Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Complete Series (2006)

I'm like Lucy (Lucy Davis). I held it together until the end. The insane tension of those last four episodes built and built and built, and I held it together. Three lives were in grave danger--one of a character we've never actually seen or had a possibility of seeing--and several jobs were in danger, too. A lot of the threads had been woven in . . . well, since the first episode, actually. These are people who are given backgrounds and conflicts, many of which go back years before the show takes place, as long as ten years in some cases. And the history of the theatre, as laid out by Tom Jeter (Nathan Corddry) to his parents in the episode "The Wrap Party," is even older than that. This has been built on foundations that we never even actually see, and I really appreciate that in a TV show. And I held it together until the end--and, thank Gods, they ended it. Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch) pulls a Howard Beale on the air, interrupting a live broadcast of show-within-the-show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to rave about the quality of satire and news broadcasting in the United States. Needless to say, network chairman Jack Rudolph (Steven Weber) fires him. New network president Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet) brings in Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) and Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) to be co-executive producers, with Danny as director and Matt as head writer. They had worked there before and had quit/been fired over a sketch in the first episode after 9/11. As such, they have some history with some of the other people around the show. Matt had a passionate on again-off again love affair with Baptist and moderate conservative Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson). Neither one of them get along with now-head writers Ricky and Ron (Evan Handler and Carlos Jacott). In fact, it would not be too wrong to say that Matt hates them. And above all is president of the company Wilson White (Ed Asner), trying to make a deal with a tycoon from Macao, Zhang Tao (Raymond Ma). And so forth. There's a lot of playing with time on the series. The series takes place over the course of a season, actually beginning with the opening show of the season and closing with the final one, but the last five episodes all take place on the same night, for example. This is true of several episodes, in fact. IMDB's trivia section for each episode lists the "guests" on the show-within-a-show, sometimes seen and sometimes just mentioned, and there are probably only a dozen over a 22-episode season. The fun thing is that one of the main props for the show is the Big Scary Clock in Matt's office that counts down how long it is until the next episode. (The label above it is "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. G. Marx.") These people are, and must be, obsessed with time, but Aaron Sorkin is not afraid to let it stretch and rebound like rubber. And, of course, the episode summary doesn't cover all the important characters. There's Simon Styles (D. L. Hughley, who usually just annoys me but is great here), Darius Hawthorne (Columbus Short), Cal Shanley (Timothy Busfield), Andy Mackinaw (the ever-delightful Mark McKinney), and so forth. This is a character-rich show, with perhaps a dozen and a half or more people you're expected to know something about--including Tom's never-shown brother--and while I may not be able to remember all their names (Matt's assistant's name is Suzanne, right, and she's played by Merritt Weaver?), I can tell you a little something about practically any of them. And, yes, I am delighted that the musical prodigy--Kim Tao, played by Julia Ling--is a concert violist. I also like her father's reasoning; there are a lot of violinists out there and not enough violists. Speaking as a violist, I can only say, "Heck, yeah!" It is a witty, moving, intelligent, funny show. I cannot emphasize it enough. I wouldn't say it's my favourite TV show ever. I wouldn't say it's in my top five. It might be in my top ten and is definitely in my top 25. It has great acting, great writing, great sets, great guests. I haven't seen 30 Rock, I must admit, but based on the clips I've seen, I already like this better. So of course it was cancelled after a single season. Because the Gods of TV hate me. But it wasn't exactly a surprise that it was going to get cancelled, and they had the chance to do exactly what they did and let us know what happened to everyone. What they haven't gone, which grieves me, is put out a soundtrack album. This means that I will never be able to find that lute version Sting did on the show of "Fields of Gold."