Monday, October 2, 2006
Studio 60
When Aaron Sorkin portrayed a TV version of the US president on the West Wing, a president who spouted Lucretius to his press secretary, you bought the premise because the stage was so big already — the world, its ego-centered politicians, and high stakes social policy; war and peace. Now Sorkin's Studio 60 uses the same rat-tat-tat Front Page conversational style, and the same middle-brow wannabe high level discourse with SNL-type comedians; you begin to wonder if Sorkin has any flexibility as a writer or grasp of the trivial import of the context. What worked as high melodrama beautifully wrought on the West Wing doesn't transfer to the current show's setting; Sorkin expects the audience to be as rapt as the principals about ratings on a long marginalized SNL look-alike; about whether they can make it to air. The cast and network suits and their anguish, their pain, their hopes: they fill a thimble.