[geeking to live; or, i attempt to become relevant by fixing things myself]
i've been trying to put my finger on why i love studio 60 so much, and there are a couple of reasons -- i never wrote fic for west wing, and the only sports night fic i really committed to was about sports stories that i wish danny and casey had covered. i could never fit my writing into west wing. it was so good that i couldn't slide into the canon, and one of the things that appeals to me about studio 60 are its flaws, because i can write in it. there are holes to fill. i like that about a show, you know. i like that i can write in the fandom.
and i like how realistic the characters are -- and i know that some of you blinked at that, said, "these people are awful, they're bitter and cranky and cynical and horrid," and i go, yeah, they are. anybody who's worked in professional comedy long enough and well enough to land on a show like studio 60 is bitter, and cranky, and cynical, because it's a really fucking hard road to a show like that. professional comedians are some of the most cynical, cranky and bitter people i've ever met, and they're also kind and hilarious and brilliant and generous. the cynical, cranky characters, with a weird generosity and kindness underneath? they ring true to me. they're like the comedians i know.
(um, maybe i just know assholes. that's a possibility, too.)
i think partially i'm too close to this; my boy wants to do that for a living -- he wants to be matt albie. so. it's a subject close to my heart, the sketch show. people care that much about comedy -- my boyfriend is that committed to comedy, you don't even want to know how many times he's dropped his pants in public to get the laugh. so. i wince a little personally whenever i read someone saying that no one takes comedy that seriously. people do. and most of them are assholes about it, but they're funny assholes, and i love them anyway.
moving on: i love the way harriet calls him matthew. (and, omg, i love matt's converse sneakers. sneakers! and jeans! ADORABLE.) their chemistry is really growing on me, on the one hand, but on the other hand, it's. i don't know. it's not clicking quite right at the same time, maybe; matt and harriet's whole first scene was flat and not quite what i thought it should have been, and i loved them anyway. when he accused her of not lying because she was a good christian girl, she didn't stand behind that -- she said, no, it's because i'd get caught. that felt more real to me than almost anything else in the show so far, and i have no idea why.
moving better tonight. tom and matt together, moving well -- walk and talk. good stuff. all the baseball metaphors mixing with august strindberg = hilarious. tom wants to be matt when he grows up. n'aww.
"at some point you're going to have to be punished for that." CHECK ONE RIPOFF FOR THE WRETCH. ... or, wait, is that a chandler-ism? hmm.
i love danny tripp wearing jeans. and HELLO. THANK YOU. belushi and farley. thank you, wretch -- you have a history to work with, here. it's a rich, funny, brilliant history and sorkin should be playing it for all he's worth. he isn't, and thus i have to write about it in my porn.
also: "nice rack. tell jordan i'm not fifteen." and matt staring at her boobs. ahahahaha.
bradley whitford with a baseball bat is kind of retardedly hot.
plus side to this episode: very little actual sketch. good. the sketch is mostly bad.
ahahahaha, omg, i'm sorry -- tom giving matt dating advice is wonderful; tom never leaves the theater! of course he doesn't, he probably still can't believe that he's on studio 60. he's like half the boys i knew in chicago. sweet and stupid and funny under the bitterness. the show really picked up at the mid-point today; snappy and sharp, and HEY OMG BRADLEY BEATING PEOPLE UP! awes.
AS I WAS SAYING. the first half of the show was pretty good, sort of sweet and a little obnoxiously bitter, but the mid-point cut back from commercial, starting with tom and matt's second dating conversation through to bradley beating the hell out of ricky and ron through to sim and harriet re-doing the news, three times -- i thought it was lovely. funny. honest. much better paced and plotted than the first half. the second half of the show felt like sorkin. the scene with matt, and ricky and ron, was one of my favorites. "now you've got my respect." i liked the sports stuff in this episode; there was a lot less politics, which i thought was good because you can only beat that horse so much, and simon was lovely and smart, and poor harriet. oh, poor harriet -- she did it to herself, but he still calls her harry, you know, and i really, really loved the second half of this episode.
i mean, if it wasn't clear that i'm the only person on the planet who loves harriet unconditionally despite the shrill way sorkin writes her; i mean -- i know that woman. i've met her. i've drunk beers with her. i've watched men stomp all over her career. harriet's my girl. sorkin's not doing her fair shakes on this show.
if you didn't watch last night because you've given the show up for dead -- i think it was really the best episode so far. it leveled out, some, it was more even in tone than the other three have been (after the awkward opening matt-and-harriet scene), and it was smarter and better paced than the first three episodes. i'd download it or catch it on nbc.com if you still have any hope. (i have unconditional love, so.) the cocaine wretch may have it in him yet.
IN OTHER NEWS. if any of you are using the greasemonkey script del.icio.us bundle-management dimmer and it's stopped working in the last six weeks or so, i fixed it! (next goal: learn to write my own greasemonkey scripts.)
all you have to do: in the tools menu of firefox, open "manage user scripts" and click on the bundle-management script; in the right hand column of the window, where you can see the pages that the script affects, can it from whatever it says now to:https://secure.del.icio.us/settings/*/bundle*
and ta-da! it works again. (possibly you all figured this out on your own, in which case, omg, why didn't you TELL ME? i was so sad when it stopped working.)
and if you're not using this script and you have a lot of tags -- like i do -- and you bundle all your tags on del.icio.us -- like i do -- check it out. if you're unfamiliar with greasemonkey, it's an extension that you install in firefox, and then you can run user-written scripts that change appearance and web site settings to your tastes; there's even one to kill the navbar everywhere on livejournal, which i looove. some of my favorites are here.
now: you recommend greasemonkey scripts to me! what are your favorites?