Studio 60 Deserves a Second Look
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a smart, entertaining drama that isn’t finding its audience. While the pundits don’t say so, perhaps the attitude of Matt Albie as presented in the pilot has something to do with it. Albie is Matthew Perry’s character, the head writer of the Saturday Night Live-style show, and appears to be one of those caustic, anti-religious right folks. In the beginning, it looked like Albie was simply going to be a sounding board for bashing Christians, right down to the content of the “show within the show”, including a promised skit during the pilot titled “Crazy Christians”.
But wait … not so fast. Perry does a great job of playing the character as not just an anti-Christian bigot, but also as a complex person with more problems than solutions in his life. By the second episode, we realize the main source of his angst … comedy star Harriett Hayes, played convincingly by
Sarah Paulson. Their former relationship was known from the beginning, but there’s still some fire in the relationship, and a yearning they try to deny with varying degrees of success. Harriett’s character is not a one-dimensional Christian-as-ignorant-fool protrayal. Without compromising Hayes’ moral standards, Paulson plays her as a real flesh-and-blood person, demonstrating her acting chops as well as anyone on the cast. And the cast is very good, indeed.
This is a good show, with at least fair portrayals of complex people, rather than the stereotypes we usually see of “Crazy Christians”. Albie, in the liberal writer role, has more than just righteous indignation and anger; he has a soul, even perhaps a tormented soul, even if he doesn’t recognize the existance of spiritual matters. It is well written, with good characterizations and more depth than usually seen in a one-hour drama. Producer Aaron Sorkin has done a good job with this one, and it deserves a second look.