In Which I Get Pissed Off by a Dumb TV Show

[snurri]

I am a Midwesterner. I was born here and I've always lived here. There's a decent chance I always will. The lazy dismissal of the citizens of "flyover country" is one way to quickly get on my bad side; in other words, if you use "Midwesterner" as shorthand for "ignorant and unimaginative" I will get ticked off. Not to say that we don't have a few of those folks here, sure. But I don't care where you live, you've got some of those folks living on your block. Don't try to pretend that sophistication is a regional attribute.

That's only one strike against last night's episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Aaron Sorkin, according to Wikipedia at least, was born in New York City, so perhaps he's never met anyone who admitted to being from the Midwest. I don't know. But from the moment that Tom mentioned that his parents were coming in from Columbus, Ohio for a visit, I was afraid there was badness coming. And Jesus Christ was there. Tom's mother goes out of her way to tell Simon, the show's only black cast member, how much she likes Halle Berry; his father doesn't give a crap about Tom's work and only expresses any emotion when he inexplicably blurts out a line about his younger son being in Afghanistan. Neither of Tom's parents has ever heard of Abbott and Costello or "Who's On First?" (for god's sake, if any of you reading this haven't heard of it, go watch this right now) and they are so dazed by the big city stage lights that they are unable to grasp their son's success.

Argh. I haven't spent much time in Columbus, but it's a big town. Three-quarters of a million people, nearly a quarter of whom are African-American. They have TV there. Cable TV, even. Lights, too. Fucking hell, Sorkin; seriously, are you smoking the crack again? I can't buy this as a character note, because although we're five episodes in, Tom is barely a character at this point, and I'd guess we won't be seeing his parents again. If you're trying to make some point about Middle America vs. Hollywood, then congratulations, you've just regurgitated every contemptuous dismissal of the audience as a bunch of clueless, reactionary rubes ever committed. The next time you get on a plane, try getting off somewhere that's not the coast. I'd offer to show you around, but I've got a problem with ignorant people who think they know a lot. They rub me wrong.

What with all the regional stereotyping, I hardly had the energy to get irritated with the mess Sorkin made of the race issues (apparently all black people come from the ghetto, and the "good" ones feel guilty for getting out of it) or his trademark civics-lesson-within-an-episode (the random appearance of a blacklisted sketch writer from the Sid Caesar era, held up as a mirror for us to better watch the continuing hagiography of Matt and Danny). Man. I just don't think I can watch this anymore.

Comments

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

This episode was a badly plotted piece of shit. It was all over the place, and, me from Kansas, I get just as pissed off as you at the terrible stereotyping like the ones Tom's parents filled.

This show has nowhere to go as far as I can tell. I like the actors, I like the dialogue, but it has nothing. to. say.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Amen. It's been messy from the beginning, but I've lost patience with it.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

My vision of "midwesterner" is "creepily friendly." The Dude is from Chicago, which, I mean, not really the nicest city evar, and even so he is always the target for the talkative homeless people, never me. I come from "please go away" people, also known as New England. The Dude has not yet mastered the forbidding mien of the northeast.

I don't watch Studio 60, but I coulda told you Sorkin would be heavy-handed and dismissive. Due wrote a TV show about presidential politics, featuring a president from New Hampshire (who had been governor of the same state), and that state being one of the most famous and electorially-canvassed areas in the country every four years? Guy couldn't be bothered to look up how you pronounce the city of Concord.

Lame!

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was never a "West Wing" fan; I came for the "Sports Night" love, and I was hoping for something more like that. I don't even know what this show is.

"Creepily friendly," eh? Heh.

[jennreese.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. I kept waiting for Sorkin to pull the twist on the parents plotline, to have them break the stereotype in an amusing and surprising way.

But nope.

I can't believe this is the same guy who brought us Sports Night. He must have Lucas syndrome.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Amen. God, I loved "Sports Night."

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You're from the Midwest?

Who logs you in to your computer every morning?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

See, now you're trying too hard. :-P

[gregvaneekhout.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, and yes. I want to like this show, I really do, but it is clumsy, contrived, and lazy.

At least it's shown us how to land a staff writer position on a prestigious network sketch comedy show: Perform three minutes of crap-ass stand-up. Even I can do that.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I have complete faith in your ability to perform crap-ass stand up. Wait, that came out wrong . . .

I mean, the guy's stand-up was interesting, and I can see where they might think he had the potential to write decent comedy. But hiring him on the spot makes them look like a pair of horse rustlers out to lasso them some minority folks, and the message seemed to be that, if you can't find anyone funny, you might as well just pick someone well-behaved and palatable. Makes. No. Sense.

[sallytuppence.livejournal.com]

Never seen the show. Which is probably for the best.

As we like to refer to Iowa, we're "one of the joke states."

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Growing up in Minnesota, we used to make Iowa jokes. In junior high. They're not so very funny nowadays.

Yeah, you're not missing much.

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

I don't watch much TV nowadays, and mostly for the reasons of lazy writing and sterotyping. I'm just tired of having to compromise -- 'well, it has a decent plot, even though it's misogynistic like hell.' Seriously, can't we have a show with good dialog, interesting plot, and actually thoughtful treatment of *people* rather than a stereotype of their geographical/gender/race group. Gah.

(And you think Midwesterners got it bad?)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to give up on TV again. For about a decade, thanks to "Buffy," I was convinced that TV could be worthwhile. Now everyone and their brother is trying to prove me wrong.

(True, too, about the treatment of "furriners" on TV. I mean, if it's not Balki or Yakov Smirnoff . . . man, I can't think of a single good depiction of a foreign character on recent TV.)

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

It's not Columbus itself; it's the suburbs. The Columbus suburbs are... distressing.

The lazy dismissal of the citizens of "flyover country" is one way to quickly get on my bad side; in other words, if you use "Midwesterner" as shorthand for "ignorant and unimaginative" I will get ticked off.

Am I a Midwesterner? Buffalo, Cleveland, Tucson... It's like I've always lived a little too far east, or a little too far west, or a little too right in the city. Anyway, my preferred slightly-offensive use of the word "Midwesterner" is as a synonym for "someone thinks ketchup is too spicy."

[snurri.livejournal.com]

It's not Columbus itself; it's the suburbs. The Columbus suburbs are... distressing.

That might be so, but I don't trust that Sorkin knows it--nor is it common knowledge enough to make hay of on a nationwide TV show.

I think Cleveland is Midwestern, or at least borderline.

And as for your preferred regional slur, bollocks. Do you know how many Hispanics live in the Midwest? Somalians? Hmong? DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FUNNY? HUH?

Erm. Sorry.

[merylinabarrel.livejournal.com]

I agree with this post completely and whenever anyone implies that the midwest is all backwater hick towns, I love to point out that Columbus, Ohio, the city that fictional Tom's fictional parents are from, has the fifteenth highest population of any city in the country. That's more than Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas or Atlanta, which somehow are all deemed more cultural.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Apparently we are not allowed to have culture. No mountains and no oceans, ergo no culture.

[jonhansen.livejournal.com]

As a resident of the Atlanta area, I defy anyone who claims we're cultural.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

What amazes me about Sorkin - besides the watching the slow painful flameout of the show as Aaron Sorkin gets away with preachy, poorly researched, autobiographical wish fullfillment crap so bad (like having the writer and director characters get stopped by autograph hounds outside a nightclub) it's like he snuck into an SNL Backstage Fan Fiction site run by people who never watch the show and then upped the Mary Sue factor by 10 - is how he keeps shoving these speeches about Quality and Art and Not Condescending To The View into people's mouths while at the same time engaging in condescending, cheap-ass writing.

One week he has a character "bravely" refuse to do a joke about a school censoring some play because it would mean mocking a small town of working class people - as if economics excuses censorship or would be a reason anyone gave for killing a joke, ever, outside of a comedy show run by the West Wing staff.* Then another week he has the dramatic and comic foils being uptight Midwestern parents so fucking out of touch they've never heard the 5 billion references to Who's On First which would have saturated their generation. This from a guy who thinks a Gilbert and Sullivan sketch would be a genius stroke cold open sketch in 2006. Good god, the Capitol Steps are more in tune with the zeitgeist. Of course, I knew it would be bad from the moment the plot stopped dead so some of the youngest characters on the show could engage in dialogue voicing Sorkin's personal grudge against internet chat boards (left over from his freakout on Television Without Pity a while ago).

The West Wing was a Capra-inspired fantasy, but audiences were intersted in idealistic projections when it involved the White House (and it was still better researched). When it involves Saturday Night Live, the fantasy projections which are interesting have NOTHING to do with noblity.

Sorkin seems to be projecting a pre-SNL sensibility onto his post-SNL world - as the Chicago Reader put it: "But that's Studio 60's dirty little secret: it's nostalgic for the days when people didn't have any choice. Back in the golden age, when Saturday Night Live was first hitting it big -- which was also when Network came out -- the media landscape was a monolithic police state."

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Good god, the Capitol Steps are more in tune with the zeitgeist.

Oh man. It's horrible but true.

And yes. I mean, if there remains any kind of raison d'etre for the show it would seem to be "The audience is smarter than you think." Except, it seems, whenever we actually meet a member of the audience, be they 50-something Midwesterners or cocktail waitresses named Treasure. It's like he's trying to write a love story to the viewing public, but his loathing keeps showing through.

[jonhansen.livejournal.com]

Well, if it makes you feel any better, Wikipedia has the Nielsen ratings for each week of Studio 60 at the bottom of the entry, and it seems pretty clear the show's in free fall. Given how expensive it is to produce, I'm guessing it won't last the season.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's been steadly bleeding viewers. I mean, I'd be happiest if it were a better show that lots of people watched. So much potential . . . wasted! It is kind of too bad.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Neither of Tom's parents has ever heard of Abbott and Costello or "Who's On First?" (for god's sake, if any of you reading this haven't heard of it, go watch this right now)

1. I didn't know it. You may or may not consider "being British" an excuse.
2. Don't take this the wrong way, but ... that's the height of US comedy?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

1. "Being British" may be an excuse.
2. Not the height, no . . . in that era I'd put the Marx Brothers, at least, ahead of that sketch. But it's definitely a touchstone.

[jlundberg.livejournal.com]

I was really disappointed with this episode to. I'd actually been enjoying it up until now.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had too, despite its problems. Right now I'm not sure if I'll keep watching.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Anyhow, any real Midwesterner knows Ohio is "out East." :-)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I figure they get referred to as "flyover," so they're family.