Psychoanalytical drive-by: Aaron Sorkin, and Studio 60

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was one of the most anticipated shows in recent television history, and since it premiered, it has become--for me--one of television's most entertaining flops. Nothing seems to excite sophisticated urbanite television reviewer types like Aaron Sorkin's dialogue*, and what better place to show it off than a return to form like this one? Everyone loved Sports Night, after all.

(*-I will refrain from describing Sorkin's dialogue here, instead relying on hackneyed critical conventional wisdom and thesaurus.com to do it for me. As for me? Well, I've seen no West Wing and very little Sports Night, but I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Yes, yes, it's smart and snappy, fine. It's the same voice shoved down the throats of a half dozen bodies who then go about trying to outsmart and outconverse each other for the hour. The banter at the center of Matt and Harriet's on-again-off-again romance is so echoic that their relationship practically feels incestuous. Call me when the guy writes a character.)

What was to be Sorkin's triumphant return to television is based around character Matt Albie's triumphant return to television. The once-venerable sketch comedy show has been watered down to a bland, unwatchable sludge, and it's up to Albie to right the ship. Early episodes show Albie writing Important-With-A-Capital-I sketches sticking it to, mainly, the Christian right. But what will the American public think? Albie doesn't care, because he's on a mission, though he should care, because if he did he would learn that his sketches are painfully heavy-handed and just generally fucking abysmally unfunny. Meanwhile, everyone around him calls him and his show and his work "brilliant" and "important" with faces as straight as they are oblivious. They say this about a series of sketches called "Crazy Christians." We are clearly not watching the same show.

It's impossible not to cringe and to feel a measure of embarrassment for Sorkin, who may as well have named his main character Saron Oorkin. It's hard to know when these episodes were written, but one imagines he was already making space on his mantle for the Emmys he was planning on receiving for this mess. Just to make things more uncomfortable, Albie--like Sorkin--exerts almost complete control over his show, writing basically every sketch. If the horrendous sketches and less-than-punchy 1000-word "News 60" setups we see aren't enough to convince the viewer of Sorkin's fundamental ignorance of comedy, then his utter distrust of and contempt for the writer's room will do the trick. The guys in charge of "the room" are two of his earliest nemeses; one of the first and only times Albie depends on the room, the sketch turns out to be plagiarized and the show is thrown into chaos (the lesson as always: no one but Sorkin is to be trusted). At one point, every writer quits but for two rookies who have never even tried writing their way out of a paper bag, and there is nary a hiccup in production. Oh, and when these two rookies finally prove their worth by coming up with something worth airing, it is a hostage sketch, and that night some nut goes and takes his family hostage in North Dakota. The lesson as always: If you are Aaron Sorkin, always write more than you need, because God has chosen you and you alone to share the gift of brilliant television with the world and He does not like it when others encroach upon the path He has chosen for you.

So basically, Studio 60 is a drama whose dramatic moments are contrived, overdone, unearned, unconvincing and often annoying, about a comedy show whose comedic moments are not funny, written by a guy who seems to have no idea how comedy shows and even comedy itself work. Critics were unkind; ratings were unkinder. The show was a flop.

As NBC's support eroded and Sorkin felt the pressure of a hostile audience, he seems to call an audible. He brought in Mark McKinney to give the humor a kick (like the least funny Kid, long past his prime, could have saved this trainwreck). And most interesting of all, Sorkin seems to acknowledge that his show is less than perfect. But all the "Crazy Christians" and "we're too edgy for the red states, so you network suits can just buzz off, all right?" worked beautifully as a built-in defense mechanism. Even if the show (ostensibly the sketch-comedy show, but obviously Sorkin's dramedy as well) struggles, it is not because the show is not perfect, but because Albie just has too much unflinching integrity to dumb down his genius for the masses. He can't help himself! The attitude of both shows is "We are going to be smart and edgy and win over middle America, and if we don't win over middle America, that only further proves how stupid middle America is--and, therefore, how smart and edgy we are." It's a can't-lose proposition, except neither Albie nor Sorkin seems to acknowledge that even the critics--his tiny target audience--were hating this shit.

Tonight, the blatantly transparent psychological defense mechanisms officially became unbearable. Throughout the show's run, the way the guiding ideology of the first episodes clashed with the reality of Sorkin's disappointment was almost poignant. The drama of the show is bad, but the show's more poisonous problem is the utter impossibility of believing that anyone would regard the guy who writes such shitty sketch comedy as a genius. And while Albie is able to escape these criticisms in the echo chamber of the fictional show, Sorkin has to take lumps for the two of them: for Sorkin, as the overpraised writer of a bad drama, and for his autobiographical creation Albie, as the overpraised writer of bad comedy. There isn't much that's more embarrassing than overestimating one's own worth, especially in front of a large crowd, and Sorkin got exposed in the worst way. The "Great Writer Saves Television By Writing Show About Great Writer Saving Comedy" storyline is undercut at the root, and every other step along the way. The poor asshole never had a chance.

But if his scripts are any indication, Sorkin has handled the failure of his show with something less than complete grace. Whether or not enough of the sketch comedy show's troubles are placed at Albie's feet (though there is little reason to believe the fictional show is in as much trouble as Sorkin's), the scripts have grown increasingly stubborn, petulant and immature. This week's episode features the real threat of--well, something--because of ratings that are only getting worse. In the meantime, Albie is wrestling with drug problems (like Sorkin did, imagine that), one actor's brother has been taken hostage in Afghanistan, the President of the network might have miscarried--is that everything? Sorkin shows his disdain for the 296 million Americans who aren't watching his show by returning to the issue of ratings again and again, and in absurdly telling spots. Jordan can't hear her baby kicking, so Danny is about to rush her to the emergency room. Half-evil network exec Jack says that they need to talk right now. "We can't talk about the ratings now," Danny says, because a baby is dying. But Jack doesn't want to talk about the ratings, because three soldiers, including cast member Tom Jeter's brother, have been taken hostage in Afghanistan. Even half-evil network exec Jack understands a real serious situation when he sees one. At this point, the viewer imagines Sorkin backed into a corner by critics, and lashing out--"WE'RE AT WAR, BABIES ARE DYING, I'M TRYING TO WRITE IMPORTANT SATIRE OF MIDDLE AMERICA AND SOLVE THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS AND YOU'RE TALKING TO ME ABOUT MY SHOW'S RATINGS? HOW CAN YOU EVEN...UH...LOOK OVER THERE! ELSEWHERE!" At the end of the episode, Danny and Matt stand in the control room, and they tick off the traumas of the night. Ratings are not important; can't you see all these other things that are more important than ratings? The last line of the show gave me the heartiest laugh I've had as a semi-regular viewer of the show: "The next person who talks to me about ratings is fired," Matt says.

OK, Aaron. We won't talk about ratings anymore. But someday, you're going to have to understand that poor ratings were only one of your show's many glaring failures, and you'll have to accept that some of the blame belongs to you.