Where does Sorkin find these guys?

“Timothy Busfield sure was great in Little Big League and Bradley Whitford stole the show in Billy Madison. Let's cast 'em!” – Aaron Sorkin.



Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip premiered last week and it seems like Sorkin’s done it again. Yawn.

One of the keys to Aaron’s success is his ability to find actors with talent and bring them out from anonymity. Busfield and Whitford are the best part of Studio 60, but it remains to be seen if this will make Steven Weber (Wings) a star.

While I’m definitely an immediate fan of Studio 60, I remain skeptical about whether it will save TV, as was pretty much promised during the show-inside-a-show’s opening monologue.

Here are top three concerns after the first two episodes:

1. How will they handle the sketches?
Sure, Sports Night was “funny,” but it was dialogue based, and sketch comedy is a different beast. Maybe we won’t even regularly see sketches, or maybe it will turn into a one-per-episode formula as they used in the second episode. None of the writing staff were sketch writers in a previous life, but, if you ask me, I think it would be a good idea to hire a couple people with that kind of experience to help write sketches.

2. Matthew Perry? Amanda Peet?
I wasn’t impressed with his brief stint in West Wing, but Sorkin insisted that he play the character of Matthew Albee on the show. I don’t want to live to see the day Perry is nominated for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series, although he is better than Kiefer Sutherland. As for Peet? Hopefully her character will be gone by Season 3.

3. Romantic possibilities?
I already hate the idea of Peet and Whitford getting together, or the drama that will ensue with Perry and the religious singer (WTF?) Harriet Hayes. Also, please get Dule Hill out of that Psych show and onto network TV where he belongs.

Combining his dramatic and comedic power is an exciting play from Sorkin, but I don’t feel like the attempt to do something that combines Sports Night and West Wing necessarily means that it will be better than or equal to the sum of both parts.

So far I love the show, but really hate Sarah Paulson. The prayer circle before the show was strange to say the least, and the way everyone keeps talking about her like she's a comedy god hasn't been backed up by her saying or doing anything funny. Her performance in the song at the end of Ep 2 was painfully unfunny.

She must be fucking Sorkin or something...

Here's the very weird Defaker blog created to promote the show. I don't think this was a good idea. Here's a cache if they decided to take the site down because it was not a good idea.