Studio Sixty? More Like Studio Sucksty.

Byline: David J. McGee and Blackey I. Fontaine

About 30 minutes ago, Fontaine turned to McGee and asked, "You mad?"

"Hell yes, I'm mad," McGee responded, spittle and chunks of half-masticated gummy bear heads flying out of his mouth. "This sucks!"

"Why you mad?"

"You and I could write this shit eight times funnier. Eight times funnier. And if they wanted it at Sorkin pace, we could get ourselves an eight-ball and make it happen." Alright, Fontaine added that part after the fact. The coke part. Not the funnier part.

The Pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (ooh! alliteration!) was phenomenal. A behind-the-scenes look at a live, late-night comedy show. Written by Aaron Sorkin? Holler. We can handle the truth. We assumed the truth would be brung. That's right. Brung. And for those first 40 minutes, we felt that was the case: this show had sharp writing, good acting, and what we thought was a premise good enough for two new shows. They promised they would show us how light-night sketch comedy would be revolutionized, the teeth put back into it, none of this SNL shit. While we realize this is an hour-long drama about a sketch comedy show, in the interest of preserving the verisimilitude (Fontaine's word), should not the comedy be, in fact, revolutionary? Of course it should. ER deals with actual diseases. Law and Order is 'ripped from the headlines.' And, shit, SportsNight discussed actual athletes... and discussed them intelligently.

The fuck happened?

The second episode found our revolutionary writer character (played by Matthew Perry) needing to create basically the most brilliant sketch in TV history. He worked long and hard. He worked for a week. And then providence struck. He had it. He had it. IT, in this case, was rewriting Gilbert & Sullivan's (I'm shaking my head as I write this) "Modern Major General" song to be "We are the very model of a modern network TV show." Fontaine would like to add that he had no idea that this was a Gilbert & Sullivan song (he went to "real school"), but his response was "this shit just ain't funny." McGee's response: "I did that shit in '96, when I rewrote that selfsame song for a project in algebra class in motherfucking eighth grade. So, what Sorkin's telling me is I revolutionized comedy ten years ago? When M. Perry was still cutting his teeth as the second ugliest friend?* Where's my cut?" They promised to shake up TV, and they shook up 1870s operetta. Congratulations, only 130 years later.

Third episode: the decent enough writing and plot took a backseat to the really notable montage of "revolutionary" sketches. These included:

1) A parody of MTV's "Pimp My Ride" called "Pimp My Trike" (as in tricycle), which of course would never get aired on MadTV. Although, hold on, we're pretty sure it already did. And if it hasn't already, we're sure they had it ready for this season. Fuck, SNL aired "Gangster Bitch Barbie" back when Ferrell was yelling at kids to get off the damn shed. That shit was timelier, funnier, and actually had some element of social commentary about it.

2)"The Nicholas Cage Show," which was way more brilliant than the "Joe Pesci Show" from back in the day (where is Jim Breuer by the way? still spending that Half Baked money?).

3) "Science Schmience." Do we think that it's good for sketch comedy to get at organized religion. Sure. But it's sketch comedy. See that last word? It's got to be funny. Having some half-wit do a Tom Cruise impression does not comedy make. Shame on you, Rob Reiner. You're better than this. Pick it up.

Fourth Episode: We thought Dawson's Creek went off the air. Didn't it go off the air? You know, Katie Holmes is in Batman. That kid with the big chin is... umm... going to a lot of auditions. The sets have been dismantled. The Creek dried up, alright? We mean, we think it did. Never watched one episode. For a reason. We don't want that shit. The weeping, pining, heart-on-sleeve, blackhole that is rom-com. Matthew Perry spent this entire episode trying to 'win back his girl.' Are you fucking serious? We thought this show was for grown-ups. And not the kind of grown-ups who watch Jerry O'Connell direct-to-video movies. Failure to Launch at least advertised itself properly so we knew to stay away**. Oh, also the brilliant sketches we saw were a half-assed Chris Rock bit about how we label kids as having ADD instead of calling them stupid, and how we're so fat we also do humanitarian food drops on countries we bomb. Umm... OK, we guess you... uh... have a point. Not a funny point, but a point. The debate team's gain: late night comedy's loss. But even more egregious was a sketch called "Meet the Press with Juliette Lewis" which... um... does anyone remember who she is anymore? Natural Born Killers was a looooooooong time ago. Today's psychopaths were born after that movie was on VHS. Rush Limbaugh's already blaming bad behavior on Vice City; can't we at least have Liotta on? Also, what's the motherfucking humor in her hosting Meet the Press? We don't even get it. It must be so revolutionary that it's over our heads.

Oh, there it is. This show is too smart for us. Friday Night Lights is gonna get cancelled in two more episodes. Arrested Development is gone. Veronica Mars hangs on by the weak-tensile strength of the "Aerie Girls.****" Studio 60 is gonna run for ages. We'll be watching Kitchen Confidential episodes off YouTube (GooTube?) and crying ourselves to sleep. Come on, Sorkin: let us know when, instead of claiming to revolutionize a genre, you actually revolutionize (or just revise) a script.

*Kudrow
**Fontaine watched it. With a woman on his lap***.
***He's whipped (McGee note)
****Can we please drop them from an actual aerie?