TV Thoughts: Studio 60

Am I the only one who thinks Aaron Sorkin is no big deal? He's certainly doesn't deserve enough incessant ego-stroking to drive him to do rails to "ease the pain."

Conventional wisdom says The West Wing circled the crapper after Sorkin left the show but lots of watchers mistook style for substance. How do you give credit to a writer who makes every single character a mouthpiece for himself? I love talking to myself as much as anyone, but an hour of it on TV with different actors saying all the words the same way? I mean, please Aaron Sorkin. Just stop doing coke and maybe your characters will talk a little slower and actually sound like different people.

His latest overrated TV show, Studio 60 takes on a topic that we know everyone cares deeply about: sketch comedy shows. High stakes, folks! Sorkin's rapid-fire glib style works when you're friggin deciding whether or not to drop a billion tons of bombs on Qatar. It makes us feel for the characters because they're glibbing away to cope with massive decisions that shouldn't rest in the hands of most mere humans. But throw Sorkin's style into the cast of a sketch comedy show and it's just a bunch of pampered Hollywood comedy writers snorting their bounty up their noses and glibbing away at what they seem to think is the most important thing of all things. Ratings. The life of a television network. Wow. I'm not sure how the starving people of Darfur are going to react to this.

But really, Aaron Sorkin, I'll take your word for it, what you're doing is important. I mean, those jokes on Weekend Update. Culture-changing, really. A oversmart drama about a comedy that deals with how red state TV audiences laugh differently from blue state TV audiences.

Here's a memo from my television network to yours: The GOP will lose the mid-term elections and I'm not sure it has anything to do with how crappy SNL is. Try a show about The Colbert Report next time.