After months of negotiation, reruns, and alternative programming, the writers’ strike is over, according to…Michael Eisner? Sure, why not?
Listen, it’s not like I haven’t found plenty of other things to watch since some of my favorite shows disappeared as early as November, but when Lipstick Jungle is the only new original programming on the air, you know it’s time to create some new shows.
First order of business: bring back The Office!
As a rather passive gaming enthusiast, I don’t know all that much about the history of video games; I have just enough information to appreciate the fact that the 8-bit games that lived in cabinet-sized machines have evolved into photorealistic adventures that fit onto a compact disc. I’m the perfect audience, then, for the Discovery Channel’s
Though my preference in television has long evolved away from the traditional sitcoms of my youth to hour-long dramas and half-hour comedies with high concepts and no laugh tracks, one throwback show has managed to be one of the few new series this year to keep its grasp on me:
It’s hard, really, to feel bad for Aaron Sorkin. After the runaway success of The West Wing and the critical embrace of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the series’ failure could easily be shrugged off. But for so many fans of Studio 60, its departure from the airwaves marked a significant downturn in the amount of quality television available. If only Sorkin hadn’t felt it so necessary to continue telling us so.
Upon the cancellation of Arrested Development and Veronica Mars, two of television’s most intelligent shows, fans clamored for them to be transferred to HBO, where ratings are less important and advertisers are virtually nonexistent. Anyone looking for those shows to resurface is out of luck, but they can take solace in the network’s Sunday lineup, which now boasts one of TV’s smartest shows in Flight of the Conchords.
You should consider yourself very lucky, because this is the last time I’ll write about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip…at least until the DVD set comes out. That’s right; last night was the season and series finale of Aaron Sorkin’s erstwhile series about the behind-the-scenes drama of a late-night sketch comedy show hampered by conservative America. The final six episodes were a strange mix between limping to the finish line and going out in a blaze of glory; the same can kind of be said of the entire series. Marketed as a comedy at the same time as a show with an identical ad campaign (30 Rock, which will be coming back for a second season), Studio 60 was never presented to audiences the proper way. At the same time, Sorkin never managed to spread out his political sermons among stories that could keep the show moving at a good pace.