the photo

newyorkmug.jpg

the info

Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

Calendar


July 2008
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Categories

The Counter

the world

Locations of visitors to this page

Search


the library

The Words

the shots

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from dan_carlson. Make your own badge here.

the city

the politics

The Alumni

« Hey Baby, ¿Qué Pasó? |Main| A Thoroughly Awkward Conversation I Had With My Boss »

October 17, 2006

"Studio 60": Who Said Comedy Needs To Be Funny?

By Dan Carlson

This was, perhaps, inevitable. I had quite a bit of emotional investment in this season's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," having fallen violently in love with "Sports Night" when it aired and having been a similar fan of "The West Wing." I even stuck with "West Wing" through seasons 5-7, or what is better known as The Years That Didn't Happen. Sorkin's latest behind-the-scenes venture, this time at a late-night sketch-comedy show, was supposed to be a return to greatness, a chance for phenomenal programming to once again take to the airwaves, and another show for me to take to my heart. (This season there are only two other shows like that, so it would have been nice to have a third.)

And, well, despite the many issues with the show that I will no doubt address in the future, the show has a major problem: Sorkin can write good, humorous dialogue between characters, but he can't write a funny sketch to sace his life.

Apparently, the fact that Mark McKinney ("The Kids in the Hall") is working on the sketches isn't helping at all. Last week's episode revolved around a purportedly stolen monologue that turned out to be NBS property after all, but no one stopped to think that the speech, which included a bit about dropping Hot Pockets along with bombs, wasn't funny in the first place. Last night's episode featured a cruelly, blatantly, powerfully unfunny Nancy Grace sketch, which (a) you have to really suck to miss the natural humor of an idiot like Grace, and (b) it made the recent Nancy Grace sketch on "SNL" look funny by comparison, which is a startling accomplishment. Still, the worst offense came in the second episode of "Studio 60," when the show-within-a-show's cold open was an abysmal rip-off of Gilbert and Sullivan. More than just typical Sorkinian recycling (cf. "And It's Surely to Their Credit" for a much better use of the music), the sketch was just stupid. Hearing the fictional studio audience laugh and applaud the lame song was almost painful. I sat and watched, unmoved, realizing that Sorkin is still a talented writer-producer, but his best work may well be behind him.

--------

Comments: 0

Post a comment

the post

Questions? Comments? Complaints?

Drop 'em in the mailbag.

homefeed.png

The Lines

The Quotes

"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael

"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
— Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

"Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these."
— Ovid

Current Reading

In Rotation















the humor

the screens

the tube

the sounds

The Plugs

Recent Posts

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]

Archives

Powered by
Movable Type 3.33

the wisdom

Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— Me, Fall 2003

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.
— Ask the Dust, John Fante