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.

[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.

[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.

[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.)