The clock is ticking for '24' and 'Studio 60'
BURBANK, Calif. — Ask Aaron Sorkin what's wrong with "Studio 60 on the
Sunset Strip," his television show about a television show, and his
answer will tell you everything.
It will tell you why NBC is placing such great faith in Sorkin, why it came back to him after the stormy four-year span when he created "The West Wing," wrote the lion's share of its episodes and created enough backstage drama to fill, well, another prime-time TV series.
But it will also tell you why this stubborn, charming, tormented and often hilarious talent may be doomed to go down with his ship.
At 9 p.m. CT Monday on KSHB-TV, NBC will air the first of seven new episodes of "Studio 60." At least that's the plan. But with ratings hovering near all-time record lows for that time period, "Studio 60" is on life support. Any other show, from anyone other than the dynamic duo of Sorkin and producer Thomas Schlamme, would surely be gone by now.
Production on the "Studio 60" set - which is not on the Sunset Strip but the WB lot in Burbank - halted briefly last week as a swarm of TV critics and reporters toured the set and interviewed the principals. As usual, Sorkin gathered the most voice recorders and gave us plenty worth playing back.
"I'm not particularly sophisticated when it comes to ratings," he began. "But I can tell you this: Our audience is 10 percent bigger than you think it is." That's because "Studio 60" is the most TiVo-ed show on TV. But since time-shifters are thought to be ad-skippers, Nielsen doesn't count them.
"When I compare the size of the 'Studio 60' audience to the size of the 'Sports Night' audience, I'm delighted," said Sorkin, drawing laughs from critics who fondly remembered his low-rated show from the late 1990s.
"Would we like more people to come to the show? You bet. But there isn't a lot we can do creatively. I think it's a mistake to do things creatively to attract that audience."
That said, and listen for the gear shift, "we happen to be falling into a period where there's a lot of romantic comedy on the show. Hopefully that will bring some people who otherwise wouldn't have been interested in the show."
When asked if he hadn't just contradicted himself, he said: "No, I think the romantic comedy was there all along. I planted it in there with Matthew Perry's and Sarah Paulson's characters. What I didn't write into the pilot was Amanda Peet getting pregnant." Hence the late-gestating hookup between Peet's character and Bradley Whitford's.
Funny, though ... I have the original press materials for "Studio 60," and there is only a fleeting mention of romance in the show description. What NBC was promising critics in July was, rather, "a crackling take on the drama behind the humor of producing a popular, late-night comedy sketch show."
Oh, yes, the humor part. A critic brought that up: Why are the comedy sketches on the show so lame?
"If enough people tell you one thing, it's got to be a little bit true," Sorkin said contritely. And then, a defense.
"All I was trying to show you was: Here they are doing the show. I was trying to give it the feel of a sketch comedy show, the way that on 'Sports Night' we would do a few moments of sports news or on 'West Wing' there'd be just a few moments of chatter about the Council of Economic Advisers.
"I think if you saw a random 10 seconds of 'Wayne's World' or a random 10 seconds of 'The Coneheads,' or some other sketch ... you wouldn't think it was funny. You wouldn't get it. So ... you're not supposed to be finding this funny. You're supposed to be finding this a rehearsal."
So there you go. Save your belly laughs for "Slings & Arrows."
Also airing tonight is the fifth hour of "24" (8 p.m. CT Monday, Fox 4), though I'm not sure all viewers have recovered from last week's white-knuckle opening, which featured Jack Bauer severing the jugular of a kidnapper with his teeth, torturing a terror suspect with a knife and watching helplessly as a mushroom cloud rose above (far) suburban L.A.
On a set visit to CTU, the supersecret headquarters of "24," last week, I asked Kiefer Sutherland about that torture scene.
"I liked that," he said cheerily. "When we actually got down to shooting it, I was looking for a piece of cantaloupe to put in my mouth so when I spit that out, that's going to be his Adam's apple. That's when we all started to act like we were 7 years old: How gross can we make it?"
Amazingly, Fox's censor had no problem with the biting scene.
"They had a problem with the fact he was spitting it out," said Jon Cassar, who directed the episode. "They had a bigger problem with Episode 2, where Assad (Alexander Siddig) puts a knife in the guy's knee. And it was a sound-effect problem. You didn't see anything, just a hand going into a knee. But the sound was so gruesome, they made us pull it back. They made us pull back a sound effect. People's stomachs were turning."
Like yours is now.
