Studio 60 Gets Dowdified

I watched Studio 60 again. Not even really on purpose. I was trying to finish watching The Good the Bad and the Ugly, but for all its grisly Western grit, it’s kind of a quiet, contemplative movie at times, and so it doesn’t gel well with a raucous house full of mid 20s men and their stereo systems. Clint Eastwood may be a nameless cigar-chomping badass, but somehow he loses his mystique when set to a thudding techno beat. So off went the DVD player while the channels just flipped themselves right over to Sorkinland.

And yes, it’s still very much a show that is first and foremost about Aaron Sorkin, almost more so than it is about its ostensible topic, television. Christine Lahti showed up playing a wry, attractive, left of center D.C. columnist always ready with a quip. Yes, folks, it’s former Sorkin flame Maureen Dowd reimagined as . . . a blonde. Lahti got the mannerisms down pretty well, but she didn’t have much to do other than bat her eyes and show some cleavage while helpfully providing a pivotal piece of plot information. One wonders (or perhaps hopes) what dirt he’ll dish on Dowd as the show continues.

With the inclusion of the Dowd character, Sorkin is starting to seem absolutely incapable of keeping anyone from his life out of his show. You know how that turned out for Woody Allen in Deconstructing Harry, don’t you? “I’m a guy who can’t function well in life but can in art,” is the film’s key line, and it’s probably just as appropriate for Sorkin as it is for Allen.

Still the episode was much better than the last two, mainly because the show focused on—shock and surprise!—the character relationships and the hectic business of running a live, weekly TV show. If Sorkin can keep this up, I might even go back to watching the show on purpose.