REVIEW: Studio 60
After the success of The West Wing and Sports Night, I was ready to watch anything Aaron Sorkin wrote. So I was primed to love his next offering, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. After all, it had Bradley Whitford, who had proven he could do comedy, plus post-Friends Matthew Perry, supported by Amanda Peet and Stephen Daley. Heck, it even had Ed Asner in a recurring role.
And yet.
For all that promise, the series never became good enough, witty enough, or funny enough to work. It crashed and burned after 22 episodes. Now the complete series is finally arriving on Blu-ray, courtesy of Warner Archives.
Clearly inspired by Saturday Night Live, the series had tremendous potential as a workplace comedy. A large countdown clock loomed over the writers’ room, marking the time until the next broadcast and the deadline for filling 90 minutes with hilarity, commentary, and guest stars. That pressure is familiar from the real world: sustaining a weekly sketch show is an incredibly challenging feat. SNL’s survival after 50 years, despite years of mediocrity, shows just how difficult the job is.
Running the circus is Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet), the new head of programming for the network, and her boss, Jack (Steven Weber). Both know the show is suffering and needs refreshing, and they recruit former producers Matt Albie (Perry) and Danny Tripp (Whitford). They also bring back star Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson), who just happens to have a messy history with Matt.
The problem is one of focus. Sports Night was about the people who report on sports, and The West Wing was about people trying to run the country; Studio 60 seemed more interested in what it meant to be a broadcast network series than in the people making it. The expected tensions between the cast and the suits give Weber room to preen about costs, the FCC, and other issues unrelated to being funny. The cast’s personal dramas are interesting, but the core writers and performers rarely get to shine, despite a talented ensemble rounded out by Nate Corddry, D.L. Hughley, and Timothy Busfield.
The guest cast was strong, as expected, with nice turns from Kari Matchett and Christine Lahti. But even they could not overcome the show’s inflated sense of importance. We were told this was a struggling fourth-rate network whose owner (Asner) worried more about deals in Macau than about producing good television, yet everything was treated as momentous. The stakes were high, but the characters never seemed to rise to the occasion or give us enough reason to care. Episodes such as “The Christmas Show” and “What Kind of Day Has it Been” showed how good the series could be, but those successes were far too few.
The Blu-ray makes watching this disappointment more palatable, pairing a high-definition 16:9 (1.78:1) widescreen transfer with upgraded DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound in place of the DVD release’s lossy audio tracks.
The extras are limited to two DVD carryovers: a pilot-episode commentary by Sorkin and director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme, and In-Depth: The Evolution of Studio 60 (24:00).
Better picture and sound make this a more palatable disappointment, not a better series. With only the DVD-era extras included, the Blu-ray’s appeal rests on the presentation upgrade rather than any fresh insight into what went wrong.
