In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
The Good: we don't see any unfunny sketches. The Bad: nearly everything else. Matt is introduced to the three dumbest human females who have ever existed outside a Real World/Road Rules Challenge. He gets bailed out by Simon, who wants him to bring some black writers onto the staff. When Matt gets defensive and weird about it (not to mention calling upon Patti LaBelle for street cred), Simon takes him on a field trip to a comedy club. While there, Simon clues Matt into his past as a character in Boyz N The Hood. Also while there, we're treated to one stereotypically unfunny black comic (of the "black people talk like this, while white people talk like this" variety), and one endearingly unfunny black emo comic. Matt and Simon essentially kidnap the latter in the guise of offering him a job on the staff. Jordan needs to make some friends and also to get Darren Wells to sign a baseball for her nephew or whatever. Unfortunately, Darren is "the anti-Matt" (per Harriet), which ends up meaning he's stupid, boorish, and eager to hit on Jordan via his preferred phone-number-on-athletic-equipment method (not like that, perv). The upside of this is that it allows Jordan to make better friends with Harriet. Jack gets loaded and wants to fight Danny (WOO!), though nothing comes of it. Tom's Ohioan parents come to visit, armed with unfathomable Midwestern ignorance, and they leave with a solemn lesson in the History of Comedy, even though Tom will never measure up to his brother who's fighting in The War. Speaking of the History of Comedy and The War, Cal encounters an enfeebled old man in the lobby and ends up wading hip-deep into a lesson about the Greatest Generation and the Black List. Sure, it wasn't an entertaining hour of television, but think of all we learned! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
It would figure that the weather would keep me from recapping two episodes I mostly liked, and then have me return to...this episode. Anyway, previously on Studio 60: Harriet and Matt almost kissed while watching Sting; Danny helped Jordan to snatch a high-minded drama about the United Nations away from HBO's prestigious clutches; and the show would like us to believe that Jack put his foot down in opposition to said U.N. show rather than in favor of the Temptation Island ripoff like we all know he did. And also, AB Chao and M. Giant were utterly ass-kicking as they filled in for me on very short notice. I may never stop fetching their drinks at the TWoP Team-Building Retreat and Pig Roast.
We open where we left off last week, with Lauren Graham signing off the live show, thanking Matt and Danny just so we know who the brains behind this operation are. Cal and Lilly banter about some crew member who isn't so good with the English, or maybe just the adverbs. Thankfully, the episode does not break off from here and turn into one big, long preachy monologue about immigration, because that's just not the kind of show this is. It's all a way of transitioning into Cal telling Suzanne to instruct the PAs to put tarps over everything, because the wrap party is being held in the studio tonight, and the last time that happened, they needed two weeks to repair the damage. Out in the hallway, Cal runs into Jordan, who might need a tarp all to herself if she keeps going the way she is right now. She booze-rambles that she just bought her first show (the U.N. one, in case you don't remember three seconds ago) and also how she's hiding from Jack because she passed on Intercourse Hotel or whatever and Ed Asner backed her instead of Jack. She says that, tonight, the studio is, for her, "like Superman's Dome Of Pleasure." Cal: "Fortress Of Solitude?" Cal and Jordan share a rather endearing giggly moment over this right before Jack bursts through the doors at the end of the hallway, highball in hand and ever-present entourage in tow. "Guess who's in the hizzaaaay?!" he bellows drunkenly. Cal: "Suzanne! Tarps over everything!" Hee. Alcohol makes this show so much better.