“The Friday Night Slaughter”
Oh wow guys this was such a great episode! Matt, my poor sweet Matt, we see the beginnings of what seems likely to be his complete unravelling. So yes, the majority of this review will just be about Matt Albie.
I knew there was something very off about Tim, whom seven years ago, before Matt had ever gotten anything on the air, was apparently fired by Wes for taking pills, and this is all shown to us through a series of flashbacks and dreams, Matt is seemingly the only person with any memory of him. This felt reminiscent to two episodes of other Sorkin shows I’ve watched. Both Josh’s obsession with pilot who killed himself in The West Wing typing that now in light of recent events feels very strange… and the penultimate episode of The Newsroom in which Will dreams/hallucinates his father being in his prison cell with him. The plot of this episode of Studio 60 falls somewhere in the middle of these two. Matt persists, asking everyone else who worked there at the time about Tim but no one remembers him. I had a gut feeling that he wasn’t real when neither Danny nor Cal know who Matt is talking about, and then when Matt visits the singer in her dressing room and she spots that he’s high and warns him that his dreams can seem real. There was no Tim. But more than that, Matt used Tim’s blue shirt and khakis to try and jog peoples memories, except that was what Matt used to wear.
I loved this so much, even though I’ve not completely wrapped my head around what it means. Is this the beginning of a drug problem for Matt? Is him dreaming a version of himself being fired for that exact reason supposed to be his way of warning himself about that exact eventually? I’m sure Danny knows that something is wrong, and also he’s been there, he himself is recovering drug addict, surely she types hopefully, he’s going to realise that there is something going on with his best friend and be able to help him.
Other Thoughts:
- We also get to see in this episode Matt meeting both Harriet and Simon for the first time. His meeting Harriet is particularly sweet, and then of course he puts his foot in his mouth straight away by going off on the Christian right. So maybe sweet isn’t the word for it, it’s just setting the stage for what is the future of Matt and Harriet, and right now that is far from sweet. He falls in love with her though, I’m sure of it, in those first few meetings, and he doesn’t ever stop being in love with her, just like he doesn’t ever stop being an idiot when it comes to her.
- Danny talking to the baby. Adorable!
- That goddamn reality tv show. I hope there isn’t actually a show like this because if there is, a special place in hell is waiting for those who made it. Jordan can’t stop it being made, so the best she can do is stop it being the absolute worst thing imaginable. In the show people who have been wronged confront and forgive those who wronged them. Jordan has to convince the grandmother of a participant who was paralysed by a gang member to have her grandson reconsider. Jordan knows that this whole show is exploiting victims, but the alternative participant is a porn star who was molested, and it’s just wrong. Hallie, the president of illiterate programming I’m sticking with that description of reality tv and nothing will stop me is just the absolute worse, she left it to the last minute to tell Jordan that the paralysed med student had dropped out so that they would have to use the woman who was abused as a child. It’s just slimy. She is just slimy and the whole thing is just morally bankrupt.
Samantha Gray 