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Not terrible, but I'm gonna need some more convincing. It seems terribly self-impressed, doesn't it?
I was expecting a more character-driven show than WEST WING, because the subject matter does not, at first blush, have the same dramatic heft as that show. How wrong I was: Aaron Sorkin apparently feels that the story of two guys called in to fix a failing sketch comedy show has precisely the same cultural gravitas as the story of the Great Works being done in The People's House. God help us, he seems to think that STUDIO 60 tells an important story.
Which is just fucking dumb. The comparisons to NETWORK (and oh, look how clever we are to endlessly harp on the similarity—as if that somehow makes it less shameless! See "You Can't Fire Me, I Quit") simply don't work, because Chayefsky was writing about TV news at a time when TV news had enormous cultural power, while Sorkin is writing about fucking sketch comedy. And it's not just that the format's power is diluted because there are so many sketch comedy shows nowadays—even at its peak, Saturday Night Live was never quite the sociocultural force that everybody involved with it, with infinite smugness and self-congratulation, told themselves it was. He's pining after a golden age that never existed.
(Actually, if anything we're living in that golden age now: see The Daily Show for smart, politically-conscious comedy that has the potential to effect real change, if only to the minds of the viewers. But then, Sorkin is eulogizing broadcast television, as opposed to cable, so he's painted himself into a corner.)
The other thing I'm getting is that STUDIO 60's Big Issue is going to be religion, particularly the role of faith in public life and the difficulty of actually starting a public dialogue about faith without it descending into name-calling. The problem is that Sorkin writes about the life of faith from outside. he is sympathetic to people of faith, but he shows no sign of actually understanding how we think. I'm thinking of THE WEST WING's famous cussing-out-God in the National Cathedral scene. It's always nice to hear ecclesiastical Latin on TV, but theologically the scene was nonsense—it served only to make Bartlett look petulant and self-regarding, not like the thoughtful, wise ex-seminarian Sorkin told us he was.
Just so, last night's revelation that the reason Matt (or was it Danny?) broke up with Harriet is because she promoted her CD of Christian music on Pat Robertson's 700 Club. This is supposed to show the hidden streak of bigotry behind Danny's (or is it Matt's?) staunch liberalism. But the scene fails because, in fact, he's right and she's wrong. See, here's the thing: I love Jesus as much as anybody, and I love sacred music more than most; and it's entirely possible to reach a Christian audience without pandering to the obnoxiously-politicized fundamentalist side of things. There are many, many Christian markets and outlets other than The 700 Club, and to ally oneself with a hatemongering streak-of-shit like Pat Roberson is, for an allegedly thoughtful, good-hearted Christian like Harriet, a far graver moral compromise than anything the more worldly Matt (or is it Danny?) has done.
Sorkin hasn't intentionally stacked the deck against Harriet, I don't think; I think he genuinely wants to expand the conversation, and provide a balanced portrait of religion. The problem is, he knows so little about the religious viewpoint that the end effect is patronizing and unconvincing. With friends like Aaron Sorkin, what enemies do Christians need? |
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