critique TV show.

[Spike]

Spike wrote: (other thread): "... one I have thought about is this: What if Sirhan Sirhan had been distracted for a moment, maybe something boiling over in the kitchen, and had entered that hall a moment later, and was, this time, off, by a fraction, by enough. And Bobby Kennedy survives."

And I was reminded of where this bit came from. A script, a somewhat playful attempt at a Sorkinesque riff on a Sorkin world. One I worked through some time ago, and even made some small futile effort to get someone in the Sorkin sphere to read.

And I still kind of like it.

And, parenthetically, a slight larger point, maybe a question for someone smarter than I: I have no idea what to do with this kind of stuff. I thInk some of it good enough to not just forget, and it can begin to drive me nuts--these documents, just sitting in some device, unread, un-anything, and I can't help thinking: F-word me!, lol. Anyway.

This takes place at a party for the Ziegler twins, Huck and Molly--a birthday party, their 20th. 4.25 pages.

https://www.keepandshare.com/doc30/114772/toby-huck-ah-pdf-68k?da=y

 

[mlesemann]

It's a good starting point but too monologue heavy, I think. I'd also stay away from anyone else's characters. And the name Huck reminds me of the show Scandal

Of course, once you change that point in history, there's ALWAYS something else that has to go wrong, in order to make it interesting as well as realistic.

 

[Spike]

It's a good starting point but too monologue heavy,

Hence "Sorkinesque" lol. This assumes a familiarity with Aaron Sorkin, and with, specifically, The West Wing. I ended up doing it because i imagined I could, because I imagined West WIng devotees might find it amusing, and even imagined that a West Wing pro might as well. But I don't see it as an attempt to break into anything, to put myself out anywhere. So yea, not in itself a great idea. I suppose it is in the is-what-it-is category.

Thanks Mara, again, as always, for reading.

 

[Nate North]

Don't know how I missed this one, must have slipped past me.

I liked it, it actually captures the WW style pretty well for a moment. I sometimes wonder what that show would have been like with anyone else besides Martin Sheen. He performed Sorkin's character so well that I just can't imagine anyone else in the role. As top tier as Sorkin's writing is on the West Wing, I have to give credit to the casting department for putting together a team that really conveyed the chemistry on the page.

 

[Spike]

Thanks, Nate, for reading. I remember, some time ago, hearing Aaron Sorkin say, in some interview on the you tube regarding a West Wing reboot, something like: I'm not against it but I don't have any ideas. And I thought, I raised my hand: I have one. And I started to write it down, and then started to dramatize what I was writing, and ended up with a whole 55 page pilot, lol.

I think it was New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum who ridiculed someone as being "the kind of person" that thinks The West Wing was the greatest television show ever. (She, I think, is more enamored with Sopranos/BreakingBad kind of stuff.) Anyway, I am one of those kinds of people. I would make it "one of the greatest," but not out of any embarrassment.

And when I say The West Wing, here, I mean only seasons 1-4 The non-Sorkin West wing was OK, but was more like regular TV.

And Sorkin's West Wing was great for a lot of reasons--great cast, great direction, and of course, great writing. People talk about Sorkin's quick-fire dialogue, but for me, more characteristic, are the long monologues, and some of these resonate throughout the American film and television cannon: Jack Nicholson in a few good men, Toby Ziegler addressing his newborn babies, President Bartlet dressing down Christian fundamentalists, and this one, from the first episode of the News Room (starting at 1:40 if you're impatient).

So when I read Huck's last speech above, to myself, at a reading-out-loud pace, I try to hear the rhythms, what Sorkin calls the "music" of the words. Sorkin is criticized (and is certainly aware of the criticism) for being sentimental. For me, I think, it's being sophomoric, lol, but anyway.

I'm not saying that my thing is great, or even good. Only that this was its inspiration.

 

[Nate North]

Thanks, Nate, for reading. I remember, some time ago, hearing Aaron Sorkin say, in some interview on the you tube regarding a West Wing reboot, something like: I'm not against it but I don't have any ideas. And I thought, I raised my hand: I have one. And I started to write it down, and then started to dramatize what I was writing, and ended up with a whole 55 page pilot, lol.

I think it was New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum who ridiculed someone as being "the kind of person" that thinks The West Wing was the greatest television show ever. (She, I think, is more enamored with Sopranos/BreakingBad kind of stuff.) Anyway, I am one of those kinds of people. I would make it "one of the greatest," but not out of any embarrassment.

And when I say The West Wing, here, I mean only seasons 1-4 The non-Sorkin West wing was OK, but was more like regular TV.

And Sorkin's West Wing was great for a lot of reasons--great cast, great direction, and of course, great writing. People talk about Sorkin's quick-fire dialogue, but for me, more characteristic, are the long monologues, and some of these resonate throughout the American film and television cannon: Jack Nicholson in a few good men, Toby Ziegler addressing his newborn babies, President Bartlet dressing down Christian fundamentalists, and this one, from the first episode of the News Room (starting at 1:40 if you're impatient).

So when I read Huck's last speech above, to myself, at a reading-out-loud pace, I try to hear the rhythms, what Sorkin calls the "music" of the words. Sorkin is criticized (and is certainly aware of the criticism) for being sentimental. For me, I think, it's being sophomoric, lol, but anyway.

I'm not saying that my thing is great, or even good. Only that this was its inspiration.

I'll be honest, The minute Sorkin left the West Wing, it was kind of a big letdown. It was pretty much the best show on television at the time, and thought the characters, the production values, the casting was still everything it was before, it just started to feel very..... lackluster, by comparison to those earlier seasons. And it went on too long after it was in decline too. I liked the newsroom, but felt the production didn't gel as well as WW, and also they didn't give him enough time to really build out that world and those characters. Like in example, the WW had this soft lens glow that created a look that worked perfectly with his optimistic/patriotic/sentimental whatever, in a way that's hard to define. The newsroom shared a lot of positive DNA, but I think for a lot of people it was a case of not putting quite enough creamer in the coffee, a strong and bitter intellect, without those soft gel lights and Sheen and Dule Hill's warm charisma and comic relief to take the edge off.

 

[Spike]

The minute Sorkin left the West Wing, it was kind of a big letdown.

Yup. I was complaining about season 5 to someone, and they said, I want to know what happened to them, the characters, and I thought: But it's not them. They've all been lobotomized, the Sorkin part of their brains cut out.

I did like The News Room a lot, but I think its problem, for me, is that if fell back on so much stuff about who was whose boyfriend or girlfriend. Same problem, I think, with Sports Night and Studio 60. And the lack of this stuff, in his West Wing, left so much room for things more interesting.

 

[Nate North]

Yup. I was complaining about season 5 to someone, and they said, I wan't to know what happened to them, the characters, and I thought: But it's not them. They've all been lobotomized, the Sorkin part of their brains cut out.

I did like The News Room a lot, but I think its problem, for me, is that if fell back on so much stuff about who was whose boyfriend or girlfriend. Same problem, I think, with Sports Night and Studio 60. And the lack of this stuff, in his West Wing, left so much room for things more interesting.

My completely unfounded guess is that over the years Sorkin lost some of his optimism about the political process, and he didn't enjoy writing that particular thread as much as he once did, in more idealistic days. I think the West Wing is kind of this idealized dream of a democratic white house, and what was so amazing about it to me was that it was a very accurate portrait of how I thought things should be, and how I once imagined they actually were. It's hard to believe that a person of Sorkin's intellect would be an evergreen optimist with unflinching faith in his compatriots, and the "America, we're No. 17" speech you posted does feel to me like it supports the theory of a more world weary Sorkin. It's cool though. I like both varieties of Sorkin. His masterclass really stood out among the others, he was the one guy on there who actually knew how to teach a class and show up prepared.