‘Studio 60’ doesn't take comedy seriously

From time to time, he makes witty remarks about his dislike of conservatives, debates social issues with passing co-workers, worries over whether the public is smart enough to appreciate all he has to offer, obsesses over his former girlfriend, and ponders his place in American society. It's striking to note how similar the “Studio 60” workplace is to the workplace of “The West Wing.” The same kind of guy winds up working as an “SNL” writer who might otherwise wind up working as the White House deputy chief of staff. He’s serious, all right.

But fans who tuned in from the beginning cannot have tuned out because the show took itself seriously — or even a little overly seriously. Sorkin is, after all, a gravitas kind of guy. He opened the well-received pilot with a heavy-handed monologue from a fed-up producer about how we’re sinking into a vast cultural morass, and it’s all the fault of bad television — especially bad reality television. The implication that this show had come to save us from all the other shows we foolishly enjoy promised a relentless seriousness of purpose that has hung from the neck of every episode like a distracting cowbell ever since.

The misstep hasn't been seriousness. It's been borrowing that seriousness from external issues, rather than drawing it from the staff and their commitment to their work. Mostly, Sorkin has reached for importance by dousing the scripts with overwrought discussion of public-policy issues. He has covered how the fictional “Studio 60” runs into racism, religious prejudice, and conservative excesses. He has, in only seven episodes, centered plots around the war in Afghanistan, the blacklist, homophobia, and drug laws. This show is as serious as a heart attack. It would arguably be impossible to create a show about comedy that was less fun than this.

What the show has not taken seriously, however, is comedy itself. Doctors on “ER” are serious about saving lives. Cops on “Hill Street Blues” were serious about enforcing the law. Attorneys on “Law and Order” are serious about winning cases. At least part of the time, the comedy professionals on “Studio 60” should be serious about comedy. They should discuss it as comedy itself. Not as a contribution to red-state/blue-state politics, not as part of the greater struggle against corporate thugs, not as an attempt to elevate the culture, and not as an attempt to stand up to oppression. They should discuss it and take it seriously as comedy. We should be hearing talk about mechanics here — timing, structure, and well-known rules — just as we hear about surgeries and illnesses on a medical drama. It just isn’t happening.

This is the problem. These people have a passion that consumes their lives, and it is nowhere to be found on the show being written about them. The problem isn't the characters on “Studio 60” care too much about comedy; it's that they work on a comedy show and rarely even discuss comedy except in political contexts.

The show has been criticized for pretending the stakes could really be as high on an “SNL”-style show as they are in the White House, which is clearly nonsense. The stakes are enormously high for creative people, who drink, cut their own ears off, and go mad because they want so badly to be brilliant.

What "Studio 60" needs in order to be successful is a working vocabulary and understanding of the kind of workplace in which it is set. Without that, it cannot work. It's not that viewers aren't willing to care about comedy, but because no one in the audience can care if it isn't even compelling to the characters.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.

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