I can see why certain critics have it in for the show, as yesterday’s part of last week’s episode seems haphazardly written. But yet the other part, and latter half, of “Studio 60″ was still just right up there with the standards of the last episode and the other well-done airings the show has seen.

Sometimes “Studio 60″ can be smart and other times it can be smarmy. For an example of the latter, there’s a bit in Jordan McDeere’s office where the character inexplicably and for no reason at all states “Race car is a palindrome.” What the heck does that even mean? Yes, I know a palindrome is word spelled the same backwards as it is forward, but what does it mean for Jordan’s character? Why did she even say it? There were quite a few lines like that here. I think sometimes Sorkin’s random dialogue is, unlike Joss Whedon’s pop culture-saturated Buffy scripting, more reliant on intellectual in-jokes. I don’t think Sorkin is doing this in purpose – the show’s chief characters had stated again and again that television should not be dumbed down – but I think sometimes Sorkin writes this jokes without so much of a life jacket, and they go down like the Titantic as a result.

But not all of Sorkin’s intellectually-inclined material is problematic. When wrapped in context and not asked to fill dead air, it can provided an intriguing insight into the characters. Take the introduction of mentor-writer Alex Dwyer (Simon Helberg) – Matt retorts he staged “Looking Back in Anger” in Dutch. Now, if you have read “Looking Back in Anger” and you can picture it in Dutch, you pretty much get a sparkling image of Alex Dwyer inside and out – brooding, difficult, random and ultimately loyal and well-intentioned. But if you haven’t read “Looking Back in Anger”, it doesn’t matter – because Sorkin bang-bang-bang dialogue more than compensates for the possibility.

By the way, I love the inclusion of writers Darius and Lucy into the show. Lucy you might recognize as Lucy Davis, last seen as Dianne in “Shaun of the Dead”. The two characters are really enjoyable minor figures who could probably carry an entire episode, if not make their way into the cast as title characters some day.

The Christmas episode next week looks certainly interesting – it’ll be interesting to see what role the very Jewish Matt plays in all of this.