Today in TV History: ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’ Left Us Forever

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 28, 2007

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, “What Kind of Day Has It Been.” (Season 1, Episode 22) [Watch on Amazon Instant Video]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: It all began with such promise! A pilot episode featuring the writing talents of Aaron Sorkin, making his triumphant return to NBC after parting ways with the network mid-way through The West Wing‘s run. An all-star cast included Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber, and Sarah Paulson. An attention-grabbing opening scene featured Judd Hirsch delivering a blistering monologue about the sorry state of modern television and how the men and women making it were failing in their duty to serve the public. Everything looked prestigious, and moodily dark, and stridently confident in its vision of making television something we could be proud of again. If this all sounds like the perfect environment for a TV show about the backstage workings of a late-night comedy show, Studio 60 was the show for you, and Sorkin and NBC could have really used a few more million of you.

After the pilot, the fall from grace for Studio 60 was swift. The idealism that we (or at least a lot more of us) loved so much on The West Wing felt so much more like a lecture when the stakes were late-night comedy. The characters managed to be even preachier, even more strident about their worldview than White House employees, and not a single one of them were funny enough to believably be employed in comedy, much less at its highest levels. And the decision to make a central pillar of the show an endless argument between Perry and Paulson’s characters on the subject of religion vs. atheism was an unbearable as it sounds:

The grand, infuriating romance of Matt and Harriet wasn’t the show’s only problem, nor was its obnoxious persistence in addressing each and every one of TV’s evils and chalking it up to the internet or things generally not being as good as they used to be. There was also the stalky romance of Danny and Jordan (Whitford and Peet), the inability to deliver sketch comedy that felt in any way authentic … I could go on.

Studio 60 is the worst thing Aaron Sorkin has ever made. And yet it’s also FASCINATING because of it. I find myself thinking about the show often, baffled that something so misguided and unjustifiably pompous made it through the writing/development/casting/filming/publicity process as it was. I think we should all get together and watch it once a year. Maybe not all 22 episodes, but five or so. We should not let it go forgotten. Lest the mistakes of the past be repeated. (…Like they were on The Newsroom.)

[You can rent “What Kind of Day Has It Been” on Amazon Instant Video]

Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.

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