Tuesday, February 20, 2007

I HOPE IT'S GOING TO BE WHAT 'LARRY SANDERS' DID WITH TALK SHOWS. I WOULD LIKE TO DO THAT WITH LATE NIGHT SKETCH COMEDY: Whatever our recent problems with Aaron Sorkin were, last night's apparent end to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a moment for sadness, not schadenfreude. This blog was on the show's love train since the fall of 2005 and we followed its casting and other developments faithfully because, as is obvious, we're fans of Aaron Sorkin's work and believed in his ability to deliver a brainy mix of drama and comedy, creating characters in whom we believe and for whom we want to root.

So, what went wrong here? Was it mostly the shift to romance, as USA Today's Robert Bianco claims? Is Tim Goodman of the SF Chronicle right that "the premise wasn't so much flawed as doomed" because viewers didnt care enough about late night sketch comedy to see it treated seriously, or was Sorkin himself correct that the show was actually a success (to him) because it had more viewers than Sports Night? Was it just not funny enough?

The good news: Sorkin's new play, The Farnsworth Invention, opens in workshop in La Jolla tonight. Here's a nice preview.

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