Watching Studio60

As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from Studio 60’s second episode, “The Cold Open.”

Jordan: We’re just at the beginning of our development season for next fall, and with each of our potential new shows, I’ll ask myself three questions: Do I like it? Would my parents like it? If I had kids, would I want them to watch it? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, I’ll put it on the air. If the answer to all three is no, then I won’t.

Reporter: Jordan, can you describe the reaction of NBS executives Friday night when Wes described the network as a candy-ass network and a greed-filled whorehouse of a network?
Jordan: Pleased and proud, as you can imagine. Until we realized he wasn’t talking about Fox, he was talking about us.

Danny: I made a decision for you. You’ll find I’ll be making a lot of them.

Matt: A caller from Toluca Lake called us Barbra-Streisand-loving, Michael Moore-worshipping jackasses.
Danny: What have I always told you about listening to show tunes?
Matt: Don’t do it.
Danny: Don’t do it.

Jordan: I’ll tell you what I do believe. I believe that the people who watch television shows aren’t dumber than the people who make television shows. I believe that quality is not anathema to profit.

Matt: Wait a second, the caller from Toluca Lake with the “Barbra Streisand-loving,” was she calling us Hollywood liberals or was she calling us gay?
Danny: It’s a pretty fine distinction.

Jordan: They are irreverent. They are brilliant. They will make us laugh. They will make us think. They will make us talk. And they will make us proud.
Danny: Easy does it, lady!
Jordan: They will return Studio 60 to its former glory as the flagship program of NBS. And NBS will return to its former place as America’s greatest broadcast network. And if you don’t believe me, tune in Friday night at 11:30.
Danny: No.
Matt: By the way, this latest career move of ours?
Danny: Pretty stupid?
Matt: Yeah.

Danny: Stick around, and when we’re done? I need to choke you to death.
Jordan: You bet.

Jeannie: Do we just let Jesus be our co-pilot?
Harriet: No. My mom used to say, if Jesus is your co-pilot, you should trade seats.

Reporter: What’s the division of responsibility?
Danny: Matt’ll do the work, I’ll take the credit.

Jack: No one speaks until I point and say their name.

Jordan: No one ever went wrong breaking the tension.
Jack: Check again.

Jack: The Rapture’s what I think it is, right? The world comes to an end, believers go up in a spaceship?
Jordan: It’s not a spaceship, it’s Jesus Christ.
Matt: What happens to the nonbelievers?
Jordan: You get thrown down into a fiery pit.
Matt: Can we just do that now?

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

Matt: I need to come up with a cold open.
Danny: And the hour and 25 minutes that come after that.

Danny: Matt’s happy to see you, too. He’d speak right now, but he’s started to move into a coma.
George: I remember the look.

Matt: (seeing countdown clock) Oh, man, no wonder he went crazy. … How did it know?
Danny: How did it know what?
Matt: Exactly how much time was left in the week.
Danny: Yeah, it’s a miracle of technology that we’ve invented an electronic device that can count backwards from seven.
Matt: But it was off!
Danny: It has a battery.
Matt: So it always knows.
Danny: Don’t endow the thing with special powers, Matt, it’s a clock.

Harriet: When you had the surgery, you didn’t miss a show.
Simon: I am exceptional in many ways. He, on the other hand … I don’t think he can sit in a chair.

Danny: I got a chance to speak on the phone with each of you yesterday, and I think I know what you’re all thinking: They’re gonna make some changes, bring in some new blood, am I staying, am I going. That’s what you were all thinking, right?
Tom: Not until just now, no.
Danny: Man, well, you should have been. Don’t give me your very best, or choose this week to complain about something, you’ll make those decisions very easy.

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.
Tom: Why don’t you guys settle it like the real Athenians, over 18 holes at Riviera?

Matt: What are you all wearing? I’m not Blackwell or anything, but holy cow, what the hell are you guys wearing? One of the things this show does is decide what’s cool, and I’ve just decided it’s not longer cool for grown men to dress as if they’re in junior high school.
Ron: It’s a comedy, Matt.
Matt: Not yet, it’s not. And until it is, we’re all going to act professionally, you understand? We’re going to act, dress, talk, write, and behave professionally.
Harriet: (bursting in) You are an adolescent, oversexed whoremonger with the sensitivity of a head of cabbage.
Matt: And all that will begin in just a few minutes.

Matt: Don’t ever walk into that room and talk to me in front of the staff like that again, I will bench you until Christmas. I will make you the highest-paid extra in Hollywood, Harry, I will so help me God pay you to wave and say goodnight at one o’clock in the morning.

Matt: Now, what is your problem, that after you broke up with me I went out with somebody else? That’s what almost always happens.
Harriet: Not someone from where I work. There are seventeen strip clubs within a three-block radius of this place for you, not someone from my show.
Matt: It’s not your show, it’s mine, and there are only five strip clubs within a three-block radius.

Matt: You think I’ve been dating Marlo Thomas?
Harriet: Who the hell knows what you do, you addle-minded pervert.
Matt: Marlo’s married to Phil Donahue, who can still beat the crap out of me anytime he wants.
Harriet: Thank God.
Matt: Seriously. He’s a huge Irish man.

Harriet: If I slow-danced with Danny, your head would explode, and you know it.

Jack: The world has to come to an end?
Shelly: For the Rapture?
Jack: Yes.
Shelly: Yes.
Jack: So there’s a percentage of the population hoping that the world will come to an end?
Shelly: Yes.
Jack: You’d think they’d be rooting us on.

Jordan: Have any of these people ever watched the show? And if they don’t like it, can someone go over to their houses and teach them how to change the channel?
Jack: Sounds like exactly what my next job will be.

Jane: I’m just coming to see you. I’m on hold with Clay Aiken’s manager.
Simon: Then hang up the damn phone.

Danny: We don’t need to do it now, but at some point, I’m going to need you to level with me about Harriet. I need to know how big a problem it’s going to be.
Matt: It’s not going to be a problem at all.
Danny: It will if you’re in love with her.
Matt: I’m not. … I’m not. Danny. … I love her talent. The woman’s got millions of fans, but there are maybe fifty guys in town who really understand how good she is, and we’re two of them. That’s all, I admire her. And I’m knocked out by her talent. … I like it when she makes me laugh, and I like making her laugh, which isn’t an easy thing to do, so it’s gratifying. … She’s undeniably sexy, and I like it when she smiles at me, and a couple of other things, but that’s it.
Danny: Oh, my God, we are so screwed.
Matt: I know.

Jack: You know what, Mary? You got spunk.
Jack and Jordan: I hate spunk.
Jack: See? I like television too.

Jordan: Frogs didn’t fall from the sky?
Jack: 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.

Harriet: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, creator of the universe and father of us all. Thank you for giving us one of your greatest gifts, a sense of humor. And if you have time, please make something heavy fall on Matthew’s head. We say this prayer in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who had to have been funny to get so many people to listen to him.

Harriet: I got a laugh at the table read when I asked for the butter in the dinner sketch. I didn’t get it at the dress. What did I do wrong?
Matt: It’s one laugh out of thirty you’re going to get tonight.
Harriet: What did I do wrong?
Matt: You asked for the laugh.
Harriet: What did I do at the table read?
Matt: You asked for the butter.

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

_{Photo by Terri Mauro}

Studio 60, NBC, The Cold Open, memorable lines