Final Episodes

NBC has been burning off the final episodes of this show, as it has been officially cancelled and won't see the light of a second season. I actually have been TiVoing it all season. I started doing so because the advance reviews were so good. And, while I was certainly not enamored by the early episodes, I remained tuned primarily because the cast is so good.

I think I can pretty much figure out why this show didn't catch on with the viewing public. First off, I am not a big fan of Aaron Sorkin. I never watched either "Sports Night" or "The West Wing." He overwrites his dialogue as if he is trying to do a polish of "Hamlet." Real people do not talk the way he writes. I know lots of clever people, but they do have their moments where mundane conversation is of the order. Not with Sorkin's characters. Every word from their mouths must be more profound than the last. And none of it sounds remotely organic or authentic.

Of course, you can get away with dialogue like that on "The West Wing" where they were always solving some crisis that was imperiling the country. (Has somebody finally told Martin Sheen that he's not really the President?) That type of scriptwriting is not germane when the major conflict of the week revolves around the production of a weekly SNL-like show. There's really no drama there that can engage the average viewer, who has never been in the position of jockeying to be the one that gets to wipe Lorne Michaels' ass at the weekly wrap party. You can't make relevant drama out of something that is inherently irrelevent. It's as if you start promoting Osama Bin Laden for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Nevertheless, I have found the cast to be dynamic. Matthew Perry has done a solid job of making us forget him as Chandler, especially when the writers went really inside to depict his character as having a prescription drug addiction. (I understand one of Perry's DUI convictions happened right in front of my apartment building.) I've always liked Amanda Peet and Timothy Busfield, the latter primarily because he and I shared a first class row and conversation on AA Flight 114 on September 20, 2001.

The set was amazing. The production values were there. And the cast was luminous. They tried in later episodes to develop plots that were not tied to that stupid show they are producing. But, it was too little too late. I would have ultimately liked to see more...of less.

One friend remarked to me that the sketches on the fake SNL show were not funny. I replied that they were at least paying attention to detail on that one. The real SNL has not been funny since Phil Hartman left.

I am sure they will try to amortize the costs even further by putting out a box set of the entire season. It's not worth the plopdown of a debit card. But, there's always Netflix.

Dinner last night: chicken tenders and mixed green salad at the Arclight following "La Vie En Rose."