Sorkinosis
My cronies list veritably crawls with Aaron Sorkin fans. On their collective recommendation, I figured I’d check out Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip. Alas, after several episodes, I erased its entry from my PVR. Turns out it suffers from the same problem that made The West Wing unwatchable for me: I know just enough about the subject matter to have my suspension of disbelief continually challenged. Too many of the situations in the first few episodes would just plain never happen. A packed press conference to introduce a new show runner? National TV news coverage of a network exec’s 8-year old DUI? A new creative era on a sketch show heralded by a Gilbert and Sullivan parody?
My disbelief extends to the characters and their interactions. Sorkin is an imaginer, not a keen observer, of the institutions he examines. Even without the giant homage in the opener, it’s obvious that Sorkin wants to be the Paddy Chayefsky of his generation. But Chayefsky’s institutional satires ring true with real-life observation. I think this stems from temperament. Chayefsky was an outraged cynic. Sorkin is an idealist, a celebrant. Which means he can’t look very closely at the ways people really behave in the situations he wants to portray.
Even though it’s a broad comedy, the characters in the similarly-premised sitcom 30 Rock are way more authentic. Their daffily self-involved agendas are exaggerated but entirely credible, as befits the show’s gentle, un-Chayefskian flavor of cynicism. (The pilot had other problems, mostly related to trying too hard. The overbearing "this is hilarious, folks" score has to go. But overall I dug it and hope it will settle in now that the intro is dispensed with.)
A final point of comparison presents us with a mirrored pair of paradoxes. On Studio 60, the comedians and writers are supposed to be brilliant, but what we glimpse of their work is painfully hacky. On 30 Rock, the Tracy Jordan character is supposed to be hacky, but, as played by Tracy Morgan, is extremely funny.