24 nóvember 2006

Að taka gamanið alvarlega

Þeir halda áfram að skrifa um það ,,afhverju s60 virkar ekki." Þetta er ágætis punktur, reyndar:
What [Studio 60] 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.

-b.

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