A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A LEO: Although last night's Studio 60 was, IMHO, pretty decent, it magnified one of the problems the show has. By increasing the prominence of Darius and Lucy and by elevating Suzanne to Matt's assistant (and wow, there's some unnecessarily catty commentary about her over at TWOP), we're up to at least 3 Charlie/Donna/Jeremy regular/recurring characters (arguably, you can add Dylan to the list as well), and a bunch of Josh/Sam characters (those who are smart, good at their job, and mean well, but invariably screw things up)--Matt, Danny, Simon, Jordan. So what's missing? The mentor figure. There's no Jed, no Leo, no Isaac, to be the voice of reason and calm and bring everyone together. It's not Jack (who's more in the vein of a Hoynes), it's not Harriet (who's some weird combination of CJ, Dana, and Sorkin's own psychological issues), and Cal isn't developed enough to make it work. The closest we've come, oddly, is Simon, and because his character has no control over anyone else, he can't function as "the boss" effectively. Mark McKinney's character last night might be an effort to fix that, but I'm not sure he's enough.