Recap: 1-10 “B-12″
We’re taking a second look at “B-12,” the tenth episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which originally aired on November 27, 2006. Following up on yesterday’s review, here’s a recap of the time-traveling, unannounced-flashback-heavy episode. Tune in later this week for memorable lines and questions.
PRESENT: Friday night
The show starts with the show starting — we hear the announcer say that the musical guest is Corinne Bailey Rae, and then guest host Howie Mandel comes trotting out. While he and Danny do a sort of interminable parody of Deal or No Deal, which involves Danny being on the phone with the “banker” for what even Mandel says is an unrealistic length of time, we get a glimpse of what else is going on around the studio: The cast is sick; Jeannie’s getting a literal shot in the ass; Simon’s temperature is 101; Matt’s looking concerned about something he sees on the monitors; and as if that wasn’t enough trouble, Martha O’Dell is back on the floor observing.
She and Danny finally get a little opportunity to banter, about an article she wrote that Danny didn’t like, and about the fact that the writing staff is down to two newbies and Matt. “Stuff happened while I was gone,” Martha observes, and yes indeed, we’re going to see some of that, as we flash back to the …
PAST: Monday
It’s raining, and Matt is wet, starting a recurring theme of why people don’t use umbrellas. Matt’s also alone, with the writing staff and his assistant having ditched the show with Ricky and Ron. In other news, Danny tells Matt about a stupid-criminal story he read, and by the way, there’s a virus going around, and around we go back to the …
PRESENT: Friday night
… where Danny tells Martha there’s no place for her to sit just as an assistant brings up a chair with her name on it. Danny’s annoyance quickly fades, though, when he gets a note from Matt and things get serious. Danny looks up to where Matt is standing on a balcony, makes a quick throat-cutting sign, and walks back to Martha. “What happened?” she asks. “Real life,” he replies, and hands her a note reading “5 Dead in Grosse Pointe.”
That seems like a good cue for a swoop back into the past, but first we have to watch a little of a Bachelor parody with Tom as an “Italian prince” — Italian-American variety — in Rome, picking from among bachelorettes that include Dylan in a dress. Harriet’s character is booted off, and she has a quick exchange with Simon backstage about a guy killing his family and the need to cut the hostage sketch and replace it with something else. “Then this is a good week to be without a writing staff,” Harriet observes, which finally then does fling us back to the …
PAST: Still Monday
Here’s that nonexistent writing staff now — a mumbly and mildly panicked Lucy and Darius at one end of a long table, Matt at the other. After instructing them to work on a sketch about a dumb criminal, Matt meets with Danny to suggest bringing Andy Mackinaw aboard. As Danny sort of remembers, Andy is a serious guy who used to work there. He’s probably not much less serious now, since his wife and two-year-old daughter were killed. But Matt thinks he’s just the thing to liven up the writer’s room. And before we get a chance to see for ourselves, we’re whipped back to the …
PRESENT: Friday night
Dylan, still dressed in drag, passes out, the latest victim of the dread virus. Backstage, as he’s being tended to by the nurse, Harriet tries to cheer him up by telling a joke, which is greeted by groans all around. What’s with Harriet and jokes? Let’s swoop back to the …
PAST: Presumably still Monday
We’re in the dressing room, where the male cast members are practicing their spit takes. Harriet enters to declare that she is being inducted into the American Falstaff Society, and that makes her better than all of them, or all of them except Simon, who’s already a member. Matt enters, sees all the spitting going on, and leaves, with Harriet in hot pursuit. Seems she needs to tell a joke at her induction, and needs some help. How much help she needs becomes clear when Matt tells her a joke and she is absolutely unable to repeat it in any sort of a humorous way. Things get even less humorous when they meet Danny, who’s watching a news report about a hostage situation in Grosse Pointe with a guy, his wife and three children, and a gun holed up in a house. “There’s no way this ends well,” Danny says. And that’s our cue to whoosh back to the …
PRESENT: Friday night
Corinne Bailey Rae is singing, and Matt’s in need of a new sketch. Remembering the silliness in the dressing room from earlier in the week, he gets the idea to do “Spit Take Theater.” He needles Danny a little about when exactly he’s going to get around to giving Martha grief for her column, which we originally seem him reading in the …
PAST: Tuesday
Martha called a movie Tom was in a failure, and worse still, she quoted an anonymous post on a website as a source (and we all know, that’s a capital crime in the Sorkinverse). Andy Mackinaw, who Matt is bringing in to help the writing staff, comes in and seems pretty much of a sad sack. He goes with Matt to the writer’s room, meets Lucy and Darius, and immediately asks for an update on the hostage situation. Fun guy!
Also watching the hostage situation is Jordan, who’s in her office with a group of young staffers who aren’t as concerned with pleasing her as they ought to be. One of them has gone over Jordan’s head and had Jack give the go-ahead to a rejected show. Jordan goes to take issue with that with her boss, but Jack’s more concerned with the virus that’s going around, and with the fact that Jordan won’t make her bad publicity problem go away, already. There’s been a Newsweek article criticizing her, and Jordan reluctantly agrees to do an interview to try to reform her image — but with Time, not Newsweek. And with that, we whoosh forward to … well, not quite the absolute present, but to a more recent past.
PAST: Friday morning
There’s a show on tonight, but in the writer’s room, things aren’t exactly humming. It’s still raining, Darius and Lucy are still working on their sketch about a dumb criminal who takes hostages in a bank, and Andy is still not finding anything funny. What Matt’s finding funny is needling Danny about the B-12 shot everybody’s getting to ward off the virus, and the fact that you can’t get it if you’re pregnant. Danny is busy getting a new assistant for Matt, and he settles on Suzanne. Andy’s ready to be a former member of the writing staff, now, because unless Lucy and Darius really have a hope of getting something on the show, they’re never going to produce something worthy of getting on the show. They need to see something of theirs performed at dress and tank before they’re going to start really working as writers. Matt agrees, and Andy stays.
Then Matt can get back to his needling of Danny, asking, again, when he’s going to give Martha grief about her column. That’s our cue to finally get back to the …
PRESENT: Friday night
Danny’s trying to rake Martha over the coals for what she wrote, but Martha’s hard to get a rise out of. She’s not ashamed about using Web sources, and not wrong about Tom’s movie, and sort of enjoys seeing Danny all riled. So it’s time to swoop back to the …
PAST: Earlier on Friday
… where Danny can still imagine he’s going to deliver a smackdown. Harriet comes in, all wet from the rain, and is still trying to tell that same darn joke. And failing.
Also failing, at giving a civil interview, is Jordan. She’s sitting with Shelly and a Time interviewer for ten questions. But the reporter doesn’t appreciate her banter and sarcasm the way Danny does — the way I do, too — and keeps trying, somewhat smarmily, to get a straight answer out of her. And finally he gets one: Jordan thinks the press is manufacturing her crisis, and it’s not that she doesn’t like the press in general, she doesn’t like this guy in particular. Well, that went well.
Just about as well as Lucy and Darius’s sketch, which was resoundingly not laughed at. But as Andy predicted, the bad response launches them back into the writer’s room to make it better. The cast, meanwhile, is trying to get better, with illness and B-12 shots all around. Danny still hasn’t gotten his shot, so Matt is still tweaking him about the fact that he can’t get the shot if he’s pregnant.
Surprisingly, though, Andy comes in with Lucy and Darius and a sketch that is entirely funnier than it was at dress. Funny enough to earn that sketch about a hostage situation gone wrong an actual slot on the show. Yay, them! Time to zip forward to what is not quite the present but the very recent …
PAST: Friday, start of show
We’ve been here before: Danny’s onstage with Howie Mandel, doing the endless Deal or No Deal takeoff again. But now we see what Matt was looking at on the monitor: A news report shows that that hostage situation in Grosse Pointe, the one that’s been mentioned frequently through all our time-flipping, has indeed ended badly, with the gunman killing his family and then himself. Matt writes the note that we saw Danny reading earlier, and we see Danny reading it again, and making the motion to Matt to cut the hostage sketch.
And that’s bad news for Darius and Lucy, whose sketch it is, and who are on their cell phones in the writer’s room alerting friends and family about their upcoming sketch debut. Except not. Matt breaks it to them that, due to the tragedy in the news, it would be in bad taste to air their sketch. So they’re going to have to help him come up with something new, now, fast. Back to work!
And now, it appears we may finally be fully up to the …
PRESENT: Show in progress
“News 60″ is on, and Danny and Martha’s bickering is on, too, as Danny criticizes the reporter for being buried in her computer while life is happening around her. That is, until she mentions that she’s reading an e-mail about Jordan punting an interview. That gets Danny’s attention.
And Jack has Jordan’s attention. She’s looking sick as he questions her sarcastically about how her interview went. He’s angry that she was supposed to make things better, but she made them worse. Although he agrees with Jordan that the public doesn’t really care and will watch NBS regardless, he disagrees that the public is the main concern here: It’s the board of directors and Wilson White she has to please. And they are not. Pleased. As she did after Wilson White menaced her a couple of episodes ago, Jordan looks truly rattled.
Jordan’s been about as ineffectual at fixing her press as Harriet has been — still is being — at telling that joke. Now, in the backstage infirmary, with her sickly colleagues, she can’t even get a knock-knock joke right. Matt comes in with the sketch he and the writers have come up with to replace the hostage sketch, something inspired by a fun moment from the flashbacks: “Spit Take Theater.” Harriet, who has somehow managed to avoid getting sick all this time, is a little worried about being spit upon by sick people. And that gives the sketch its final twist: Everybody just spit at Harriet!
Jordan’s looking pretty sick as she comes to the studio to watch the show. Danny sees her standing there in an upper window and goes up to reassure her about the interview. Jordan’s looking about as upset as we’ve ever seen her, and starts talking somewhat incoherently about playing in to every cliche and acting hormonal because of … um, something. Danny tries to reassure her, using those very same anonymous sources he criticized Martha for; they’re now coming out in support of Jordan, so they’re A-OK by him. Jordan starts to pass out, and Danny runs off to get the nurse, but not before Jordan tells him several times that she cannot get a B-12 shot. Because … what was that joke Matt was making, again and again? About who can’t get B-12 shots? All together now, with Danny: She’s pregnant!
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