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.