Roundup and Recap

Reports of the Sitcom's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
USA Today this week had a great interview with producers from the shows making up NBC's revamped must-see-tv block on Thursday nights. Among the topics are ratings, the new style of sitcom, and as always, whether the sitcom is dead; to which Bill Lawrence, exec. producer of "Scrubs", has the best answer I've heard in a while:

The only thing really dead about comedy right now is that everybody has so many options about what to watch that crappy comedy is dead. Crappy television is dead. The days of putting anything on at 8:30 just because it's after a hit and expecting people to watch it, I think that's over with.

Of course crappy television isn't quite dead yet (somebody put "Twenty Good Years" on the air after all), but his point is a good one.

Shielded Cable
Also in USA Today, speculation that broadcast decency standards may be applied to basic cable in the not too distant future. I'm a still on the fence about that. There's a lot of questionable stuff on some cable channels even during the middle of the day. But nobody's forcing me to buy basic cable, and most cable boxes these days have more parental control options than they do channels. Plus, the only chance I get to watch "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" is when they're rerun at 8am, and I'm pretty sure a change in the rules would take that away from me.

Fake News Alert!
Speaking of the "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report"; executive producer for both shows, Ben Karlin, has decided it's time to move on. Luckily he will stick around as a consultant. Get the whole skinny from the NY Times here.

30 + 60 = 90 Minutes of Quality TV
Alessandra Stanley compares "30 Rock" and "Studio 60" in an interesting piece in the New York Times. She likes both shows, but notices many of the same annoyances with "Studio 60" that I do.

"30 Rock"s on!
Good news for fans of "30 Rock", which includes me. NBC has picked up the show for a full season. Details are here at zap2it.com.


Quick Recap
Solid episodes this week from "The Office" (of course), "Heroes" and "3o Rock". I didn't get a chance to watch "Studio 60" yet. First there was Monday Night Football, and after that I was a little busy with the Superman box set that came out this week.

I saw my first broadcast of Thursday Night Football. Not only wasn't I really interested in the match up (though I do have Baltimore's defense in my fantasy league), but I had a hard time with Bryant Gumbel doing play-by-play. There's something off-putting in his nasally, high-pitched delivery that doesn't really go too well with football. I'll take Greg doing a game any day.

Friday night marked the first on-screen appearance of my brother-in-law Ken. Usually he works behind the scenes, but last night he got some face time and stole the show, leaving at least one viewer (his sister) asking for more. Nice work Ken!

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.