Last Night’s “Studio 60” Musical Guest: Oh, Sting, Where Is Thy Death?

Brian Raftery | October 17, 2006 11:39 am

If you have not yet watched Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, then you’re missing out on a once-a-week opportunity to go absolutely, emphatically, screaming-at-the-cat coconuts. Despite being billed as a grounded-in-reality look at the entertainment world, it’s actually an Ivy-league pipe-dream in which all good comedy begins and ends with A&E’s Night At The Improv, and everyone talks like an eager-to-impress magazine intern. It’s the reason why caps-lock keys were invented.

Last night’s episode, however, was the most loonily far-fetched yet: In order to demonstrate just how edgy and dangerous the fake-SNL show-within-a-show can get, producer Aaron Sorkin actually booked Sting as a music guest. Not just any Sting, mind you, but the Sting who makes the ladies swoon by playing “Fields Of Gold” on a lute. It’s a painful clip, not only because Sorkin’s cool-hunting radar is still stuck in the mid-’90s, but also because Sting’s accompanist looks as though he’s going to make sweet sweetness to a 7th-century stringed instrument.

Lute, There Is Is! [YouTube]

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