Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the show whose biggest flaw may have been that it was not The West Wing, ended its short-lived run last week. The finale sought to tie up most of the loose ends, as I’d imagine most finales do, and the creators did so in an extremely positive way for all story lines involved.
Artistically, this rankles; real life tales don’t end so happily, especially not all at once.
But the scheme worked brilliantly for me, and I say that because in Studio 60 I had found a set of characters I cared about. More so than most reality TV show characters, more than the average sitcom troupe, I cared about what happened to these people, with their neuroses and their foibles and their bad, bad jokes. So for that reason this series was a success. I wish that I cared about more of the networks’ offerings.
