Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

[Shinmaru]

I'm slightly surprised that a thread was not already made about this show - I can't really think of another pilot that was more hyped this season than Studio 60's.

For those who don't know, the show is about the behind the scenes activities of a fictional live sketch comedy show, Studio 60, that has more than a few similarities to Saturday Night Live (especially in the beginning of the pilot :p). The pilot begins with Studio 60's executive producer, Wes, fighting the network censor to keep a great, but potentially controversial, sketch on the show; the sketch is cut, and, in frustration, Wes storms onstage and delivers a rant on live TV about how awful his show has become and the dire state of television in general. He's fired, the studio needs a replacement for him, and so on and so forth.

There's obviously much more to the episode, but I don't want to give [i]too[/i] much away, since if you missed it last night, you can see the repeat on Bravo at 8:00 PM tomorrow.

Anyway, I was skeptical as to whether the pilot could actually come close to meeting the ginormous hype behind it, but it was pretty damn entertaining and set things up very well for the rest of the season. You can't really ask for much more than that from a pilot, and if Studio 60 keeps going at this pace, I could easily see it becoming one of the best shows on TV. The cast is great (Matthew Perry's character being "high as a kite" the whole time and Amanda Peet taking charge like it's nothing at all were the highlights for me) and the writing is sharp (Wes' speech was great, of course, as were the several points in the episode where various characters were verbally owned - Harriet putting down the rookie cast member was vicious, haha). I'm becoming addicted to this show already lol.

Anyone else watch Studio 60? What'd you think of it?