Dear Studio 60

Hey, what's up? How've you been? I’m okay. Monday's kind of suck. I'm not really into Heroes so I feel a little like a social outcast, but I was totally pumped when I saw you! Okay, I wasn't "pumped" so much as "interested in getting in on the ground floor of one of those fancy Aaron Sorkin shows everyone loves." I never watched West Wing and I only got into Sports Night once it was cancelled and rerunning on Comedy Central. So I was all set to really love you.

And at first, I was in solid like with you. The religious stuff was a little weird and I didn't buy for a minute that anyone outside LA would care about Jordan McDeere's sorid personal life--I did an informal poll of my Red State friends and none of them knew of (or cared about) the likes of Dawn Ostroff and Les Moonves--but I was super smitten with Nate Corddry and for once Sarah Paulson's kind of weird voice wasn't bugging me. Also, Matthew Perry? What's not to love?

I know everyone's been on you about how the skits you show aren't funny, and they’re not, but that’s not the biggest problem. I’m just gonna rip off the band-aid: You take yourself way too seriously. Can’t there be any gray area? Like a black comic who isn’t Simon with his South Central tale of woe* (and that new non-funny emo guy doesn't count)? Or maybe a believer in God who isn’t BFF with Pat Robertson? I like Harry, but jeez. And what was with the super confrontational Gay Mafia last night? That was totally weird and…no, just weird.

Studio 60, the main thing I’m worried about is the whole patriotism/political/lame thing. I know your creator is used to the drama in his White House series being Life And Death, but you’re about a comedy show. So maybe sometimes people could like smile or crack (funny) jokes. I don’t know. It’s just an idea. See ya next Monday.

XOXO,

St. Clare

PS. Please stop turning Nate Corddry’s character into a martyr with a hopelessly repressed background in the dreaded Suburbia (“Your brother’s in Afganistan!”). His assertion that Studio 60 is the Paris Opera House of television was just so, so self-congratulatory (although not as much as Matt writing the whole episode because he’s a GENIUS). And I can’t wait to find out why Tom was speeding last week. No doubt it will involve Simon getting shot by former friends from the hood and Tom rushing him to the hospital. He really is like Jesus.

PPS. Lucy Davis needs more lines. She's hilarious and she's being WASTED.

* I don’t think South Central would actually be visible from Simon’s house in the hills