Watching Studio60

It’s a birthday bonanza this week for Studio 60 cast members. Tuesday was Steven Weber’s special day, and now we wish a happy 45th to D.L. Hughley, who was born on this day in 1963 in Los Angeles. So I’m putting off that promised “4 A.M. Miracle” recap to browse through the memorable lines roundups for the first fifteen episodes and find some good Simon quotes. Since Simon’s not so much about the big speeches as the snarky comebacks, enjoy these exchanges:

From The Cold Open

Simon: Look, can he sit in a chair? ‘Cause eight days after I had the surgery, I still couldn’t make it from the bedroom to the kitchen without a damn epidural, and I’m an athlete.

Tom: You are?

Simon: I played football in college, I play golf every Sunday.

Tom: The Yale School of Drama had a tough team to beat?

Simon: Intramural flag football. Anyway, he’s telling people that he can do forty leg lifts with thirty-pound weights. I say he’s a liar, and I challenge him to a contest of physical supremacy.

Jane: I’m just coming to see you. I’m on hold with Clay Aiken’s manager.

Simon: Then hang up the damn phone.

From The Focus Group

Simon: Where did we get these candles from?

Harriet: The PAs ran out to the store.

Simon: Did they go to the Phantom of the Opera House of Crap?

From The West Coast Delay

Harriet: You know where I grew up, if this had happened? There’d be a town meeting, and everybody would be there. And the guy would have to sit and listen while Reverend Tillinghouse gave a sermon on honesty and character.

Simon: That’s exactly what would have happened where I grew up, except we’d have driven by the guy’s house and shot him.

From The Long Lead Story

Martha: Simon, you got a minute?

Simon: For a rectal probe?

Simon: Harry, listen, something’s happened.

Harriet: What?

Simon: You know your … I guess, what do you call it, your personal life
Harriet: Yeah?

Simon: Well …

Harriet: What did you idiots tell Martha O’Dell?

Simon: For what it’s worth, it started out as a gentlemanly act.

From Nevada Day Part I

Simon: The joint is mine. The joint in his jacket pocket was mine. It was my jacket. He’s not nearly cool enough to have a jacket like that. It’s obviously my jacket.

From The Option Period

Harriet: People knock on closed doors in America. Were the two of you raised on a farm?

Tom: I was.

Simon: I was raised over a heroin dealership.

Tom: Hey, I’ve been under arrest most of the day because of you.

Simon: And my joint’s still in Nevada … I’m just saying.

Harriet: Debra got the movie. There was some feedback that it’s not that she was sexier, but that she’s thought of as sexier. It’s hard to follow that logic, but it all seems to be synonymous with “We wanted someone sexier than you.�

Simon: You know how many movies Tom hasn’t gotten because they didn’t think he was manly enough?

Tom: It’s really gotta be like this?

Simon: You don’t see him on the cover of Field and Stream.

Harriet: They don’t think I’m sexy, Simon.

Simon: They will if you show them you’re sexy. They won’t if you show them your ass.

From B12

Simon: Listen, it’s on the news. The guy killed his family and then himself.

Harriet: No!

Simon: Yeah, he did it in the wrong order.

From The Christmas Show

Tom: Simon, tell Lucy about the time you were arrested on about forty-three larceny counts in high school.

Simon: Hey, cool, why don’t you tell her about the time everybody thought you were gay in high school.

From The Harriet Dinner Part I

Simon: Give me your manhood right now, give it to me, because you’re not gonna be needing it. Let’s let somebody else use it.

Tom: Oh, my God.

Simon: What?

Tom: That can’t possibly be Kim.

Simon: Where?

Tom: There.

Simon: That’s Kim?

Tom: Oh, my God.

Simon: Alright, you’re gonna need your manhood.


From The Friday Night Slaughter

Simon: I’ve got the most important audition of my life in … six hours ago.

Simon: Are you in love with her or just stupid?

Matt: What do you mean?

Simon: If you’re writing for a new cast member, there’s not much chance it’s going to get aired. I’ve never heard of you, so you need to get on the air. So which one is it?

Matt: I’m stupid.

Simon: You write like you’re on a first date. “Look at all the words I know.�

Studio 60, NBC, D.L. Hughley, Simon Stiles, quotes

I watched “4 A.M. Miracle,” and honestly, if they hadn’t already used up the “Matt sees an imaginary person” plot last week, I’d totally have thought the eerily in-the-know lawyer lady was a chemical trick of Matt’s brain. Well, that and the fact that she was also seen or known about by Danny, Suzanne, and Jordan. In this place, though, you can’t rule out mass psychosis.

Danny and Jordan continue to be crazy about each other, anyway, and I’m happy to see that Jordan is no longer checking sight lines before smooching. The fake baby subplot was a little silly, maybe, but I loved it for the way it showed the affection between Danny and Jordan, the obliviousness of Tom and Simon, and Cal’s sort of heedless enthusiasm (and way with a practical joke).

I’m glad we seem to be coming to an end of the Harriet-Luke movie shooting and relationship skirting, because I find both Luke and his movie sort of intolerable. Sure, it’s not cool for Harriet to keep working out her Matt issues in front of him, but making everybody keep working just to get back at her? Not cool either. Especially for that poor guy who had to keep shooting himself in the head. At any rate, it was nice to have her back at the Studio at the end, back upstairs, back to being Matt’s muse, and appropriately remorseful.

Once again, no Jack, but no Hallie either, so I’ll accept that compromise. Maybe they both actually go home at night.

Come back tomorrow for a full recap of “4 A.M. Miracle.”

Studio 60, NBC, The Friday Night Slaughter, review

Tomorrow, we’ll get back to talking about “4 A.M. Miracle.” Today’s the day to wish a happy 47th birthday to Steven Weber, who was born on this day in 1961 in Queens, New York. In honor of the actor’s special day, enjoy these quotes from his Studio 60 alter ego, Jack Rudolph, pulled from the memorable lines roundups for the first sixteen episodes.

From Pilot:

I’m not like every other heterosexual male in show business, Jordan, I don’t find you charming. And you’ve earned the loyalty of absolutely no one. So you go ahead, take your first steps, Jordan, make us look all classy again. We’ve been waitin’ for ya.

From The Cold Open:

If anybody can think of ways to screw up that we haven’t tried already, I’ll be in my office.

J-Mac, if the ratings start to dip next week, or if America doesn’t find “Crazy Christians� as funny as you do, frogs falling from the sky’s going to seem like Club Med compared to what’ll happen next.

From The Wrap Party:

(To Danny) But before I reach down your throat and squeeze your kidneys with my hand, I wanna thank you for helping Jordan acquire for NBS a television series about the United Nations. ‘Cause that’s got smash hit written all over it. I’m thinking of premiering it against the Super Bowl. America’s been waiting for a show about negotiating a lasting peace in Sudan. I hope we’ll hold off on the debate over humanitarian aide to Darfur until sweeps. Aw, it doesn’t matter, an episode will be a winner as long as it’s about the U.N. Because Americans are just crazy about the U.N. We just can’t get enough of their freewheeling, sexy, bucaneer style. I foresee a couple of problems, like nobody at the U.N. speaks the same language. But that’s okay, because if there’s one thing every teenager loves, it’s subtitles. You see it as part of your job to screw with my company, don’t you?

From Nevada Day, Part I and Part II:

I’ve always felt the People’s Republic of China was just one good string section away from being able to feed itself.

Hollywood isn’t run by liberals, it’s run by companies. You could look for a pretty long time before finding a liberal on the board of directors of any of those companies.

(To Danny) If you had my job for a day, you’d lose a couple hundred million of other people’s dollars and not care. Though I’m sure NBS would be the number one rated network within a mile radius of Zabar’s and the Chateau Marmont.

(To Zhang) My company doesn’t have honor? One of my guys spent the day in two different police stations because he came to the defense of a woman who was being verbally and physically abused. He could have been out of it easy if he’d played the support-our-troops card, but he wasn’t about to minimize the sacrifice of his brother and his brother’s buddies. Simon Stiles has prior convictions, but with the Budweiser Clydesdales, you could not stop him from making clear to a judge that this much marijuana was his. This guy (pointing to Danny) … I don’t know what the hell he was doing … except trying to convince me that Jordan McDeere has been all over the gossip pages because when she was 25, she married a fraction of a man. And this man has been telling tales, both true and false, in the hope of selling a book and working the talk shows. Sir, of all Jordan McDeere’s faults, and there are many, lack of honor is not among them. She’s killing me with her honor. So I’m sorry, Mr. Zhang. You have insulted me, and you’ve insulted my company, and I think you should take your business to Time Warner.

From The Christmas Show:

You have to understand that pro-family groups support our troops in this time of war, just as long as we don’t have to see or hear what our troops fighting a war looks and sounds like.

From Monday:

I’m not a Bedouin. I like making money, and I’ve made a lot of it for you. You can’t, you simply can’t, in this country, mess around with news coverage of a war. Ted, believe me, I wish this was a fight for ethics. I wish this was a conversation about the integrity of the news, but it’s not. It’s about preventing ourselves from being a laughingstock.

From The Harriet Dinner, Part I and Part II:

(To Tom) There comes a time in every great man’s life when he needs a favor from … someone like you.

Your best isn’t going to do it, Tom. You need to do somebody else’s best.

(To Zhang) Your daughter’s not going to quit the viola. You didn’t raise an idiot. But you might consider getting up off her ass for a short time, you commie prick. Did you understand all those words?

Studio 60, NBC, Steven Weber, Jack Rudolph, quotes

If you’ve been following along with my Studio 60 Revisited Monday night marathon, tonight’s the night for “4 A.M. Miracle,” which originally aired on February 19, 2007. The episode has its fair share of Matt-Harriet psychodrama, but it will, to me, always be known as The One With The Exploding Baby. Ha! Pretty sure they’re never going to ask Tom, Simon, or Cal to babysit now.

I’ll have more to say about “4 A.M. Miracle” tomorrow after re-watching it tonight. Right now, though, I’m thinking about “Nevada Day Part II,” and a question I wrote at the time we re-watched that one:

“How great would it have been to have a face-off between Wilson White and Judge Bebe? When the scene in which Ed Asner’s White intimidates Jordan was immediately followed by the scene in which John Goodman’s Bebe made Jack melt down, I couldn’t help but wish these two great actors could have chewed some scenery together — whether butting heads or chatting over pie at the diner.”

Of course, we never got any sort of meeting between John Goodman’s character and Ed Asner’s in Studio 60’s single season. But some movie news I saw today made me think about that wish: The two actors are appearing in the same film, Gigantic, an indie romance starring Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel as characters named Brian and Happy.

According to an item in The Hollywood Reporter, “Asner will play Brian’s pot-smoking, gangsta rap-loving father,” and “Goodman will play Happy’s brilliant, domineering dad.”

Don’t suppose those two characters will be meeting at the diner for a slice of pie. But it’s nice to see them working, and working together.

Watch “4 A.M. Miracle” with me tonight, and come back throughout the week for a review, recap, memorable lines, and five questions.

Studio 60, NBC, Ed Asner, John Goodman, 4 A.M. Miracle

Five questions that popped into my head while re-viewing “The Friday Night Slaughter” (and in honor of this flashback-heavy episode, that’s 1999-era Matthew Perry pictured, with vintage guest host Neve Campbell):

1. Who was that singer? She’s so unknown, she’s made up. According to IMDb, the character of singer/pharmacist Diana Valdes was played by actress Gina La Piana, who I see from her IMDb page has previously played characters named Hot Friend and Hoochie. So apparently she has some experience acting with her chest.

2. Was that supposed to be Danny on the couch? At one point, Flashback Matt nudges a sleeping figure and calls him Danny, but the voice that responds didn’t sound like Bradley Whitford’s to me, and we didn’t really see enough to tell who it was. Was Whitford not available when they shot those flashback scenes, or not interested in pretending to be younger? Maybe he saw how little a baseball cap served to de-age Matthew Perry, and decided to pass.

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