Obsequious Conundrum
February 23rd 2007 | 02:24 | TV
I’m catching up on the most recent episodes of the OC (as you do at 2 in the morning on a school night) and I’m so perplexed as to how these kids get so regularly into trouble? Taylor has decided to woo Ryan by becoming his (wait for it) sleep therapist, and Summer has gotten into trouble at University by, you guessed it, stealing an overweight bunny rabbit. And they wonder why it got cancelled.
It’s also not hard to see why Aaron Sorkin’s amazing new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is in trouble.

Not only is it far too intelligent for mainstream television, but it is 40 minutes every week of brilliantly scripted and delivered deconstruction of the bizarre workings of the American television industry, but a scathing attack on the ridiculousness of the religious right’s dominance of popular culture. And Matthew Perry is brilliantly deadpan in a role that finally sheds Chandler. Not that any of this matters when it cannot possibly be allowed to survive. It was fine for Sorkin to point his arrows at Washington, but it seems that Hollywood is unable to take the joke when they are the target. It may be poor ratings that sunk it, but it was almost certainly a lack of support that sent it staggering down the street with a knife in its back.

