of all is that these people just aren't funny. No, it's not that... they don't have a sense of humor. They only seem to want to work with irony and dry delivery. Where's the absurdity of something like Samurai Deli? Or Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.... ?

Yes! It's like I said about the bits of sketches--if they showed things that were zany and out there you could imagine something funny. Like there's that Kids in the Hall sketch where they start out one way and claim they're cutting out the middle. Then suddenly they're dressed bizarrely with a dog hanging from the ceiling that they address as the mayor.

Love the Monty Python story-and didn't they (as I think most comedy writers say) that they basically just kept stuff in that made them laugh? These people never laugh. I remember one moment where Harry encourages Matthew Perry that a scene is funny and he says, "No, it's almost funny." WTF does that mean? I mean, I get that a real comedy writer would be driven to make it really funny, but it's like he's doing algebra to figure out it's not funny. He never actually laughs at anything, or tries to make anyone else laugh, or has other people try to make him laugh. They're all just sad sacks. When the English girl pitched him her Operation sketch I honestly thought she was serious, like this could be a thing on the show. And probably instead of ever laughing at a sketch he would say, "That's funny."

I'm also remembering this New Yorker article about one of the writers on the Simpsons--again, totally interesting and funny, and the guy could talk all about his favorite comedy shows growing up.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

* Love the Monty Python story-and didn't they (as I think most comedy writers say) that they basically just kept stuff in that made them laugh?

The rule was that they ALL had to laugh. There's other great stories. For example, Eric Idle's famous "nudge nudge" man was originally written for another show in which he didn't perform, but no one got it, because it's all about the delivery. And all the animation Gilliam did was basically him frantically pulling stuff out of his picture files and slapping it in front of a camera.

I haven't been able to catch 30 Rock all the time, from what I've seen, they know at least how to portray comedy writers. There are other good models out there--The Dick Van Dyke Show and My Favorite Year come to mind. Both were based on the experiences of writing for the Sid Caesar show (on which Neil Simon and Woody Allen got their start as writers).

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I notice in somebody's office on Studio 60 there's a Woody Allen poster. I haven't been able to tell which movie it's from or if it's from a movie. My first thought was Love and Death. Though I get the feeling they'd presumably like it because of the references to Russian Lit and Bergman instead of the jokes about Russian Lit and Bergman.