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Studio 60: Season 1, Episode 15

A tv post by erin, posted on February 11, 2007 at 11:24 pm

“The Friday Night Slaughter” spoilers below:

Things that happened

Though it’s way too premature, Aaron has decided it’s flashback time! The episode shoots back and forth between Friday night, sometime 2007, and Friday night, sometime 1999, when Matt was a year into writing for the show, Luke was around and Harriet was brand-spanking new. In the present, the show is twenty-eight minutes too long, so it’s mainly banter between Danny and Cal about which sketches should be cut and which should stay. Tom and Dylan are lobbying to get their sketch on the air. However, Matt is too distraught about Harriet to really care, and spends most of his time in a haze that’s perfect for……..flashbacks! In 1999, Matt hasn’t gotten a sketch on the air yet. Harriet shows up and Matt and Luke both decide to write a sketch for her. This is a bad idea because she is new and they both are inexperienced writers. Also, Matt finds out Harriet is a Christian and this leads to many discussions about God and Jesus and Angels that are not unlike the many discussion about God and Jesus and Angels in previous episodes. Luke’s sketch got on, Matt’s didn’t. Back to the present where Matt realizes that his friend in the past, Tim, is a current figment of his imagination, and perhaps foreshadowing his future inability to be funny.

Things that were good

  • Tom and Dylan caring about their sketch and their mood swings from ‘It’s so in!’ to ‘It’s so not!’ were the one highlight of this episode.
  • Very little Jordan!! The less Jordan, the better. I am also excited for when Amanda Peet is no longer pregnant so her wardrobe can get pretty again and I can look at her skirts and not her giant teeth. We know she is pregnant now! You can stop dressing her in all black! It was nice to see her actually do her job the very few moments she was on-screen and told Danny to shove it when they are working. However, every scene she had with Danny belongs under the NEXT headline and not this one.
  • The realism of the flashbacks. From the clothes to the computers to the music, it really felt like 1999 (which was so very long ago).

Things that were not so good

  • Every scene with Danny and Jordan.
  • Danny talking to Jordan’s unborn baby was just plain creepy.
  • The redundancy of the Matt-Harriet flashbacks! She’s always been Christian! He’s always hated it! Luke has always liked her! Matt has always hated that! We got that without an entire episode dedicated to explaining it.
  • It’s way too soon for a flashback episode! These characters aren’t fleshed out enough nor do I know them well enough to care about their back stories.
  • Matt’s newfound drug addiction. Danny just got out of rehab, buddy. Don’t you learn anything from your best friend? Mind you, he is a creepy stalker who has no clue how to treat a lady or talk to a fetus, but this is one lesson we all can learn from him: Drugs are bad.
  • No Jack! I missed him tonight.

Worth watching if…..

You still don’t get that Harriet is a Jesus-loving-Christian-freak and Matt is a hater-of-Jesus-loving-Christian-freaks. Aaron Sorkin has been so very subtle about this plot point, I’d understand if you haven’t gotten that yet.

In Five Words

These recaps are becoming painful.

But I will solider onwards…….

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