Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip sucks. It sucks so bad it makes me angry, even.

Why? Because at least on Sorkin’s previous show, The West Wing, you could forgive the pomposity and the self-involvitudeness of the characters, because they were, after all, running the US of A and affecting world events. On Studio 60, they’re still just as solemn and grandiose, but instead of working in the White House, they’re producing a television sketch comedy show.

A comedy show. On TV.

So maybe Sorkin could have his characters get down off their high horses and instead of waxing misty-eyed over schmaltzy music on their glorious heritage of pie fights and Jew jokes, he could give them some more realistic dialogue about how they all should get down on their knees and thank their lucky fucking stars that they’ve landed in an industry that rewards them so very well for so very, very little.

Not only that, but Sorkin’s motto for this show is apparently “believability be damned!” How else can you explain the young comic whose 50-ish Midwestern parents HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THE ABBOTT & COSTELLO “WHO’S ON FIRST” BIT?? I mean, what the fuck part of Ohio are they from? Brigadoon?

And the predictability of the story lines! Did anyone NOT see the end of that crazy-old-crank-wanders-halls-but-is-discovered-to-be-not-only-not-crazy-but-part-of-our-glorious-heritage thing coming?

And oh, let’s speak in hushed tones about the so so racially sensitive story line about the bad black comic (Black people be different from whites!) versus the good black comic (I’m troubled but intellectual, folks. In a street-wise kind of way. Did I mention I have to catch a bus back to the hood?). Did anyone not see their last-minute discovery coming for, like, 45 minutes?

But the thing that makes the show really smell like ass is the fact that when they do manage to squeeze in a teeny tiny bit from the TV sketch show they purport to live and die by, it is GOD AWFUL. Like Fridays awful. Doumanian SNL awful.

My advice to Aaron Sorkin is that he should catch some reruns of the old Dick Van Dyke Show. Because at least the writers of The Alan Brady Show understood that Alan Brady had to be funny.