Pilot

Watched the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip pilot episode last night, which NBC released on Netflix earlier this month. Unfortunately, only the one pilot episode was on the disc; the other content was a pilot from another new show called "Kidnapped", about which I could hardly care less. Not sure why NBC decided to put the Studio 60 pilot out on DVD, maybe just to generate buzz? I've watched it and I'm pretty excited for the regular season.

It's a bit more Sports Night than West Wing, though it seems to borrow from both. Like Sports Night, it revolves around producing a television show, with executive decisions, control room banter, and personal/ethical issues at the forefront. The ensemble cast is huge and full of well-established and rising actors, and the dialogue and drama are similar in style to Sports Night, if not slightly better paced. Other similarities:

To Sports Night:

• The two-tiered control room looks very similar to the one in Sports Night
• Felicity Huffman makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of the show
• Matt and Danny (played by Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford, respectively) interact a lot like Casey and Dan, the hosts of Sports Night
• The "woman in power" character; this time it's Amanda Peet playing the president of the network
• A rigid network hierarchy, with a media group executive at the top, network chairman above the president, and the unfortunate Standards and Practice guy acting as middleman without much respect from anyone around him.

To The West Wing:

• Timothy Busfield and Bradley Whitford return in prominent roles
• The opening sketch from the show-within-the-show is an Oval Office address, both homage to The West Wing and parody of a common SNL skit
• Lots of walking and talking in corridors, and at least one collision
• Danny's drug-relapse backstory, playing a similar role to Leo's alcoholism
• Matt's not-a-druggie-but-happened-to-be-on-medication stint is reminiscent of two hilarious scenes from the West Wing, one with President Bartlett and one with Miss Federer.

Unlike Sports Night and The West Wing, however, Studio 60 doesn't have an overarching father figure who grounds the various moral dilemmas and protects the younger staff (Sports Night had Isaac Jaffe, The West Wing had Leo). There also isn't as much humor or rapid-fire dialogue, though they might be underplaying that aspect for the purposes of the pilot (pilot episodes tend to appear pretty lame and overreaching in hindsight, even in past Sorkin shows). Finally, I'm wondering if there will be an equivalent of the Sports Night control-room-nerds or, of course, Ed and Larry.