Watching Studio60

Well another very “samey samey” episode where most of the story lines got moved along about an inch and we are left for the next two weeks waiting for what has to be an “action packed” hour which will answer all questions and bring all stories to a close.
Let’s begin with Tom’s brother. Still missing but alive as far as we know. Tom is still with James Lesure (Wow that man is so sssexyyy!) and they are still not getting on very well. As Tom said - You are the most uncomforting person I know!. Well lawyer Mary lets Matt know that her firm Trask Industries - No wait that was Working Girl - just Trask, has very cryptically “Found a way to move forward”. This information gets relayed to Tom, who decides he doesn’t want to interfer with whatever the military may be doing. Then Captain Boyle actually does some counselling - Yeah. He tells Tom not to even entertain the notion of using Trask. A story about how a similar exercise last year in Columbia has now raised the going rate for executive extractions to $11 million. But later in the show, Captain Boyle gets a phone call that changes Tom’s mind. We learn that the kidnappers are about to show a tape of them excuting one of the three hostages, which is in fact a killing from four months ago, but the mere suggestion that it could be real is enough to send Tom running back to Matt and Jack and Lawyer. No resolution yet, but Tom is off talking to his parents and then promises to start the process of the “R” part.
Danny spend the entire episode at the hospital without ever seeing Jordan. We do see the baby - cute! Jordan stops bleeding but then gets a post op infection. We learn that she is classified as “critical”. Hariett is with Danny trying to cheer him up, although why she thinks her insane impressions of Holly Hunter or Juliette Lewis would be appropriate is way beyond sanity. Finally she tries to teach Danny to pray and I think the conversation they had in the chapel was the highlight of the show for me. Being raised Catholic, I found that scene very poignant and thought provoking. I was also tearing up when atching Danny watch his daughter. We know that if Jordan dies without signing the papers that Mary was trying to push on Matt, then Danny will have no standing with the baby and lose both his fiance and daughter in one moment. He doesn’t know this yet, which makes it all the more heartrenching. Again - left with no resolution and this story line could go either way.
The major part of this episode was dedicated to the interplay between Jack and Simon, with flashbacks to 6 years ago leading up to the firing of Danny and Matt. Jack is trying to insist that Simon apologies to the press for his outburst at the end of last week’s show, Simon is adament that he will not apologise. The flasbacks show us that 6 years ago, Danny and Matt had the option to apologise for the sketch about patriotism, but refused to do so and eventually Jack got Wes to fire them. We didn’t actually get to that point last night, just to the phone call from Jack to Wes, but we have to imagine that that is what is coming - next show. There was a lot of interplay and witty conversation between Jack and Simon, and then again between Jack, Matt and Danny in the flashbacks, a lot of which is very typical Aaron Sorkin but none the less enjoyable.
The best thing about this episode was that it was not longer a show about putting on a show but more about a bunch of people who work together who really care about each other. It is a shame that it not only took this long to get to this point but that it is happening with only 1 show left is really sad. I also believe that this episode was good because there was a lot less of Matt and Hariett and that has to be a good thing.
No show next week - Series Finale - July 5th. Stay Tuned and lets send it out with a bang.