John and I are a little bit obsessed with Studio 60.
We love it in much the same way we love CSI Miami. We don’t watch it for the drama, we watch it for the bundle of gurning, smirking facial tics that pass as David Caruso’s acting. We watch it for the billion dollar lab, lit with lasers and stocked with every possible technological advancement known to man, even though they’re pretty much just cops. They have a database that identifies the killer by plant fibers, and brings up a color headshot with the perp’s agent and cell phone number.
Yes, we love Studio 60 the same way. And even though we both stare at the set in abject horror each time a groaning, clunking episode comes to a dribbling halt, and we swear we’ll take it off our Tivo season pass, we’re only lying to ourselves. We’re hooked.
So last night, we decided to come up with a Studio 60 game. Not a drinking game; that would be too obvious. I mean you’d be shit faced before the credits, just from all the shots you’d have to do everytime Amanda Peet doesn’t change her facial expression.
No, we wanted something a little bigger. We decided to try to figure out what the next “funny sketch” would be on Studio 60. And by the way, you know it’s funny because they cut away to people laughing in the control room. That helps a lot.
So we looked at the structure, and really thought about it. We sensed there was a format there, and we finally pinned it down.
Let’s look at “Science Shmience”, which was one of the hilarious sketches from a previous week with Rob Reiner, who would of course be hosting a show like Studio 60, because, um . . .
Ok, so anyway, if you look at “Science Shmience”, you’ll see that Sorkin has crossed a hackneyed comedic sketch device (game show) with an impossibly highbrow and self-consciously intellectual premise (fundamental religious groups denying various indisputable scientific laws).
And that, my friend, is not only the gestalt of Sorkin’s comedic genius, it’s also the Studio 60 game! Add a hoakey sketch premise to bloated intellectualism and voila! You’ve added another Post-it to Albie’s bulletin board.
We came up with:
• The Scooby Doo Gang searches for weapons of mass destruction
• Hip Hop Ibsen (A Doll’s Crib)
• Dorothy Parker Slam Poety reading
But there’s more!
You can develop even more “comedy” by exploiting the cast’s marginal impressions of not very hot actors (I’m still smarting from Harriet Hayes doing Juliette Lewis on Meet the Press).
So what about:
• Quentin Tarentino’s cooking show (he makes Quentin Crisps)
• Dr. Phil talks to George and Martha from Virginia Woolf
• Sarah Paulsen doing Meredith Baxter Birney as Leslie Abrams on Hardball
We also had a good laugh at the idea of a guy writing a play about Pericles being sought after by a mainstream network for a show about the United Nations. If that isn’t a peek into Aaron Sorkin’s own ass, I don’t know what is.
So perhaps another adjunct to the game is trying to determine Jordan McDeere’s next hot find . I think it’s a guy who wrote “It’s All Uphill: The Sisyphus Story”, who is currently developing a show about the WPA called Breadline.
Unlike Studio 60, this could go on for a least a few more weeks.
