The Disaster Show

There's something about the opening montage, which we get instead of a cold open, that seems different -- is it a bit snappier? A little more brisk? I'm honestly sad this show was cancelled, as it could be fun. If it ever got away from Matt and Harriet relationship melodrama, or stopped being so smug about how it was so much smarter than its medium,which it rarely did.

The show is on the verge of chaos for cast, which this week includes guest host Allison Janney (I know!), when the propmasters union goes on strike. They have props, but they're in a disarray, and there are no cue cards because the guys who make and hold the cue cards? They're part of the propmaster union as well. So when Harriet slugs grain alcohol instead of water in a Nancy Grace sketch, or the squibs wired to Allison's body go off in the James Bond spoof sketch instead of the gangland shootout bit, you know who to blame. Though the strike doesn't end before Allison has to doff her pants in a parking valet sketch, and Allison has to work with an earpiece while director Cal feeds her lines and direction, the show ends, thank goodness, with Cal reminding her that while the night was most definitely Studio 60's disaster show, a low point for the series in recent years, at least they're not digging ditches.

The strike isn't the only thing on Cal's plate. A bomb threat was called in after the dress rehearsal, ostensibly in reaction to a sketch called "Muhammaad the Thin-Skinned Prophet". Jack brings in a bomb squad, whose bomb-sniffing German Shepherds (they only understand German! so cute!) find nothing. Still, though, nobody rests easy until they trace the call to a lost cell phone belonging to two college kids who thought they'd get on the news with their prank. Instead, they get to do a perp walk as the police haul them off to jail.

Meanwhile, Harriet is still fuming after last week's breakup with Luke and the "thing" with Matt. She unloads to the rest of the cast, who don't care so much as they finally get the message through her thick blond head of hair that the only person who has a problem with a castmember dating an executive producer is, apparently, Harriet. And Matt, too, I guess, but he's got other problems (pills) to deal with.

Oh, and Simon is a cad. There. I said it. In the 65 minutes he was broken up with his girlfriend, he found an old date, still looking good and busty to take to Hawai'i for Memorial Day weekend. But when girlfriend came back, Sim dumped the old date, though not in time as Lucy consoled the girlfriend on Tom's quick conquest. So it'll be Tom, Lucy, and Simon as the lovable third wheel for a romantic getaway to the island of Kona? Not quite.