Watching Studio60

As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from “Nevada Day Part II.”

Jeannie: Is Tom in jail in a Marx Brothers movie?
Matt: That’s good. That’s funny. Keep that sense of humor, Jeannie, you’re going to need it waiting tables at the Hooters in Santa Monica.

Matt: I can’t believe I really get a chance to say this … the show must go on.

Matt: I don’t need any reminding that my party is full to brimming with pandering and mediocrity.

Matt: There’s no way to get to the end of that sentence without saying that homosexual love is something less than heterosexual love, and watching you trip all over it makes me wanna hit you in the head with Liberace.

Harriet: Ow.
Jordan: Did you just punch the wall?
Harriet: Yes.
Jordan: Did the wall have it coming?
Harriet: The wall was a victim of displaced anger. If you examine the wall, you’ll see it’s a veritable hieroglyphic of meetings in Matt’s office.

Harriet: I’m in a position to show them that Christianity has a nicer voice than Ann Coulter’s.
Jordan: Carol Channing has a nicer voice than Ann Coulter’s.

Jordan: You have more doors open to you than anybody, and they’ll all close if what you’re most famous for is being a gay-basher.
Harriet: I’m not.
Jordan: I know. So please, sit down for six weeks.
Harriet: My career will be fine.
Jordan: I’m sure you’re right, but just for a second opinion, let’s go ask Anita Bryant.
Harriet: She was a gay basher, and she had to be something, ’cause she sure wasn’t talented. I’m not Anita Bryant.
Jordan: Like I don’t know that. Harry, really. Friend to friend, okay? You trust the media and the American public to make the distinction?

Danny: It’s Danny.
Jordan: Danny who?
Danny: Danny Tripp!
Jordan: I know, I was being dry. Why don’t people ever get that?
Danny: Well, for one thing –
Jordan: And then I was being rhetorical.

Danny: The judge’s name is Bobby Bebe. I’m in the middle of an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Danny: I want to know what you and Shelley are doing about this latest round of press.
Jordan: With Harriet?
Danny: With you. You don’t want kids, you don’t like kids, you don’t wanna hire women who have kids. What are you doing about it?
Jordan: Well, I’ve been reading this cool book called Oliver Twist, and it sounds like the best thing for me to do is to get a bunch of them together in my root cellar and set them to work for me as pickpockets.

Matt: You’re going to come back here, right? People are asking me questions as though I know what I’m doing.

Darius: Sometimes I hear people calling other people “sir.” There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to when and who. I don’t want to be impolite, but I don’t want to look like an idiot either, so …
Lucy: What?
Darius: Who gets called “sir”?
Lucy: I’m working on a sketch right now.
Darius: Okay.
Lucy: There are no rules to it. It’ll come naturally, like calling a conductor “maestro” when he’s in the vicinity of the podium. The nearer we get to Friday night, the more you’ll hear Matt and Danny called “sir.” Cal, too. Department heads, anybody who deserves it. It’s not a big deal.
Darius: Okay … Is this a white people thing, or …
Lucy: I’m not white, Darius, I’m English.
Darius: Put that line in a damn sketch.

Harriet: You know what? When George Michael does some guy in a bathroom, or Woody Allen marries his daughter, or a child molester gets an Oscar nomination, it doesn’t really give Hollywood a lot of moral authority on sexual behavior.
Matt: Hollywood? Who else are you talking to? You say Hollywood like, A, you’re not a part of it, and B, we all get together once a month to decide what we think. I’ve worked in Hollywood for ten years, I’ve never been in a room with three people who agree with each other.
Harriet: Alright, keep talking, I have to call back my agent because I know this is gonna be good news.
Matt: By the way, you know what never happens? An evangelical preacher getting caught with his secretary or a hooker, we never see that.
Harriet: Absolutely nobody is listening to you.
Matt: So I’ve learned after 35 years.

Harriet: I’m gonna get whacked by The Advocate for being intolerant.
Matt: Well, if that’s the worst that happens …
Harriet: It’s not. I’ve been asked not to appear at the Women United Through Faith concerts.
Matt: Why?
Harriet: For not being intolerant enough.

Danny: I don’t like network presidents vocationally.

Dylan: I can’t just be myself.
Matt: Why?
Dylan: Because I’m not Robert Redford.
Matt: I’ll be honest with you, Dylan, I really don’t, you know … I don’t pay attention to other men’s bodies.
Harriet: Yeah, he’s not homophobic.
Matt: I’m homophobic in a way that makes sense.

Bebe: Are you mouthing off to this court, Mr. Rudolph?
Jack: Yes, I am, judge. That’s what happens when I’ve been screwed with a couple of hours straight by someone other than my wife. You’ve been playing around with us like a damn cat toy because you think it’s funny.
Bebe: How exactly is that different from what these guys do every Friday night?
Jack: These guys aren’t the law, judge, they don’t wear a frigging robe.
Danny: Jack, really, he needs a lawyer.
Jack: I am a lawyer! And Buffalo Bob and his sister Sue over here are going to keep Tom in jail for the weekend because they don’t like Studio 60.
Bebe: Deputy, handcuff Mr. Rudolph, charge him with contempt, and read him Miranda.
Jack: You can tell the governor he can find a new ATM machine!

Bebe: How much do you pay this guy?
Jack: He’s a copyright lawyer.
Tom: Now they tell me.

DA: Is it dangerous?
Bebe: You wanna go to a Taliban-controlled region of Afghanistan right now with an American flag on your shoulder and build a school?

Bebe: He didn’t want his little brother’s last act on this earth to be getting him out of a speeding ticket. I’m right, right?
Tom: Yes, sir.
Bebe: What do you know, I’m Agatha Christie.

Bebe: On my own motion, I move to dismiss all the charges in my jurisdiction against Mr. Jeter. I do so in the interest of … well, really, just cause I feel like it.

Bebe: Stop thinking everybody between Fifth Avenue and the Hollywood Bowl just stepped barefoot out of the cast of Hee Haw. Tell your friends about it.

Danny: (to stewardess) This may sound crazy, but we’re not being slowed down by the fact that you’re making chicken Caesar salad for everyone, right?

Jack: Not everybody can afford to be as indifferent to making money as you are.
Danny: Yeah, but you’re somebody who can afford to be. You’re already rich, Jack, why not be a broadcaster now?
Jack: Oh, get away from me! You sit over there in your theater –
Danny: I sit over there in my theater? You have no idea what I do. If you had my job for a day, you’d sit in the middle of the room and cry.
Jack: Maybe, but 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.

Lucy: It’s a parody of the board game Operation. You know the game? There’s a body, and the players remove parts with tweezers without –
Matt: I know the game. (reading Lucy’s sketch) “Operation on a single girl. Show a cardboard cutout of a woman and plastic parts to be removed with surgeon-like precision. A group of single men sit around the game and laugh while taking turns with the tweezers. ‘Let’s take out her self-esteem, her dreams. Hey, what’s this, you got her soul. My turn, my turn! I want to get the vulnerable part.” It’s good so far. … Can I ask, by any chance, did you just have a bad break-up with a boyfriend?

Jack: 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. Zhiang. You have insulted me, and you’ve insulted my company, and I think you should take your business to Time Warner.

Danny: Hey, there’s a diner in Pahrump, you gotta eat there. You’ve never tasted food this good. They got a judge who knows what’s he doing, too.

Harriet: A simple life, and a job, a living wage. It’s what most people want. A safe place to raise kids. And the world is changing too fast for them. How about giving the rest of the world a little time to catch up?
Matt: I’d have said that to Martin Luther King. “Doc, give us a minute to be white and racist before you go all marching through Montgomery.”
Harriet: Don’t compare being black to being gay.
Matt: What the hell’s the –
Harriet: The difference is that black people have lived openly for 400 years before civil rights. For 400 years. Gay people have lived openly for about 30.
Matt: Tough.
Harriet: Matt …
Matt: That doesn’t mean you say to a reporter –
Harriet: I said, “The Bible says it’s a sin, but it also says, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’” I said, I don’t know. Three words that would make a nice addition to your vocabulary.

Harriet: God, Matthew. Are you crazy about me, or just crazy.
Matt: I don’t know.
Harriet: Now he learns how to say it.

Did I miss one of your favorite lines from this episode? Share it in the comments.

Studio 60, NBC, Nevada Day Part II, memorable lines