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This past Tuesday saw the release of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Complete Series on DVD.  Seeing it called "The Complete Series" was the final nail in the coffin for a show I already knew was dead.  But still, it hurts all the same.

For those of you who don’t know, Studio 60 was my favorite show of the 2006-2007 TV season.  And putting it all in perspective at this point, it’s easily my favorite since Star Trek: Deep Space Nine closed up shop in 1999.    Needless to say, I picked up the set immediately.

What follows in this series of articles is all simply opinion and conjecture on my part.  I have no inside knowledge about the life and death of the show, no clue about how the ratings really work, and I do not think I’m smarter than series creator Aaron Sorkin.  But instead of doing a simple review of the DVDs and going on and on about how fantastic it all was, I thought I’d offer up ideas along the way as to why in the eyes of many, something so good wound up becoming a nothing more than a punchline and then ultimately forgotten.

The first two episodes of Studio 60 are, well… pretty much perfect television.  Smart, funny, clever, well acted, expertly directed, etc. etc.  There’s nothing I can point to, content-wise, to explain someone’s lack of interest in this show at this stage.  The foundation of the show is laid out, characters are introduced and immediately given depth, new problems arise, other problems are solved and stories are moving along as they should.

But I think the initial problem with Studio 60 was something that happened before it ever even aired.  NBC’s marketing department had the idea to make the pilot available online and through Netflix a month or so before it was set to air on television.  This created a couple of problems, actually.

First off, there’s hype and then there’s awareness.  Awareness is "Hey, I hear there’s this new show coming on that’s behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live-type show.  People are saying good things, maybe we should check it out."  Hype is "ZOMG!  This show is teh awesome and you MUST watch it!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!11!!"  And Studio 60 was generating lots of hype, because so many people had seen it in advance.

Well, people tend to rebel against hype.  When something is billed as being the greatest thing ever, some people can approach it with a "Okay show, let’s see how brilliant you really are.  Go ahead, try to entertain me!" attitude.  They’re not going into it with an open mind, they have an agenda.  And if, in their eyes the show falters just once, then they come out of it thinking "That’s what’s supposed to be so amazing?  Screw that show."

When the pilot finally premiered, the ratings were strong (averaging 13.14 million viewers).  However, the ratings also showed that the pilot "lost a significant number of viewers in its second half-hour".  I do not believe that was from a lack of interest.  I seriously doubt anyone could only watch the first half of the pilot and then switch it off in disgust.

I think a number of people who had tuned in that first week thought that since the pilot was released on DVD, the first episode to air on regular television would actually be a new episode.  And as they realized that it was just the pilot again, they turned to something else.  Then, as things tend to happen with brand new shows, some of those people who tuned out lost track of the show and didn’t return the next week.  Not a lot mind you, but some.

So the show starts off with a ratings average that’s skewed higher than it realistically should be.  This ends up making the ratings drop the next week look even more dramatic than it actually was (the second episode averaged only 10.82 million viewers). 

There are roughly 25,000 Nielsen boxes out there that represent the "fast overnight" ratings, which you can tell me are accurate and scientific and all that until you’re blue in the face, but basically the numbers show that maybe two or three people with Nielsen boxes got confused and didn’t tune in the next week.  I refuse to believe that the possible mistake of or potential dislike from two or three people is supposed to represent the mindset of 2.32 million. 

Had the box been in my home, the ratings would have spiked.  So you mean to tell me that removing a Nielsen box from one non-watcher’s home and placing it in mine would mean that all of a sudden 500,000 other Americans are now watching Studio 60?

Initial hype and potential confusion are the two problems with the beginning of Studio 60‘s run, both problems stemming from NBC and not the show itself.  You really can’t fault something for being this good.  Next time though, things get a little wonky in the creative department, which draws the ire of some of us still watching…

I have no doubt that 20-30 years from now, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse double feature experiment will be as infamous in certain circles as the cinematic debacle known as Caligula.  Film schools will teach and scholars will write about how from concept to promotion to theatrical release to home video, the Grindhouse project was a colossal clusterfuck in every way, shape and form.

When I first heard the concept for Grindhouse, it sounded like a hands-down winner to me.  I figured it would be two 45 minute movies strung together with some trailers and other gimmicks and a good time would be had by all at the movies.  Then I read that each film was actually a full length feature.  And I couldn’t wrap my head around that.

Both films were released to theaters as one double feature?  How does that make any financial sense?  Two full length movies for the price of one?  Sure it’s a bargain for adventurous moviegoers, but that’s just insane from a box office standpoint.

Quentin Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse, Death Proof, would make a fantastic 45 minute movie.  As a two hour feature though, it just goes on and on and on.  Much of the dialogue sounds like someone trying to write like Tarantino with a hint of David Mamet thrown in, as characters talk about nothing at all and doing it in "hip" 20 sentence monologues when it would only take a normal person 2 sentences to get the same point across.

The film is essentially two hour long mini-movies with one character tying the two together.  Each segment could have eliminated half of the dialogue, kept their climactic action sequences, and then you’d have yourself one great little flick.

The look of the film is meant to represent the worn down prints of the movies that Grindhouse is paying tribute to.  Titles are haphazardly changed with cheap inserts, scenes are missing, the film itself is scratched all to hell, etc.  I was really digging this look, done entirely artificially during post-production.  However, the second half of the film annoyingly jettisons this look for much more pristine visuals.

Speaking of action, the final 15 minutes of Death Proof is genius.  The fact that all the stuntwork is real truly helps the film overcome many of its other shortcomings.  So the film scores points for that.  Also, every minute that Kurt Russell is on screen is great.  The man is simply awesome, and his role here reminds us of his cooler days in John Carpenter movies.

Speaking of awesome, I love the running joke of sorts that has Texas Ranger Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) continuing to show up in Tarantino and Rodriguez movies ever since his first appearance in From Dusk Till Dawn… even though HE DIED in that film.  I adore this character, and he managed to make me laugh for a good minute here simply by the spin he puts on the word "but…" in his one scene.

Finally, while a good chunk of the first hour of the film feels like Tarantino is just saying "listen to all these cool unknown songs that I like!" I can’t deny that it’s a great soundtrack.  I bought it the next day after seeing the film, and I’m listening to it as I type this.  The man definitely has an ear for music, as all his soundtracks are perfect examples of how movies can actually benefit from obscure tunes (instead of the 500,000th use of Smash Mouth’s All-Star).

So while the never ending dialogue is annoying as hell and 90% of the movie, the stunts, music, and presence of Kurt Russell and Michael Parks still manage to help elevate this film to a somewhat decent rating.  It’s probably my least favorite of all of Tarantino’s films (excluding Four Rooms, which I never really know how to judge), but it’s still better than a lot of the junk that gets released these days.  And I might appreciate it more from repeat viewings.  Time will tell.  Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.