Studio 60, Season 1: The Culture Wars

This weekend found me working my way through my DVR backlog, catching up on last week's crop of new episodes, when I got to the latest episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip". I never look forward to watching this show the way I do "Lost" or the way I used to with "Smallville", but nonetheless I record it every week, knowing that it can get better, and hoping that it will.

I started watching this show largely because of its pedigree. I will watch anything, just on general principle, if it is brought to us by the same people who created "Sports Night" and "The West Wing". But the goodwill these guys have created with me is almost used up.

Enough with the Hollywood vs. Religious Right theme! It was a decent idea for a story or two, but in no way should it be used as the base premise for the series, and that's where it feels like this show is going. It worked well when they used it as the plot device for the first couple episodes, but now it seems like every week the whole religion thing is either the plot or sub-plot of the show. Not only does this theme appear in virtually every episode, but the sketch show within the show has a religion-related sketch every week as well. Ironic? No. Overly redundant, boring and ridiculous? Yes.

One of Sorkin's minor drawbacks, as evidenced in both "Sports Night" and "The West Wing", is that he can fall into "preachy" pretty quick. This becomes a major drawback when the stories lend themselves to this week after week.

The show does draw some critical raves and it should; it is well acted, well written, and mildly entertaining for the most part. Most reviewers agree that the major drawback is how unfunny the SNL type show within a show is. Tim Cuprisin from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has an article out today that focuses on this and a couple other problems he has with the show.

Regardless, the show has been picked up for a full season (read the AP story here), so hopefully the writers will start to work out the kinks and concentrate on making a must-watch show rather than a weekly rant against the religious right that people watch out of faith in the creators. Now that's ironic.