You are invited to “The Harriet Dinner”
If you’ve been following along with my Studio 60 Revisited Monday night marathon, tonight’s the night for “The Harriet Dinner Part 1,” which originally aired on January 29, 2007.
As I wrote about this episode back when it aired in the U.K.,
- It’s the one where Cal loses a poisonous snake under the stage, followed by an escalating assortment of carniverous creatures
- It’s the one where Danny and Jordan get locked on the roof
- It’s the one where Matt continues to bid for Harriet in an online auction, but turns out not to be bidding against who he thought he was bidding against.
- It’s the one where Jack orders Tom to talk Kim out of a comedy career, forcing Tom to lie to Lucy about breaking their date in a way that totally sets up up to get caught.
- It’s the one in which NBC made a clumsy attempt to get a little Heroes magic to rub off on Studio 60 by having Masi Oka guest-star and do a little riff on his show’s plot with Harriet Hayes/Dolpin Girl. Kinda cute, but desperate.
I’ll admit, I come to the rewatch of this two-parter with mixed emotions. On the one hand, this was a turning point for Jordan and Danny, and any chance to watch them banter at length and then get together is one I’ll be happy to watch again and again. On the other hand, this was a turning point for Matt and Harriet, and set up a lot of pain in the episodes to come, and seeing them fight the bad fight again is something I kind of hate to do. And the slapstick Kim subplot, while amusing in parts, comes at the expense of a really stupid conflict between Tom and Lucy. Seems there might have been a less predictable way to handle all of that.
Still, I’m finding as we go through the episodes again here that scenes and storylines I remembered less than fondly actually worked just fine, so I’m hoping the same will be true for these two. Watch them again with me, and let’s see. Then come back during the week for a review, recap, memorable lines, and five questions.
Studio 60, NBC, Harriet Dinner Part 1
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