The Prestige TV Podcast - Prestige HOF: The 'Studio 60' Pilot With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Bill and Chris join together to honor Matthew Perry by celebrating the success of the ‘Studio 60’ pilot. They discuss the impressive chemistry between Perry and costar Bradley Whitford, highlight the end of a television era with the shift from 22-episode seasons to more unscripted content, and explore the complicated history of Aaron Sorkin’s work. Hosts: Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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All right, it's a prestige TV podcast. My name is Bill Simmons. I'm here with Chris Ryan. We are doing this because Matt Perry passed away last weekend. Everybody knows him from friends. Everybody kind of remembers that he did a series called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, written and created by Aaron Sorkin. I think the series is considered kind of a bust by Sorkin purposes because of West Wing and,

you know, even Sports Night, which was critically accruly. claimed newsroom made a lot of noise. He wrote social network. He's done a lot of great things. And I think this is one of the quote unquote misfires. And yet, Chris Ryan, the pilot is incredible. Yeah. It's so good. And you can't really stream it anywhere. You got to go on Amazon. You got to just kind of rent it or buy it for $2. But the pilot, we'll talk about all the reasons why this show didn't work. But the pilot is great. More importantly, Matthew Perry is awesome in the pilot. What did you think when you rewatch this? The pilot, and if there was a show that had all of the energy

and the precision of the pilot that was on today, it would be like a top five show. For me, I think that there's something like really satisfying about going back and watching like pros work. And that is one of the things that you have to say by Aaron Sorkin shows is that from the first actor to the 25th actor, the director, the stages, like everything about it, the cadence is like, you're just like, man, I'm in the hands of pros.

Right. Tommy Shlami directing. He used his whole West Wing team. Even the graphics feels similar to the West Wing. Your boy Snuffy Walden on the music, you know? Right. He built the show around Matthew Perry and called the character Matt and basically said, I'm not doing this unless you do it.

Matthew Perry said, I don't want to do it. Friends had just gone away, I think two years earlier. He'd made a ton of money. And Sorkin's like, I'm not taking no for an answer. Badgered him. Badgerdom, Badgerdom. This is a really weird time for TV, just big picture. It's before all the streamers, it's when they're still trying to make these really expensive

22 episode seasons of dramas and shows, and there's things that had hit like Lost and Desperate Housewives. And you look at 06, NBC has two shows basically created on the world of Saturday Live, because they have 30 Rock with Tina Fey, and they have Studio 6. and they're like, fuck it. Let's just roll both of them out. May the best show win. But just in general, like Friday Night Lights, I think, started this year, too.

I just feel like this era's over. Nobody would try a 22-episode version of this. They'd have the pilot. I think that would be the case. But then it would probably be, what, nine more episodes. It would basically be like a better version of the morning show. I think the last two creators who really took a run at doing this were Shonda Rhymes with her ABC shows like,

scandal and grays and everything. And the Kings who did The Good Wife, you know, and they did a 22-episode drama season that could stand up against anything that was on a premium cable channel or streamer. But this is it. Yeah, you're looking at like 0-6, 07, 08, and then by the time, like, when we got to Grantland, it's when they start doing House of Cards, but you've also had this incredible HBO run and AMC run and everything starts gravitating towards those networks. AMC's doing Mad Men, which launched either this year or the next year.

I can't remember, but that's, I think, 12 or 13 episodes per season. Yep. And just in general, the prestige stuff is starting to shift. And the networks don't really know how to do this because they're conditioned to like, well, it's at least 22 episodes. Sometimes it's 26. Then we'll have reruns. And they don't really know what's going on. This is also like a couple years later, this is when the Tonight Show moves to Conan.

and they move Jay Leno to 10 o'clock because they have this idea like, oh my God, TV, Network TV Primetime is kind of starting to die. What if we just had a daily show? Now you look at what Network TV Primetime is. Like ABC just runs game shows and they have maybe like, I don't know, five or six scripted shows, but if you go to ABC, you're more likely to find Pressure Luck or a reality show or a game show versus like a scripted show.

And that's just where we are. Do you know what's so funny though? so this is why I love my job. I just went on a Studio 60 run yesterday and watched like the first six, seven episodes because I was like, it gets bad, right? Doesn't it fall off? And it does, basically when Christine Lottie shows up,

not her fault, but the stories start to run out of gas a little bit. Yeah. You know, they're a little overinflated. But everything you just said about television is in Studio 60. It's like a talking point in the show itself. They're talking about how unscripted is taking over. all of primetime and all of the network's hours, and it's cheap and it's easy to make,

and people watch it. They're talking about there's even a whole scene where Jordan McDeer, who's played by Amanda Pete, who's the president of the network that Studio 60 is on, is trying to get Bradley Whitford, who is the executive producer of Studio 60, to bring a show that sounds like West Wing to the network, and is written by a young playwright who wants to take the show to HBO.

And she's like, can't you bring him to TBS? to NBS and he's like, no, it should go to HBO. That's there, that will do a better job with it. All of this stuff that you're talking about is actually in Studio 60. It's so funny that we went glass half empty on this show when it came out. And I think it was because Sorkin, Westwing hit such heights. And he hit, fuck this guy territory, which we've talked about a lot on our culture stuff when things are just going really well for somebody for a while.

And then their next thing, you know, they got, he definitely had a little over. overconfidence with some of this stuff. He takes some swings. He tries, you know, the biggest thing I remember from when the show came out was how mad the comedy community was about how kind of pedestrian and mediocre the sketches were. And Sorkin just insisting on, he's trying to make this premise, which is season one, is Matt and Danny come back to save this show. And these are like the creative visionaries. And these are like, you know, this is, Hollywood is going in the shithole, but they still have, there's still people like these two. And then they do the sketches and they're not good.

Yes. And people is the equivalent of like if you're watching a sports drama and you're like, man, we got to get this QB. He's amazing. And then you see him and he like can barely throw a 15 yard out. Yeah, it would be like if Bert Reynolds threw wet noodles, they could go five year. Burr-Renance is Mack Jones in the last yard. You know what?

First of all, I just need to say that as far as fuck this guy goes, I'm like, I'm like second and goal for fuck this guy with Travis Kelsey. Oh, wow. You know what I mean? And you're from the two-yard line. Yeah, it's just like, how about you take a step back, man? You get it all. And then...

When he went to the Rangers game, I thought that was funny. Yeah. As far as what you're talking about, though, Sorkin has one pitch. And if it's Game 7 of the World Series, that pitch is incredible. If it's the West Wing and they're talking about a missile crisis or a food shortage or a bill that has to get past,

the way he writes and the dramatic inflation that he puts into his scenes where everything seems to be the fate of the world is just this conversation right here. But when you're doing a sketch comedy show, I don't really think democracy is in the balance here, although it is really interesting to see all these people talking at a post-9-11 world about like, you know, whether or not political humor can do this or do that.

And I think what Sorkin ran into was he was writing characters the same way he was writing them on the West Wing, but this time it was about a weekly network comedy show. And it just didn't, the two didn't meet. Like, there was no sense of proportion. Yeah. Well, it had a lot of the things that make Sorkin shows great, which I think was why people stuck with this show.

I remember my big things as it was happening was the sketches are bad. I can't believe he didn't hire a comedy person to write the sketches for him. Like a real person. Like, go get Jim Downey or whoever and just make sure you know this part. Back up the money truck to Jim Downy and be like, can I have your 10 worst sketches that you'll never use? If you're using like Tim, Tim Busfield as like your eighth guy on the show, you can probably afford like one awesome comedy writer. But the other thing was they set up, and especially in the pilot, which I think was filmed a few months before the rest of the show. And Amanda Pete is just throwing 100 miles an hour.

She looks great. She's coming off a lot like love with Ashton Coucher. And it's really nice run where it's like, all right, you're not Julie Roberts, but you're still somebody. And she's just great in the pilot. And then in real life, she was pregnant by the time they have. actually started filming the show. So I think everything he had planned for for season one with her and Matthew Perry,

because they had immediate electricity in the first show. You could just like, oh, I see where this is going. But then she's pregnant, and I don't think they really knew how to reconcile that because I think that they're whatever, their romantic chemistry and how it's going to evolve is supposed to be one of the foundations of season one. So you lose that.

The sketches fall apart. and then it's 22 episodes when it should have been 10. I remember I have this vague memory of like an Afghanistan episode, like one of the cast members had a brother in Afghanistan. Bill, it's a three-part Afghanistan episode. It was three weeks of Afghanistan episodes. It's K&R part one, two, and three. One of the interesting things about this season is that there are multiple,

multiple part runs. So it'll be like Nevada Day part one and two. And then the K&R thing, which is, Nate Cordry's fictional brother in this show is kidnapped in Afghanistan in a war and somehow Matt and Danny with their ties to the military industrial complex

organize his rescue. I was saving those episodes as a treat for myself on the weekend. I got to see how this goes. It was definitely him kind of running out of things to do so then bringing in his own politics and things he cared about, which at the time as George Bush to Afghanistan.

Straight up, dude, the straight up West Wing episodes. And I think part of the criticism of this show at the time was, like, comedy's not nearly this heavy. And, you know, a show like this, people are just trying to survive week to week and just get through it and just come up with five or six funny ideas. And it's a lot sadder. And it's a lot of people just in a room by themselves or in their little office or sharing just trying to come up with shit. It's not trying to save the world. This show is basically made for you. It's an Aaron Sorkin show about Saturday.

Live, which is an institution that you read about and care about and talk to people who have worked on it and you're obsessed with it. And so you obviously were a, the target demo for it, but be the easiest person to disappoint because you might be like, come on. And one of the things you have to be about, come on about is Sorkin can't get out of his own mythology in writing this show because the Matt character, the Matthew Perry plays, the whole thing is he's like, I'm going to write the show by myself. Yeah. So every week. I don't need writer. He writes a 90-minute comedy show that has to start from scratch and is just like sitting in his office, like banging his head against the wall doing it. And it's this hero's journey of Sorkin's own kind of self-perception of like what he does writing the West Wing for four years and then burning out.

And the most hilarious thing is like the one time in Studio 60 when he uses the writer's room in the first few episodes, it turns out they plagiarize a guy and it turns into this big. scandal where they have to reshoot the West Coast feed of the show because they've used some other guys' joke. It's so funny how they make it into like life or death, but when you actually get to the sketches, they're like, yeah, this wouldn't have, this wouldn't have worked, man. You really probably needed a writer's room for these sketches. Well, in the pilot, it starts out with Judd Hirsch, and it's an obvious homage to network the movie that they even, you know, they even mentioned in a couple different ways. So they're pretty clear what they're trying to do. recurring Sorkin trope, like Danny and Sports Night does a direct-to-camera, like, oh, no, is he going off the rails?

And also in newsroom, Jeff Daniels has like a whole moment like that. So this is a thing that Sorkin really likes to do. Oh, they tried to do it in the morning show this week. Oh, yeah. I mean, the morning, Sorkin must watch the morning show and be like, holy shit. I stopped watching morning show after January 6th one because I was like, can't get any better. There's no way. the show's peak.

Yeah, so Judd Hirsch rips this whole TV framework, and it basically comes down to they wanted to run this edgy sketch, and the sensor says no way, so they end up running peripheral vision man again, which is this kind of uninspired recurring bit, which is a little bit of a dig at S&L, too, because I think S&L at that point was doing the recurring bits. It makes more sense over the course of the season,

if then the sketches that Matt and Danny are doing are just so inspired. It's like, oh, man, I can't believe they ever did print. But then the sketches were not that inspired. But the Judd Hirsch part's great. And just in general, like, this show's 42 minutes. It's not even, or the pilot's 46, but in general, the show is 42 minutes episode. But for a 46-minute pilot, they establish a lot of characters that you have a real feel for. They've Judd Hirsch.

Busfield is the guy who's basically the, What's that job he has in the control room? He's the technical director. So he's switching and everything. You have Amanda Peets character who's basically a Jamie Tarsus ripoff. And Jamie Tarsus, I think, was a consultant on the show. You have what's his face? Stephen Weber.

Stephen Weber is supposed to be, I think, the CEO of the network. Yeah. Who I thought he died in single white female when Jennifer Jason Lee put a heel in his eye, but he's still alive. And he's the president. Absolutely cooking. doing like a lot of villain stuff. You have Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford as Matt and Danny,

and we'll get into them in a second. Then you have Harriet played by Sarah Paulson, who's awesome this whole season. I had season tickets for her after that because this is a great actress, and then she ended up doing some good stuff. Nate Cordy and D.L. Hugley were the big three of the show. There's 10 characters I just listed. And you have a feel for all of them by the end of the

episode. But the Matt and Danny, I think the chemistry those guys have and the way Sorkin is able to write this backstory for them and it's a real friendship. You believe it immediately. And then there's this monkey wrench where Danny, the Whitford character, it turns out he failed a drug test. And he's the Sorkin proxy for all his drug stuff. Perry's the Sorkin proxy for all his brilliant stuff. And this other guy is like the fuck upside. And the way they have that scene when Perry's like, are you okay? Yeah. It's just really good.

It's like about as good as you're going to do. I wonder whether it's because he's writing two characters that are each like sides of himself. Yeah. The banter is just really seamless, but that they're actually, at least in this pilot episode, there isn't a ton of tension. It's just basically like two guys who really support each other and are almost trying to outdo each other being like, no, I will sacrifice for you. No, I will sacrifice for you.

It's really, it's very sweet. But these two guys, Perry and Whitford, Whitford obviously, by doing West Wing, but Perry just seems to come by it naturally, really, really, really get sork in dialogue. They can do the pace. They can do the overlapping dialogue. They can do acting with their faces while they're saying all this complicated stuff. And it's just really nice to watch these guys cook, honestly. It's just there's scenes outside of the Studio 60, which I think they,

the exterior of it is the palladium on sunset is really awesome. When he shows up and Danny's like, look, I got to tell you something. I failed a cocaine test. And Perry takes that beat and he's like, are you okay? It's so, it's just a really nice change of gear over the course of the episode. But the structure of the pilot is amazing. It's basically a play.

It starts out. They have basically these title cards. They introduce each act. It goes from Jordan to Matt and Danny to the big three. And then it has this sort of culmination. And in some ways, it goes too fast because by the time you get to the end of the episode, they've triumphantly returned to Studio 60. And I almost wonder if he was doing it over again or if this was a 10 episode season or something like that.

Do they not get to Studio 60 until episode two or three? Like, are the negotiations longer? Is there more stuff in there where, because by the time they get to Studio 60, they're at work immediately the next week. Right. And it's almost like, could this even be possible? for these guys to do this all by themselves, change everything, have a complete culture reset,

and also make politically relevant humor in the mid-2000s. Let's take a break, and then I want to talk about the Matthew Perry part of this. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

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Expedia is the one place you go to go places. Your trip can earn rewards which you can use towards your next eligible stay. Soon people will be doom scrolling you. You'll be that friend's friend, but with rewards. What are you waiting for? Expedia, the one place you go to go places, terms apply. All right, so you mentioned how they have the cards, which I thought was a really smart way to do the pilot.

And we get to the Matt Danny thing, and they're in an awards banquet for, I think, like, the 2006 Screenwriter Guild Awards. It's the, yeah, WGA Awards. And Perry's just had back, or Perry's characters just had back surgery a couple days before, so he's on, and he's just doing kind of older Chandler Bingstaff. One of the cool things about this show when it happened was, Friends had ruined Chandler the last couple years. Chandler was this, you know, absolutely iconic comedy character.

And then near the end, he gets involved with Monica and just becomes like this kind of, all he cares about is being in love with Monica. And it just wasn't as funny of a character anymore. And even in the moment, it's like, man, why'd they do this to Chandler? What are they doing? So it was like he had his fastball back and you can feel it immediately. And I think, you know, I was reading some of the career retrospective stuff for him and, you know, the movies that he made, which I think whole nine yards was probably the most successful,

but he did some other ones. And there was this sense like he was kind of pigeonholed by the Chandler character. I actually thought he was a better actor than that. I think he proved it in this show. He proved it in the good wife. He had moments where it was like, man, I actually think if this guy could have stayed out of his own way and not had as many personal problems as he did, I think he would have had a really interesting career.

I think there would have been a cool villain side. He had enough money that he could have taken whatever parts he would have wanted. And I think this show is proof like we really lost something with all the personal difficulties he had. What do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, it certainly felt. it felt like an actor who had been waiting for a writer like this for a really long time,

you know, which isn't to besmirch friends, which I enjoy a lot, but it felt like it was like he was getting his first real meal and like he had been snacking this entire time. And like everything was like, I come in and I burst through the door and I'm neurotic about a woman at work. And then I walk out the door and it goes to swimmer for a while. And like,

this really felt like his character had an arc. This felt like his character had, you know, work on and solve and talk through. The ironic thing is, like, when you watch the pilot, and I kind of forgotten, like, the dynamic between Whitford and Perry, he sits down, he's like, I'm on Vicodon because of this back surgery. And you're like, oh, so Matt's the fuck up.

Matt's going to be the junkie. He's like, can't keep it straight, but is brilliant. And then it turns out that's not the case. They kind of flip it. Yeah, it's like the stoic, solid, steady Danny is, in fact, the recovering. addict. And it's an interesting twist by Sorkin because he could obviously have played on Perry's personal stuff if he had wanted to. And I'm sure with Sorkin and his own relationship to that stuff, like they had conversations about that. But I thought it was really fascinating that he kind of

inverts the what the expectation is going to be there. It's one of the better pilots I've ever seen about male friendship where they just in a couple scenes just established like, all right, these guys will never turn on each other. Yes. Even when they offer them the job and Bradley Whitford storms out, and Perry leaves with them and then comes back and sticks his head back and the door, he's like, we'll take the job. But I don't like what you guys just did and lays into them.

You just totally believe that these guys are going to have each other's back. I think the pilot was so good that that was one of the reasons the rest of the series. You know, honestly, because I watched the second one too, which I thought was good. It wasn't as good as the pilot, but the second episode's good, and they're trying to establish the writer's room dynamics.

And the whole thing is he has to do a cold open for the show and he can't figure it out and he can't write the rest of the show until he writes the cold open. There's the clock in Judd Hirsch's office, the old clock that's like kind of taunting him. But it's still good, but I think the pilot hit such great heights

that I just feel like... We had a couple great pilots in the mid-2000s, by the way, because the Friday Night Lights pilot was really good. iconic, yeah. The lost pilot is considered probably the best network pilot ever. It's two hours. It's basically a movie. The Mad Men pilot on AMC, that's happening then.

I forget what was happening in HBO in the mid-2000s, but I'm sure they had something. I mean, six feet under is somewhere a little bit after this, and six feet under's pilot is incredible. The first episode of six feet under is mind-blowing. I mean, like, there was also just a kind of production value. And, yeah, like, I was thinking about when you were talking about, like the network shows that were really good. I mean, this is a little bit earlier, but like when 24 came

out, and you, people watched 24 for the first time, I remember, I mean, I've told this story before, but I remember like running all over Brooklyn trying to find DVDs of 24 so that my girlfriend at the time, and I can find out what happened. I mean, it's like, it's like that they were really gripping and you also felt like because so many people were watching these shows at the time that you were part of like, it was more of a monocultural experience. That was another piece of the mid-2000s. So we had the monoculture experience, which was great. On the flip side, if you missed the first couple episodes of something and it became a thing, there was no way to catch up. I've talked about this, but it happened to me with Friday Night Lights where I watched

the pilot. I didn't think they would be able to, I thought I was going to get canceled. I was like, there's no way the show staying on. And I stopped watching, and then it became a thing, and I had to buy these Japanese DVDs on eBay with the American language with the Japanese captions to catch up. But you really had to make choices in the 0506 range. The DVR situation wasn't easy like it was now. It would be like one guy in the neighborhood had TiVo, maybe one of your friends had TiVo and you be like, can you TiVo this?

And then I can come over on Wednesday to watch it. Right. And then it would be like, oh, CR said Studio 60 got really good. I'm going to catch up. Like you couldn't do that. You were making decisions week to week. And it became almost like a salary cap of, of time.

It's like, you know what? I'm going to keep 30 rock on my roster, but I think I'm going to dump Studio 60, and that was it. Once you dumped it, there was no going back. This is why people used to just basically spend hours and weeks and months talking and thinking about their grid and what time things went on,

on what days. You know, when are the people that we want to have watching this show home and, like, available? It's like, oh, Thursday at 9, that's the spot. You know, like the idea of having prize spots over the course of a week and having shows that led into your show and then a show that came after your show and that that whole thing is essentially a lost art form now. It bums me out because first of all, this show should have come along maybe seven years later,

right? It should have been an early 2010 show and they would have said this is 11 episodes. We're going to put this on cable. It can't be on a network. It's weird that this would be on the same network that runs Saturday Live. You have an inherent checks and balances that you just know whether they're going to admit or not. You know, it exists at least a little bit. Saturday Live is a profitable show for them. And if this is a 10 episode or 11 episode show on cable, I think it's on for like five seasons.

And the tweaks would have been pretty easy. It would have been like, you know what? Hire somebody do the sketches. Don't try to do so much. You don't have to do these three-part episodes. Just kind of stick to the framework you had in the pilot. And I think it would have worked. And I'm sure he, I don't know if he's ever talked about it in recent years,

but I'm sure he probably thinks like, man, that was the show that I wish I had a reset button on. Yeah. And this show also has the capacity. They could have, like, rolled in so many cast members because S&L is a show and behind the scenes is always changing. So every season on Studio 60, you could have brought in three or four new people. You know, you could have changed it up as much as you wanted to. the thing that always kind of nags at me about Studio 60 is

it wasn't enough for him to be like, okay, I'm going to do a show, a drama about behind the scenes at Saturday Night Live. It was, what if Saturday Night Live set the table for political conversation in this country? Right, which I think is what he wanted. Change hearts and minds on a weekly basis, and it was these two guys who were essentially, and I think that's where it's like, that's the fantasy.

Just the same way that the Bartlett administration is a fantasy about the way federal government could work or the executive branch could work. And sports night is a fantasy about what it would be like to do SportsCenter every night and the newsroom is a fantasy about people covering the news.

I just think that this fantasy where a comedy show would be like the cutting edge of political satire that like impacted like the way people thought about the president. I don't know. Even at its best, did Sire Night Live really make you feel differently

about George Bush? Did thousand points of light change your mind about him? I think Saturday Live affected election stuff sometimes if they could turn people into characters. But I don't think in the way Sorkin wanted it where it's like that brilliant piece of political satire changed my opinion on what we're doing in Afghanistan. It was more like George,

it was the original George Bush more than W, but the original George Bush, I think Carvey actually like really hurt the original George Bush with his like stammering stuff. And he really picked up a lot of stuff. And it was kind of like, oh, man, that's actually kind of what he's like. And I think that sent George Bush scrimly. That's probably true.

Will Farrell and Chevy Chase really hurt Gerald Ford. That was the other one. Like there's no question that hurt Gerald Ford. But like the Trump stuff didn't really work. You know, honestly. Well, Trump was like, yeah, he was basically his own self-parody. Will Farrell did a great George W. Bush. Yes.

And really turned him in a, you know, kind of a fool. And George Bush was president for. eight years. So I would say that probably that in fact that I do think Sarah Palin got hurt by the show. But yeah, it's always election season was when it had the biggest impact. It wasn't in the way

Sorka thought. The other thing I felt like he missed and just, you know, I worked on Kimmel's show for 18 months when it started is you put all these comedy writers around. They're way funnier. You're just trying to make each other laugh. And the bar is so high to make somebody laugh, you default to like the worst

possible things. Like, you're crossing lines left and right. And there's always, especially on a show like an SNL type show, there's always two or three people who are just genuinely funny that when they're in the room, it's just like everybody's laughing. And there was nobody like that on the show. The three people who are like the quote unquote big three, none of them are really funny on the show.

Yeah. Steve Hugley's like, I'm an actor. I never wanted to be on the show and carry it, the Sarah Paulson character. Like she's not funny at all. She's just a good actress. and then Nate Cordy is kind of a bust. But they're like, Harry, it's a five-tool player. Like, you just like...

Yeah, they're trying to make her like Kristen Wade. They didn't even know who Kristen Wigg was. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, like, this is always an issue when you're making art about art is then if you have to take the art from within the show, like with the things that people are working on, whether it's music or writing or whatever, if you have to show that, it has to meet the expectations

that you've created within the story you're telling that this is really good. If you've got a successful writer or a writer who's changing people's lives and you're making this writer up and you have this writer's writing, it might not be that good. And then you've got yourself a real problem.

It'll always like fascinate me how Tom Hanks makes that thing you do. If the song, that thing you do is bad, that movie collapses. He has to have that kind of a hit. Eddie and the Cruisers was like that too. On the dark side. It's a great song.

Heard it multiple times in the movie. Got to nail that song. Yeah, the actual sketch part, I'm sure would be a do-over for Sorkin. I'm sure if he had to do it over again, he wouldn't have tried to do the 22 episodes. But from a casting standpoint, I think really good, except for the Nate Cordry part. Yeah, the Cordy part needed to be like a David Spade type of young 1990s David Spade kind of wise-ass, Dana Carvey wannabe type who's just throwing bombs at everybody. But other than that, I don't know. You watched a pilot, and I hadn't thought about this show for 10 years.

You watched a pilot. You're like, man, how did they screw this up? It's funny that you watched six episodes because you were like, I want to see where the wheels came off. And they don't for a while. It isn't until basically, like, they get, they fire a lot of bullets, like in the first few episodes. You're just like, oh, wow, like, what if they had plagiarism?

And what if they had this and what if they had that? And then by the time, and they even have, like, an episode where like the electricity isn't working. So everybody's sitting around doing this by candlelight. And there's all like controversy after controversy. And then by the time the Christine Lottie character comes in, I think they're doing way too much telling and not showing. And so there's like these 10 minute scenes of Sarah Paulson

talking about her religious beliefs and stuff like that. And that's another kind of Aaron Sorkin thinking his personal biography is kind of the shared experience of the world. It's like Christian Chenoweth, who this character is, based on was not that famous. Right. She was not on Saturday Night Live.

There was not really a Saturday Night Live performer who was also a very deeply devout Christian who espoused their views all the times. Like, that didn't happen. So this show had a bigger rating than 30 Rock. But was way more expensive. But it was way more expensive. But it was way, way, way more expensive. Yeah.

So at the end of the year, NBC decided to dump Studio 60 and keep 30 Rock. and then 30 Rock ended up staying on for, I think, another six years. Yeah, yeah, or six years, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's pretty obvious that, like, the same thing that happened on West Wing. I mean, it's like, Sorkin can only do this for so long. They really pretty much got to the bottom of the story barrel by the end of the 22 episodes. If you're doing a three-part episode about rescuing someone in Afghanistan,

that's pretty far afield from a show about a sketch comedy TV show. Yeah, it should have been more like the Q-car guy grabbed Harriet's ass. What do we do? Like those are the kind of things that are happening on a show like this. It did have one good outcome for people like us. This opened the door for him to write Social Network. Yes. And be involved in Moneyball.

And, you know, wasn't he involved in Moneyball? Yes, he wrote a version of Moneyball. Yeah. Yeah. But this kind of opened the door for him to do some movie stuff, but especially Social Network. If he's doing this show and it's on for five years, I don't know if he would have had the time to figure out social network, which became one of the most important movies.

And he got it, you know, I like, I think I might like Studio 60 more than Newsroom, but he got in do-over with Newsroom. Oh, I definitely like Studio 60 more than Newsroom. I thought Newsroom was unwatchable. He got to basically make all the behind-the-scenes making of television, the power of television, the importance of television stuff, but covering wars and covering the Boston.

in marathon bombing and stuff like that and make it seem so significant. I think I actually just I just like the characters more in Studio 60. It's interesting that he made shows about like his passion points, which were basically the White House, Sports Center, sketch comedy,

but never did like a movie TV series about life on the set of a movie or some director or something like that. That would have been the last piece, I guess of the sorkin about I wouldn't put it past him to do that

and you know I think that one of the things that he obviously has is like a very romantic nostalgia for the role television played in his life growing up

yeah and the lionizing which is the Judd Hirsch character basically talking about oh my god he wrote with the Smothers Brothers right and and he lionizes

these people and like you know when Judd Hirsch is talking you're like so it was TV in the 80s like the warm fire around which America like warmed its hands. Like, I don't know.

It seemed like there was some bad stuff on in the 80s as well, if I remember correctly. So it's a little bit roasted glasses. But yeah, it would be very interesting to see him do. I would actually like prefer if he just moves on. Does social network too about the, about meta. Yeah. And maybe a money ball about the Astros.

Money ball too. Well, it's a shame because I think Matthew Perry was ready to have his like all-time career year this year and the show never worked. But it did make me nostalgic for mid-2000s and what TV was like before we hit, like, where we were at Grant Land where they finally figured it out. And it was just a murderous role of great shows all at the same time. And people were like, oh, you know what makes more sense? Like an 11 episode show. Yeah. And just things that they kind of should have known, but advertising force them. Maybe we'll figure this out with our podcast. Maybe we'll like, you know what? The rewatchable should only be 20

episodes a year. And they're just 20 great ones. Early 80s prison dramas. And all prison movies. That's it. Any of the else you want to hit on this? No, I just,

this is a really fun little project to do. I enjoyed myself for watching this. I highly recommend for the people out there, spend the $2 and watch the pilot. I think it's worth it. It's half the price of a movie. I think you really enjoy it. And odds are you'll probably pay for the second episode.

I bet you'll watch the second one. Yeah, you watch the second one. You might even go to the third one. It was good to see everybody, though. That's it for the Prestige TV podcast. We're going to pop it on a bunch over the... We got the Crown coming back and a whole... What TV show are you the most excited about right now, C.R.?

I think the Fielder Show, The Curse. Yeah, what's that start? Next week. Okay. All right. This was produced by Jack Sanders. We will see next time on the Prestige TV podcast.