I don’t have alot of time for TV. So it peeves me when I’ve been following a show only to have it yanked around on the schedule or suddenly vanishing.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, NBC’s highly acclaimed but little viewed offering from Aaron Sorkin was one of the few shows I watched religiously–or tried to. It was gone, supposedly cancelled, then back, then gone again only to show up on another night for its final episodes before it really was cancelled.
I loved this show–not just the witty dialogue that drives any of Sorkin’s work, but the characters. It was funny, it was charming, it was serious, it was clever, it was controversial, it was tongue-in-cheek…so why didn’t people “get” it?
I think because there was a disconnect in the marketing of the show. First it was billed as a comedy about the “behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live”. But there was another comedy debuting at the same time, 30 Rock (notice the similar titles), that truly WAS a comedy about behind the scenes of SNL.
And Studio 60 was so much more than a comedy. Then it was billed as a “romantic drama”–what was that? NBC’s answer to Grey’s Anatomy? And Studio 60 isn’t a romance.
The final nail in the coffin was when the show was condemned for taking current events and using them. Not in the comedy sketches, not to poke fun of (like the real SNL) but as part of a story line affecting the characters.
Hello? A TV show that can’t use real life events and see how its characters would respond? Guess that would make it either a comedy or a soap opera, right?
Studio 60 was a well written, highly entertained show that was poorly defined and marketed. It was cross genre, refused to its dying breath to be pigeonholed.
And now it’s dead…..why do I care? Because my books are, you got it, cross-genre. Poorly defined and unpigeonholeable.
They’ll be shelved in general fiction–that large mass of books that encompass everything from Homer’s Odyssey to speculative meta-fiction. They’re a blend of women’s fiction/medical suspense/and thrillers with romantic elements.
They’re different from anything else out there. Which makes me wonder if I should be worried.
People are always asking for different, but when you give it to them, like with Studio 60, they turn away and don’t want it, instead choosing the same old, same old.
Hmmm….think maybe Aaron Sorkin would take my call if I asked him for advice? What do people really want from their entertainment?
