Review: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

As an avid viewer of writer/creator Aaron Sorkin's previous television show, "The West Wing," I was looking forward to his new show "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." In addition to the talented "walk and talk" writing of Sorkin, I also must admit that I've had a huge girlish crush on Matthew Perry since he sported floppy hair, sweater vests and made snarky jokes on "Friends." West Wing alums Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield just added to the appeal. I also have enjoyed Amanda Peet and Steven Weber in their previous gigs, so it was props all the way around for good casting and hopefully good writing... then I watched it. And I was underwhelmed. Something just didn't seem right.

Don't get me wrong, I like it, it's just floundering a little bit in my opinion. Sorkin has the habit of making all of his characters very whip smart. I like that, thanks for not dumbing it down for America, we don't all have the reading level of third graders. But I also like my characters to be flawed. My huge problem with the show is that the characters have a tendency to be so sure of their intelligence that each scrape that they get in there seems to be no real fear involved in the situation. Even though for a brief moment they act scared and anxious, that quickly dissolves into this very evident and in my opinion "unrealistic" confidence. For example, Amanda Peet's character Jordan McDeere is thrown into a huge controversy on her very first day on the job as NBS president and she flips straight into her bright eyed, bushy tailed, extremely confident self immediately.

Actually, Amanda Peet has been driving me nuts in this show. I loved her in "Igby Goes Down," and even though I didn't like the movie, I thought she did great in "Something's Gotta Give." However, in this show she looks the same and does the same thing in each scene: her mouth is always parted in an expression of toothy expectation and her eyes are bright and wide open, as if she's holding her eyelids open with super glue. I just can't stand her performance here. And how I wanted to like her, I really did but I just couldn't convince myself that she was this character. Perhaps it is the character, somehow I think the show would be better, tighter more finely constructed if that character was completely written out off the show. Amanda Peet does well with realism, with conflict and consequence when the stakes seem real. In this show the stakes don't seem real, at least not for her character. If she were out of the picture that would give Stephen Weber more to do and I think he would do a good job with it. Just as long as they didn't write his character as being too stressed out and tightly wound.

The good points about the show: The chemistry between Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford is good and keeps the energy of the show going. Matthew Perry does a really great job of carrying Sorkin's dialogue and putting his own spin on the delivery of it. I'm so excited to see that Stephen Weber has branched out of the womanizing parts and into something a little different. And as a "West Wing" fan I get excited seeing all of the background actors from "Wing" showing their faces here too. I'm not sure how I feel about the central relationship drama between Perry's character and Harriet played by Sarah Paulson. I think I could begin to care about that relationship and the tug of war between the two hearts if the story line continues on the path it's going.

But something just doesn't hit me correctly with this show yet. I will give it time. I'll keep watching because it is fun to watch something that has some humor and style and wit to it, instead of the dumbed down drama and amped up humor of other shows. I'm just waiting for the realism to reach this show. It feels very much like a "show" and not a touch of it feels real to me. The characters feel like they just stepped off the page and don't have any blood coursing through their veins.

Verdict: Watch it. Even though I'm struggling with some of the characters and performances (Amanda Peet close your mouth in at least one scene, please!) I do recommend this show because no one writes like Sorkin on TV and Matthew Perry is having a good time with this part.