Posts tagged studio 60

Studio 60

Caught the second episode in the Studio 60 two-parter last night. While the character bits and dialogue continue to be fun, the rest of the show is hurting. I’ve made it abundantly clear how I feel about the sketch comedy bits, so I won’t go into that again - but last night the whole Deus Ex Machina plot device for getting Nathan Corrdry’s character out of police custody was really disapointing.

As a Christian I’ve been really interested in Sorkin’s take on faith. He sets Matthew Perry’s character firmly against the often oppresvie dogma of religious fundemantalism and the politics of the Religious Right, but counter-balances him with Sara Paulson’s character who is portryaed as, for the most part, a thoughtful, intelligent, loving Christian. For the past two weeks they’ve been arguing about comment’s Paulson’s character made in an interview when asked about gay marriage. Her comments were (to paraphrase) “The Bible says gay marriage is wrong, but it also says ‘Judge not least ye be judged,’ so I don’t know.” A very honest expression, I thought, of how lots of (okay, maybe not lots of…) Christians approach what is a really confusing issue for people of faith.

I thought the whole thing was handled really well and appreciated the care and attention given to both sides of the issue (the issue here being, not gay marriage, but rather Christian perspectives on gay marriage).

Right up until the end.

Towards the end of last night’s episode Perry and Paulson’s characters are arguing about the Christian view point and Paulson’s character explains that America just needs a little time to get used to the issue. That gay marriage is just to alien to most people and they need time to adjust (again, paraphrased).

Okay, so now all the previous attempts to thoughtfully portray the tension that exist in Christianity and it’s views on gay marriage? Forget those. The real issue is that most people in middle America are homophobes and they’re afraid gay marriage will scare the horses.

I thought the show kind of undid all the good character building it had done up until that point with Paulson’s character. She went from admitting she didn’t have all the answers to being an apologist for a fairly hard to defend point of view.

That’s just me, though. Thoughts?