You Can Reject Me Or Be Jealous Of Me But You Can't Do Both

Variety announced today that Studio 60 is being shelved after tonight. Sigh. Although I'm trying to remain optimistic, it doesn't look good. I should stop right here and say that if you don’t watch the show, you may want to just skip this post all together because it’s all I’m going to write about today. I may not get the chance to do this again. People feel very strongly about this show. They love it or they hate it. Or they very strongly want to love it but find themselves hating it.

Studio 60 turns me on. (For which the Land Baron is eternally grateful.) And not just because I have had a thing (and by thing I mean a full blown obsession) for Bradley Whitford since the first time he walked into the White House.

I love the show. I love the pacing and the humor in the conversations. I love that they steamroll right along so if you didn’t get the joke, you don’t have time to think about it and have to go back and re-watch it on TiVo until you do. I love that it’s about the industry. When I watch the show it makes me hurt to be back out in Los Angeles. I love Matthew Perry’s character and his obsession to be perfect at his writing. When his character is on the screen I feel like I’m looking at who I was supposed to be, who I still am hidden underneath this façade of suburban stay-at-home mommydom. Matt makes me stop breathing every time he tries to find the right word, the right sentiment, the right theme that will tie everything together. His character is who I am in the deepest corners of my soul.

And yet, the show is still finding it’s footing. Although many people cannot, I can forgive this because so many things are going right in the show. The ensemble is amazing- you won’t find that many talented, well-honed actors on one sound stage anywhere else in Hollywood. I think up until now, Matthew Perry has been one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. (Although, he did appear in a brilliant, three-episode arc on The West Wing during the last days of Friends.) The writing on Studio 60 is smart and fast and doesn’t cater to anyone. It is not a show for the masses. The masses won’t get the Gilbert and Sullivan jokes. And that’s ok. Now if we could just convince the execs at NBC of that…

So maybe to some of you, Studio 60 is just a show; but to me, it’s an alternate reality. It rekindles that other part of me- the part of me that gets lost among the playdates and the preschool and the laundry- the part of me that struggles to survive these years of toddler identity theft. That’s why I’m rooting for it’s survival. That may be a lot to put on one television show. But I think they can handle it.