Aaron Sorkin and Me: A Love-Hate Relationship

As a pop-culture consumer, I tend to follow certain writers from project to project. Joss Whedon, J. Michael Straczynski, Stephen King, David Milch ... and Aaron Sorkin.

Sorkin, Sorkin, Sorkin. Such a good writer -- sometimes. Look at "Sports Night," one of my all-time favorite shows (canceled before its time, but that's another post). "Sports Night" is Sorkin at the top of his game. Yes, the characters get self-righteous sometimes, and he still has a little trouble writing women who aren't total flibbertigibbets ... but for the most part, he got it right.

The dialogue is snappy and smart. The show's not about sports; it's about a group of people working together to make a news show about sports. For the most part, Sorkin makes it look like an awesome place to work.

Here's a snippet of dialogue from a season 1 episode, just 'cause I love it:

Dan: If you wear something blue you get two dollars off a giant blue margarita.

Casey: You know I make a pretty good living. I can actually afford to wear what I want and pay full price.

Dan: I'm not promoting the economic upside as much as I am the opportunity to drink something giant and blue.

The next time Sorkin did television, it was the massive hit "The West Wing." Oh, how I loved that show. The first episode, where Martin Sheen walks in as the president and corrects some right-wing yahoo's misquote of the Bible ... love! As the seasons wore on, Sorkin's self-righteous side started to show more, and the tone got strident. Sorkin is a liberal. So am I. As liberals, we sometimes forget that conservatives can be smart, caring people too. I've been guilty of that, and so has Aaron Sorkin. The difference is that mine didn't air on national television.

Next came "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," a major misstep. So much wasted potential! The pilot was fantastic. Seriously, watch it again -- just the pilot -- and tell me your hair didn't stand up. Just me? OK. I thought the energy of that pilot, where Matt (Matthew Perry) and Danny (Bradley Whitford) take over the late-night sketch comedy show (which is totally not SNL, we promise!) was pretty amazing.

But then. First, Sorkin used the show to beat up on his ex-girlfriend, conservative Christian actress Kristin Chenoweth. Couldn't the fact that Harriet (the character played by Sarah Paulsen) was a devout Christian be, I don't know, not a big deal? I'm an atheist. I have Christian friends. We don't spend all of our time pissing and moaning about our religious differences.

For me, the worst tone deafness was the "romantic" relationship between Danny and Jordan (network exec played by Amanda Peet). Danny literally stalks and hounds Jordan into dating him. I think Sorkin was going for cute. It wasn't cute. It was icky. 

Moving on.

Now we have Sorkin's latest: "The Newsroom." It's on HBO, which is lucky for Aaron, because he really seems to like the fuck word. 

I want to like this show. It's really close, too. But the female characters (especially Maggie and Mackenzie) are just so dumb, and so bad at their jobs. Plus ... here are two plot elements that Sorkin lifted directly from Sports Night, for no good reason:

- Dana was dating Gordon, an assistant U.S. attorney, and Casey was jealous. On "The Newsroom," we had Mackenzie dating an assistant U.S. attorney, and Will (the main character, and her ex) was jealous.

- In one episode of "Sports Night," Danny hijacked another client's session because he just had to talk to his therapist (who let him do this -- bad therapist!). Will did the exact same thing. It was annoying when Danny did it, and we had a lot more reason to like Danny.

I don't know if I will watch season 2 of "The Newsroom." We'll see.

Summer of '60s

MeTV (a new-to-me cable network) is mining the 1960s for its summer programming. Since I like to have something mindless on the TV while I sew, this means that I have been watching a lot of 1960s sitcoms and adventure shows lately.

Some observations:

Green Acres is a show I never watched as a kid, though it was on Nick at Nite. I had recently heard that it had an absurdist sense of humor, and thought I'd give it a shot. In some ways, you can see the roots of good-weird sitcoms like "Better Off Ted" and "Community" in it. The Ziffels and their "son," Arnold (who is a pig) are a good example. (The pig is pretty cute. I may keep watching, on and off, just for him.) Of course, that's marred a bit by the ubiquitous laugh track, but you have to expect that for a 60s show.

You know this, even if you've never seen the show, but: "Green Acres" is the story of Oliver and Lisa Douglas, a New York couple who (at his insistence) buy a farm and move out to the country. It's all right there in the theme song ("Fresh air!" "Times Square!").

I was blown away by a line in the first episode I watched, in which Mr. Haney (the con artist who sold Oliver the farm) attempts to sell him a planting machine.

HANEY: It's like having a mechanized wetback!
ME: What the fuck? Did he just say what I think he said? (Rewinds TiVo) Yep.

I know we're way more (pick your term: politically correct, progressive, non-racist) now, but I'm still kind of gobsmacked that they were allowed to say that word on TV. They couldn't say Lucy was "pregnant," but they could say "wetback." Sheesh.

Eva Gabor is pretty adorable as Lisa, Oliver's city-loving, Hungarian wife. Oliver is a total yutz, plowing and planting in his three-piece suit. In the second episode I watched, a guy from the Dept. of Agriculture meets him and makes fun of that, which helped me be less annoyed by it, somehow.

The Monkees, on the other hand, was a fairly significant part of my childhood. I remember watching a few episodes in syndication in the 1970s, but mainly I remember watching (and taping) every single episode when MTV aired it during my junior and senior years of high school. I bought their albums (on vinyl!), and I had a crush on Micky Dolenz (Davy was too short for me, plus I like funny boys).

It's a very silly show. A dumb show, even ... but I still have a lot of affection for it. As for the music, a lot of it holds up, I think. In our age of autotune and boy bands, maybe it's harder to look down on the Prefab Four than it was back then. (P.S. I still have all of their CDs.)

The Wild Wild West  is a show I remember fondly, though I don't think I saw all that many episodes. It's fun, and a little cheesy -- sort of a steampunk James Bond with a sense of humor. And this was, what, 40 years before steampunk became the huge thing it is now. I think I'll hang onto this season pass.

Other shows on my TiVo that I haven't watched yet: "The Green Hornet" and "Batman." Maybe I'll do an all-superhero post next.

Hill Street Blues: Not That Great

When I was a kid in the 80s, my parents watched "Hill Street Blues." It debuted in 1981, when I was 12 -- a little young for what was then considered a gritty cop show. I never watched it, but I was tuned-in enough to pop culture that I heard about it, plenty.

Fast-forward to 2012. My husband (who is 7 months younger than I, and had stricter parents, so I don't know why he was allowed to watch "HSB" when I wasn't, but whatever) wonders if the show is as good as he remembers it. It's available from Netflix, so we rent the first DVD. Last night, we popped it in the player.

I am saying this based ONLY on the first two episodes. That's not totally fair, but this is my blog. You want fair, write your own blog.

"Hill Street Blues" kind of sucked!

OK, I'm absolutely willing to believe it got better. It must have!

Based on the first two episodes:

The Good:
Hmm. Give me a minute. Well, Daniel J. Travanti, as Capt. Frank Furillo, has a sort of weary authority to him that I liked. I also like the way the show starts in medias res (that's fancy talk for "in the middle of things") and expects you to keep up. 


The Bad:  
On the other hand, many of the characters are -- at this point -- more cardboard standups from central casting than fully-realized characters. Officer Renko wears cowboy boots and a bolo tie. Joyce Davenport (defense attorney -- for some reason, I always thought she worked for the DA but I guess not) is tightly wound and for some reason everyone thinks she's hot. (She's perfectly fine-looking, but nothing spectacular).  I'm hoping for deeper character development as the show goes on.

Speaking of Renko, he and his partner (supercool black cop Bobby Hill) respond to a domestic disturbance, and find that a mom is threatening her naked teenage daughter with a knife because she caught the daughter (who looks 15, tops) in bed with her (the mom's) husband. (The husband is NOT the father of the daughter, thankfully). No one says anything about child molestation (in fairness, "statutory rape" is mentioned). In the end, Hill tells the mom to be more available to the stepdad, and tells the daughter to shut the bathroom door when she's dressing. WTF?

The Just Plain Silly:
Oh, where to begin?

Det. Belker bites people, and growls. Did I mention he bites people? He then gets upset when he's not given credit for NOT biting someone.

Sgt. Esterhaus (the guy who says "Let's be careful out there" every episode) is played by a 53-year-old actor. He just got divorced after 23 years of marriage. He looks -- easily -- 60. He's dating a high school senior. When he told this to Furillo's ex-wife in the first episode, I kept expecting him to say "Just kidding!" Nope. He continued talking about her in the second episode, and nobody seems grossed out by it. Except me.

There is a summit of the gangs in the (unnamed) city in episode 2 that really must be seen to be believed. The gang members -- I am NOT making this up -- wear matching vests with appliques! Fucking appliques! One gang has little bloody knives sewn onto its vests. It's adorable. It's like the costumer raided the high school drama department's costume closet. Some of the gangs wear little hats. I seriously wish I could find screencaps from this scene. It's that hilarious. (David Caruso pops up as an Irish gang leader with -- I swear -- a shamrock appliqued onto his vest.)

I found a picture!!! See, I wasn't making it up.

The show gets better, right? Or at least stays hilariously ridiculous?