I couldn’t have cared less, I remember thinking. The portly tour guide panted his way about the sound stage of a new television show, showing me the ins-and-outs of the set that looked, to me anyway, like the inside of a 1980’s ballroom.
“This show is gonna be huge!” he said emphatically as I tried to keep my mouth from opening in a yawn. The yawn sucked through my nostrils as any polite person knows, and still made my eyes water, much to my annoyance. I hoped the guide didn’t take it as me being emotionally moved by his tour.
Sure it's going to be huge. I thought to myself. And you’d know this because it has half a fake subway car embedded in the left side of the unfinished stage? Or did you sit down with the PR people and they told you to say this on your tours?
He then huffed out a list of individuals involved with the show—individuals who were supposed to give it some credibility. I really hadn’t heard of any of them. At the time I was neither knowledgeable about, and certainly not a fan of either Aaron Sorkin or Bradley Whitford. After watching one season of West Wing, that all changed.
So did my perspective on this new show.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip premieres tonight at 10pm on NBC. The show, a back-stage story about Hollywood television production, is written and produced by Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme. It stars Bradley Whitford, Samantha Peet, and Matthew Perry. Critics are calling it the smartest show on television. I would agree, at least, with the smart part. It’s intelligent and witty—much like all of Sorkin’s writing. But it also provides an interesting vantage point for social commentary.
“Helen Haye’s character represents one of the most underrepresented, marginalized groups in Hollywood today---she’s smart, sexy, fun, interesting, and she’s also a Christian. Christian’s aren’t, (and I must say part of can be attributed to me, actually), aren’t portrayed like that by most of Hollywood. They’re portrayed as sort of the traditional, right-wing conservative-types,” Sorkin said today in a Q and A session about the new series. I.e., conveyed as "nutjobs", I thought to myself.
In the show, Helen Hayes has a relationship with Matt Albi, a northeastern liberal Jew who calls the audience of the 700 club an undressed-version of the Klu Klux Klan. This religion/relationship friction is attributed for causing a breakup between the characters—her faith versus his opinion of Christians.
“Hayes and Matt (Perry’s character) have a lot of love in their relationship, but it’s doomed to failure because she has been raised to believe that he is ultimately going to burn in hell,” he added.
Ouch.
The drama of political, conservative, hypocritical Christians versus individuals of devout hearts but quiet mouths is not a drama Sorkin hasn’t attempted in the past.
Fans of the West Wing will recall that President Bartlett and his wife, while feisty and at times foul-mouthed, were quite knowledgeable of and steeped-in Biblical Scripture and the values for which it stands. The drama of individual faith versus politicized and socially bifurcated bullying masquerading as Christianity is a theme throughout much of Sorkin’s writing and the shows that Schlamme directs.
Just like his West Wing pilot that highlighted an angry group of conservative Christians as offensive, conniving, feckless, and bigoted, so similarly portrayed are the “40 million American” Christian viewers referenced in the pilot of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”.
And just like the West Wing pilot (where Bartlett enters the show quoting the First Commandment), a true believer comes forth in the dialogue—this time in the form of a valiant Helen Hayes.
Also embedded in the show’s dramatic relational dialogue surrounding politics, faith and the “business” of Hollywood, is the discussion of art and its adherents.
“Television is the best form of theatre we have in America today,” Schlamme said when asked if he thought that the television industry is as depreciated as it's portrayed in the show.
I was surprised by his comment. Not because I disagree, (I am, rather, completely ambivalent) but because what Schlamme and Sorkin do on the screen is what has generally been done in theatre---it’s intelligent, witty, and well-written. Since I can’t say that for all forms of television, and I think very few people would, I am surprised that he did.
Regardless of the reception Studio 60 receives from general audiences, I think the show provides a reason for conversations to happen that have to do with marginalized groups like honest, loving, non-politicized Christians in Hollywood. I think it provokes dialogue about art and what is happening to it in the United States today. And I think that behind its glossy façade, the show conveys common experiences of back-stabbing, loyal friendship, and more emerging concepts like male intimacy, females with professional gall and common individuals fighting the straightjackets of bureaucracy. Those things, I think, will be the show’s greatest contribution.
