MovieChat Forums > Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006) Discussion > Friday Night Slaughter

Friday Night Slaughter

posted 12 years ago by SeasonalAffective
2 replies | jump to latest

I went back and watched one of my favorite episodes of the show the other day (episode 15: Friday Night Slaughter).

I'll skip all the praise for the brilliant writing, which is the norm for this show (and all of Sorkin's work), and mention that I really like the direction and tone of this episode. It's somewhat dark, and shot very well; handheld cameras are used to flash back to 1999, and it happens throughout the show, suddenly with each instance.

There's a grainy change to the film, and the lighting--which is always used well in the series--changes with it. It's interesting to see the origin of the characters' relationships, and the way contemporary pop music is used to show the time transitions is a great touch.

Perhaps it's because I loved 1999, and perhaps it's because it's fun to see the characters in flashbacks to them in different stages of their lives than the series focuses on--or perhaps it's the way the episode gets dark at times, with Albie's drug use, and the Tim Batale character's misfortunes, etc--but I really, really like this episode. It stands out for me.

[–] SuperCore 12 years ago

Agreed it's a good episode. I love how if you pay attention to the series they have been cutting Tom's Metric Conversion sketch for weeks and this time he's really really fighting for it. I love little pieces of continuity like that.

The only shame of the episode is that Matthew doesn't look any younger (the backwards baseball cap doesn't help at all) and I was always a little annoyed that most the writers you see on the ones from earlier in the series. When in The Cold Open the writers are complaining to Ricky about how everyone's heard the stories about how Matt ran things when he was co-exec. This implies that they did not work with him before. I think different writers would have sold the past a bit more (maybe dot the writers room with one or two familiar faces).

"They have a grill, it's this grill. Now you have it...it's called America."

[–] SeasonalAffective 12 years ago

Good point re the writers, but I take exception with what you said about aging Matt. I mean, what else could they have done? The Adam Sandler movie, Click, had a multi-million dollar budget, and they had makeup effects that looked absolutely atrocious when making people look younger. You can't expect more than that with a TV series that had less funding, but they did a decent job with it.