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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 3547580" data-attributes="member: 8158">Studio 60 was a lame show that deeply deserved cancellation. It was not sharp. It was not smart. It preened itself on sharp smartness that it didn't actually deliver. People being all cocky and strident and making banter that largely consists of trying to screw up each other's witty metaphors is not all that "sharp". Being snobbish and condescending towards mainstream televeision (which Jordan refers to as "illiterate programming") does not inherently qualify as "smart". I would agree with Alzrius that it was unfair for critics to compare it unfavorably to the West Wing, except that the show set itself up for that by pretending that every week's show was turning into the next Cuban Missile Crisis. You've got a chairman and a persident of a network just hanging around this show having endless debates about content that really doesn't even have much impact simply because most folks go to bed before it comes on.In the first episode, Judd Hirsch gets up and delivers his little networksesque shpiel that's supposed to decry the dumbing-down of what was once a showcase for brilliant satire. Now, this is supposedly a reference to Saturday Night Live losing its teeth, but in actuality it's romanticizing some era of SNL that never was. I remember Chevy Chase taking pratfalls over ottomans as Gerald Ford, for Pete's sake. Then there's an episode where they have a crisis over the sudden cancellation of a sketch about an inept bank robber taking hostages, all because some guy somewhere killed his family. Now, there's almost always someone somewhere being held hostage, so what is the message here? It's always in poor taste to have a sketch ever? Sorry, they really push the premise of Stuido 60's relevance too hard.And the real nail in the coffin? The show-within-the-show was a flop. Sorkin just could not figure out how sketch comedy works. Remember the big, brilliant opening sketch they do on the second episode to demonstrate the edgy new direction? And it was what? The cast singing to the tune of the "Modern Major General" song from the Priates of Penzance. Oh yeah, Gilbert & Sullivan references are THE cutting edge. So many folks can relate. Most of the sketches we got to see (like the fake news and Jesus Christs as the head of Standards & Practices) was just trying to take Sorkin's talent for snide banter and package it as sketch comedy, and that just doesn't cut it.What a disappointment. Everything it was trying to accomplish needed to be executed with a much higher degree of subtlety. The best I could say about the show is that it had a few cute chicks. Of course, the real irony is that in the face of all its smug condescension, it wound up getting replaced by "The Real Wedding Crashers".</blockquote>

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