Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip/B-12

B-12
Season 1, Episode 10
Airdate	November 27, 2006
Written by	Eli Attie Aaron Sorkin
Directed by	Bryan Gordon
← 1x09 The Option Period	1x11 → The Christmas Show
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — Season One

B-12 is the tenth episode of the first season of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and the tenth episode overall. A virus is circulating the studio and everyone is getting sick. Meanwhile, Matt calls in a veteran writer to help Lucy and Darius become better writers and Danny calls out Martha O'Dell over her article.

Special Guest Star: Christine Lahti (Martha O'Dell)

Guest Stars: Mark McKinney (Andy Mackinaw), Todd Stashwick (Bill Chatzky), Lucy Davis (Lucy Kenwright), Columbus Short (Darius Hawthorne), Ayda Field (Jeanie Whatley), Simon Helberg (Alex Dwyer), Nate Torrence (Dylan Killington), Camille Chen (Samantha Li), Merritt Wever (Suzanne), John Mahon (George), Wendy Phillips (Shelley)

Co-Stars: ...

Uncredited: Howie Mandel (Himself), Corinne Bailey Rae (Herself)

Plot Overview

The live broadcast for this week's show has begun with Howie Mandell giving a monologue, which quickly turns into a parody of Deal or No Deal, with Danny playing the role that he's usually in. Meanwhile, backstage, everyone on the crew is getting flu shots. After the sketch is over, Martha O'Dell reveals herself and Danny expresses how much he didn't like her column to her. He also mentions that "stuff happened" while she was away.

Flashing back to Monday, the weather in Los Angeles is miserable and a flu virus is running rampant in the studio. Now that Matt is down to two writers, he struggles with them to create sketches for the Howie Mandell show. The lack of communication drives him to ask an old writer for the show to come back and work with the freshman writers.

Backstage in the hair and make-up room, Matt walks in on half the cast doing spit-takes for no apparent reason. He leaves without a question, but is followed by Harriet who tells him about how she was accepted into the Falstaff Society and needs a joke to tell. He gives her several, but she can't reconstruct the joke, leading him to the conclusion that she is completely unable to tell a joke.

The next day, Martha O'Dell's column is published and Danny spends a good part of the morning ranting about how he'll "let her have it" for using an anonymous internet message board post as a source and for criticizing Tom's movie for making "only" $9 million the weekend before. Matt comes in, followed shortly by Andy, the writer Matt talked about the day before. He quickly pushes Matt out of the writers room and attempts to work with the two on a personal level. In the NBS offices, Jordan raises hell when she finds out that Jack went over her head on bidding for a show. But, he turns the argument back on her when he explains that the negative press is building up and she needs to do something about it, or else suffer the consequences. She finally relents and has Shelley set up an interview with Time magazine.

Friday afternoon, Andy gets fed up with how poorly the writing process is going and confronts Matt about how Lucy and Darius know that they're not getting their sketch on air or even in the dress rehearsal, so they feel no pressure. He tells him to put their unfunny sketch on during dress and let them see what it feels like to hear no one laughing at their work. Meanwhile, Jordan meets with the Time reporter and only manages to make things worse by antagonizing the reporter. After the dress rehearsal, Lucy and Darius are crushed by the silence and write the hell out of the sketch, finally making it funny and finally getting one on the air. Because of the success, Andy also agrees to come back for another week.

Finally, the show loops back to where it began, with everyone sick and getting flu shots. "Stuff" continues to happen when breaking news occurs; The man who held his family hostage in his own home in Gross Pointe killed his family and himself. The sketch about a lousy criminal holding people hostage would be bad taste at this point and sketches need to be cut to allow for network newscasts. The four lone writers put their heads together to create a sketch that would be ready for air in less than 20 minutes.

To make things worse, Dylan collapsed on stage because of the virus going around, he's fine but the writers just wrote a sketch using a great deal of spit-takes, which means whoever isn't sick already is going to be sick soon. Somehow, this includes Jordan McDeere, who nearly collapses in Matt's office. Danny goes to get the nurse, but Jordan pleads with him to make sure she doesn't get the B-12 shot because she's pregnant.