FEATURE FRIDAY | STUDIO 60

FEATURE FRIDAY | STUDIO 60

Welcome to another installment of Feature Friday, in which we share with you some of our favorite Movies & TV shows! When we first were dating one of the things we bonded over was chatting about some of our favorite shows. We’ve found that is the same for a lot of our couples too! So, every now and then, we will showcase a different movie or show and share some of the reasons why we recommend it and the things that we really like about it. So be sure to tune in, check out some of our favorites, and maybe even turn it into a date night with your fiance! Make dinner or order in and tune in to watch one of our favorites.

This week: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

It’s been mentioned in earlier installments of Feature Friday that Aaron Sorkin is – far and away – Pat’s favorite writer, and so we’re onboard for anything he writes. In 2006, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip debuted on NBC. It was a one-hour comedy-drama taking place behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live-style sketch comedy show. Unfortunately for S60, NBC had ANOTHER behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live-style sketch comedy show debut that fall – 30 Rock. One show lasted seven years, won six Golden Globes and sixteen Emmys. The other was canceled after one year and one Emmy (for Outstanding Guest Actor). You can probably guess which was which.

And that’s a real shame, because there was a ton of potential in Studio 60. It was, obviously, incredibly well-written. It had a great cast in Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber, DL Hughley, Sarah Paulson, Nate Corddry, and Timothy Busfield. You could tell Sorkin was pulling from some of his own experiences quitting/being forced out of his previous series The West Wing after four seasons in the battles between the producers of the show and the fictional network airing it. That tension and some real-life politics that would foreshadow what was to come on The Newsroom was probably what let the much more silly and whimsical 30 Rock get NBC’s stamp of approval.

Amazon carries the first season digitally for about $25 and on DVD for about $50, which still seems a little high eleven years after its one-year cancellation, but that’s also kind of a testament to just how good it is. If people weren’t willing to spend that, they wouldn’t be able to charge it, right? We think it’s worth whatever it costs, because it’s seriously one of the great underrated gone-too-soon shows of the last fiteen or so years.