I want the last hour back.

[normative_jean]

It's not fair. I was going back and forth between General Hospital and Studio 60, and just marveling at how bad they both were. What kills me, though, is that they shouldn't suck. They should both be highly rated critical darlings. GH was, once upon a time, and Sorkin's got TWW, Sports night, and a whole mess of great movies to his credit. Both

Comments

[normative_jean]

I didn't want to hate them together; if anything, I desperately wanted to root for them because they clearly loved each other in spite of thier many, many differences. Are you talking about the religious discussions being true to life, or the different religions of people trying ot make it work to be true to life? The latter I definitely agree with, and so making that a point of contention never bothered me. I just don't like heavy-handedness in discussions like that, especially if the writer is just going to skim the surface of all the inherent, related issues. This show was never a good vehicle for Sorkin to write all the things he's really good at, and I think that hampered him a lot.

Jordan never really bothered me the way she bothered a lot of people, although that might just be because I didn't bring any AP issues into the show with me. But the actual relationship between her and Danny sucked, majorly. She should never have returned his affections -- at least not so quickly -- although Danny growing more obsessed with Jordan wouldn't have seemed completely out of character for the guy. People might have kept watching the show if characters hadn't just randomly switched directions. But when BW can't save something, you know you're in danger.

I say give him back the 'shrooms. Therapy might turn Sorkin into a productive memberof society, and I don't think anyone wants that.

[empressearwig]

Oh, I meant people from different religions trying to make it work. I agree he went overboard with having so many discussions about it, but at the same time, since Sorkin's such a verbal writer (I feel like that makes no sense), it didn't really bother me, because he always has verbose characters. But yeah, I think overall the show just was never going to work.

Yeah, the Jordan/Danny thing I blame on AP's pregnancy. I honestly don't think it would have gone that route if he hadn't been forced to write it in.

Hee! But Aaron on drugs can be scary. I just want my favorite writer to write the way he's capable of. Is that so wrong?

[normative_jean]

Then yes, you're absolutely right. It was a real-life issue that I'm glad was at least addressed. I guess I just think that if you're going to do something like that, you have to work at making both points of view sympathetic. Otherwise you're just ranting and soap-boxing. Being a religious minority in a place where there is only a small like-community has made me a little bitter on that point, so maybe I'm not being objective enough.

I still say they didn't have to use the pregnancy in that manner. I'd bet a lot of people stopped watching when he focused too heavily on the "romantic" aspects instead of on the show-within-a-show aspects. They could have strung out the Danny/Jordan relationship a lot longer, and the viewers might have stayed around to let him. So this was just a mobius strip of bad choices, maybe.

Yes, but at least Sorkin on drugs guarantees that his mind is freer! Which seasons of WW was he on them?

[empressearwig]

You're definitely right that both sides needed to be presented in a clearer manner than he attempted. I feel like there's a west wing quite that sums up what I feel, something like, big ideas need to be discussed by big people, and I think he's capable of those types of discussions, but he just didn't take the right direction in this case. And well, whenever he talks about religion he ends up going off the rails a bit.

You're right that it didn't have to be used in that way, but I'm not sure how they could have drug it out for the audience. America still likes pregnant characters in happy, stable relationships. Whether or not they make any sense. But yes, a string of bad choices right down the line is the best explanation for how the show went off the rails.

Season 1 and 2. i.e. the shows prime.

[normative_jean]

The thing is, I usually liked it when he had Bartlet and Toby debating philosophy and ethics and whatnot. So when Sorkin is on a roll, he can do the religion thing pretty damn well. But this goes back to the quote you just mentioned; Matt and Harriet really aren't "big" people in the sense that WW characters are, so maybe that's why religious debates felt flatter than they usually did on WW.

When has Sorkin ever cared about writing what he thinks other people want, though? If he had thought to not throw Jordan and Danny together to create the intsta-family, then I really don't think any amount of pressure could have made him do otherwise. He's got such a contempt for critics and network execs, that I have to believe he just didn't think not to go this route, rather than feeling like he had to do the family thing. Does that make sense?

See? Sorkin needs his shrooms! He really does write better with them.

[empressearwig]

Philosophy and ethics aren't necessarily tied up in religion though. I feel you have to be more careful with a religious discussion than others, and I thought a lot of the West Wing's discussion of religion (Islam in particular), was not fair and balanced, though with anything, may have been a reaction to when the show was being written and performed. But yes, putting existential debates in the mouths of sketch comedians (who may certainly have them), is not the same as putting the same discussion in the mouth of a President and his staff.

I don't know, he listened to John Wells and didn't advance Josh and Donna for years. Honestly, I suspect he wasn't allowed as much freedom on this project as he had been in the past. TWW bled money at times with Sorkin's scripts coming in late and over budget. Of course, sometimes that led to wonderful episodes like 17 people, which WB said had to be done on existing sets, so that they would save money. It's just a guess though. I really have no idea what would have happened if not for AP's pregnancy. It's just one minute, there was a relatively slow pursuit going on, the next he was stalking. It made no sense, and the pregnancy was the only thing that changed.

He does. I just hate the idea of wishing a recovering addict to relapse, you know? He apparently has a movie coming out at Christmas! I'll be curious to see that.

[normative_jean]

You're right. I really wasn't making a clear distinction between religious and ethical debates, was I? Part of what I was thinking about with this is that so much of Jewish thinking isn't explicitly religious, it's secular philosophy bred from the culture (especially among the more reform/liberal thinkers). In my mind, a lot of Toby's points were interchangeable morals/ethics with religion, which is likely a byproduct of my own childhood within that perspective. So I can totally see how that might skew my interpretations of things.

But yeah, he should just leave Islam alone. That was a mess from beginning to end. And he's never treated evangelical Christianity or Southern Baptism with much respect, either. Really, any time there's overt religious discussion, it ends poorly, so you're definitely right about that.

I thought a lot of the budget problems came in the third and fourth seasons, and that that was what led up to him finally leaving? I'm so confused now.

Oh! I don't really wish him to relapse! It's actually a really sad commentary, as you pointed out, that some of his best stuff happened while on drugs. What about when he wrote A Few Good Men or An American President? And, eee! New Sorkin movie!

[empressearwig]

Hm, that's really interesting. I mean, a lot of philosophy is tied up in religion, and that's certainly not limited to Judaism. Bartlet and Toby's debates were certainly a combination of ethics, religion, and philosophy, as both Catholicism and Judaism seem to be fairly entwined in that area. It's just not my experience necessarily, because neither are the faith I was raised with.

There were budget problems throughout the series. It was an ongoing problem, which was part of the reason that the network got so frustrated and ultimately he left. Plus, total burn out from refusal to let others write scripts.

I'm not sure what his status with his addictions were during those movies. I don't think he was ever totally clean till after the conviction for the shrooms pre-season three of TWW, so my suspicion is that they would have been written while at least partially under the influence.

[normative_jean]

A lot of quote-unquote "Jewish" philosophy actually goes the other way and is remarkably secular, at least in the sense that it's more about moral imperatives without explicit mention of needing to appease some higher authority. But again, that also depends on whether the philosopher in question leans more towards Orthodox- or- Reform-style thought. That's not to say Toby and Bartlet ever fully moved away from religious implications, but at least some of the underlying philosophies wouldn't have been explicitly religious. And I won't hazard a guess about the Catholic stuff, since I know nothing about their internal philosophy.

Conversations like this make me glad I never went to yeshiva. I'd have ended up even more verbally anal-retentive than I already am.

I guess I just never realized the budget stuff was there from the get-go. That's a shame, then, since it hampered his bargaining capital with the network from the beginning. And yeah, script burn out must have killed him.

That's so sad, though, that his best stuff all seems to have been written under the influence. I don't want to believe that it takes drugs to produce such amazing results. Obviously, the talent is already there. I just hope Studio 60 was enough of a wake-up call that he starts using his powers for good again.

[empressearwig]

Hm, that's all really interesting stuff. The area I grew up in was about 70% catholic, 25% lutheran, and 5% everything else, so I definitely don't know as much about other religions as I should.

Out of curiosity, what is yeshiva?

Well, according to him: He admits that this approach can have its drawbacks, saying "Out of 88 [West Wing] episodes that I did we were on time and on budget never, not once."

I hope this movie is good. I hope that if his philo farnsworth project ever makes it out of workshop, it turns out well (because I want to see it!). But yeah, mostly I hope he is capable of writing while sober.

[normative_jean]

I don't know nearly as much about my own culture as I should, but since my parents grew up more religious than me, there was always discussion about the various aspects in my house. The entire state only has maybe a couple thousand Jews, and more than half converted for marriage, so it's not the strongest culture up here.

Sorry! Yeshiva is religious school, mostly attended by young Jewish boys. Students study the Old Testament by reading the original text and two different rabbinical commentaries. Basically, students read three conflicting interpretations all at once, and then have to examine and make sense of them all. One of the reasons so many Jews have historically gone into law is because yeshiva training teaches them the kinds of mental skills required to be good lawyers.

Okay, that makes more sense about the over-budget thing. And I really hope that movie is good so that Studio 60 is proven to really be a fluke, rather than an example of him writing soberly.