STUDIO 60: "If I Ran the Zoo, er, Studio, er, World..."

Because basically, this new show is a variant on the same theme:  Wouldn’t the TV business (just like the White House) be ever so much better if an idealistic, correctly liberal Sorkin stand-in ran things? But whereas Sheen provided the appropriate presidential gravitas to “The West Wing,” Matthew Perry brings his matchless comic timing (and not a trace of Chandler Bing from “Friends”) to the Sorkin character in “Studio 60.”

And a good thing, too, because despite Sorkin’s undeniable skill with the workplace drama, one thing he’s not is funny. Talking about “mean-spirited and voyeuristic” TV at the NBC press conference for “Studio 60,” Sorkin made a little joke: “I think it’s bad crack in the school yard.” That didn’t get much of a laugh, but Perry’s rejoinder later did: “I think it’s mostly like bad Vicodin in the schoolyard.”

Perry is one of those actors whose timing and delivery can make him seem funny, even without the benefit of actual witty dialogue. But lack of comic writing is less a problem with this new show than you might think, because “Studio 60” is only superficially about a comedy. Actually, it’s about the same thing “West Wing” was about: Characters of proper liberal moral clarity making rousing speeches to each other while the swelling soundtrack tells viewers what to feel.

Sorkin has been careful to balance his liberal hero - a comedy writer named Matt Albie - against the hero’s ex-girlfriend Harriet, a devout Christian who for some reason is also a fantastically talented (and basically liberal minded) member of a late-night comedy sketch show. They broke up because Harriet appeared on “the bigot” Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.” - but don’t worry, it was only to sell her new album to people who like that kind of music, and she wouldn’t do it again!

With his director partner Danny Tripp (a stand-in for Sorkin’s director partner Thomas Schlamme, except in “Studio 60” the Schlamme character is the one with the drug problem), Matt has been brought in to run Studio 60 after the Judd Hirsch character had a I’m-mad-as-hell meltdown on-air after the network wouldn’t let him run a sketch that might offend “every psycho religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott.”

Harriet, however, was only offended that she wasn’t in that sketch. “And you know what it was called?” Harriet yells tremulously at Matt during the premiere episode’s denouement. “Crazy Christians!” So there.

One thing “Studio 60” has that I never noticed in “The West Wing,” despite all its tedious moralizing, is some awfully weird, phoning-it-in locutions when it comes to avoiding raw language. “If you’ve still got the muscle to do it, you wouldn’t have asked,” a nasty network exec says to the Judd Hirsch character. I don’t understand why the character couldn’t have just said “balls,” since “balls” was used later in that script (not to mention “crap”) but wouldn’t “guts” have been a more natural substitute for “muscle?”

Meanwhile, the new network president, Jordan McDeere, is described as seeing to it “that Jay Leno spanked David Letterman on a regular basis” in her previous job. (Spanked?) And Jordan, tough cookie that she is, says a little later that “the news division can kiss me.” Er, OK.

As played by the beauteous Amanda Peet, Jordan is a truly strange creation: A tough but charming lady network president whose mouth is permanently set in a peculiar, doll-like half smile. Could such a Barbie-ish creature actually exist in the TV business? I suppose after Martin Sheen as Bill Clinton, anything’s possible. But I much prefer the line Artie the manager snarled when he had to tangle with the tough (and uncharming) lady network executive on the old “Larry Sanders” show: “I killed a man like you in Korea.”

Not till next week’s second episode, though, does Sorkin really show his political hand… in case anyone was still wondering. The news of the Sorkin/Schlamme characters being brought in to run the show naturally brings out vicious sniping from the baddies over at talk radio, who call the heroic duo “Barbra Streisand-loving” and “Michael Moore-worshiping.”

Even worse, while “The West Wing” do-gooders tangled with “right-wing turkey basters” the fictional NBS network now has blogs to contend with. Next week, a network exec worries that “the Bernadette Blog” has been taking them to task because of the turmoil at Studio 60. “Bernadette is writing in her pajamas - what do you care?” someone responds. Pajamas? Oh, snap.

(Link to Studio 60 site)          

PajamasMedia Special Correspondent CATHERINE SEIPP writes the weekly “From the Left Coast” column for National Review Online, a monthly column for Independent Women’s Forum and freelances other places, such as the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal op-ed pages. She previously wrote columns for: Buzz, Mediaweek, UPI, New York Press and Salon. Her work has also appeared in Reason, Penthouse, TV Guide, the National Post and Forbes.
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