Studio 60 Continues Not Sucking Streak

Until I learn the purpose of the TV blog "recaplet" and how to successfully write a good one this will be how I shall address the airings of most recent episodes.

Show: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Air Date: Monday, January 22, 2007
Title: Monday
Writer: Aaron Sorkin *

Commentary: Without completely losing the Religious Right critique he's been using as the moral center of the show, a schtick a lot of viewers have grown tired of, Sorkin kicked off the second half of the show's first season with a strong story incorporating the finer aspects of his past work: intriguing overarching plot points, richly written women characters and the painful tenderness of unrequited love.

One interesting thing to take away from Monday's episode is Sorkin's maturing exploration of race. Predominantly a non-issue in Sports Night, race became an awkward scepter of self-righteousness which Sorkin used to pat his own back in certain episodes of the West Wing. In Monday's Studio 60, however, the developing story line of Simon Stiles, his race and his relationship with a young, black writer introduces a topic often noticed but rarely discussed - the black identity within the history of American comedy.

Perhaps it was of no oversight of his own that Sorkin wrote the scene between Simon Stiles and the new, black writer for an episode to air 30 years after the premier of that other great institution of American television, Roots.

Maybe the improbable is possible; Sorkin can be topical without being pedantic; maybe someday I'll learn to write a recaplet.

*Sorkin only gets a "created by" credit not a "teleplay by."

Meta Tarses

I'm home for the holidays in the Midwest and my dad's refusing to give me any wine because I've already taken 2 Sudafed pills for a cold he's probably responsible for by voting Republican then refusing to turn on the heat because of high oil prices. In my alcohol-less stupor I've been relegated to watching My Boys on the plasma wrapped in an afghan on a leather chair that awkwardly matches my skin tone.

As my thighs started to congeal to my track pants under the intense heat generated by my immobility I noticed an awkward screenshot of the Match.com homepage during a scene of My Boys that had really nothing to do with the episode's overarching narrative. Some google-ing later I found that I was probably the last TV blogger this side of Taipei to know about the groundbreaking deal struck between Match.com and TBS for full sponsorship of the freshman series. Needless to say, an angry phone call to the TV on the INTERN back in New York ensued, which is when I heard that according to the New York Times:

“It’s a fully integrated campaign that feels less like a sponsorship or advertisement and more like a part of the program,” he added.

In threading Match.com through the episodes of “My Boys,” Mr. Safka said, “it has to feel seamless and natural,” otherwise it could annoy or even alienate viewers.

Now, I don't know if a random screenshot constitutes either seamless or natural, but the new media side of me kind of smiles at the notion of TV advertising taking risks on original programming on basic cable channels. You go, TBS. You go, Match.com. And you know what? You fucking go too, Dr. Phil.

On a related note, the fucking NYT also had to be the one to break to me that My Boys executive producer Jamie Tarses was the inspiration for Jordan McDeere, the Amanda Peet character on Studio 60 and the Sunset Strip. Born in 1964, she was the youngest creative exec at ABC in the mid '90s, and I as I sit on this mocha colored couch watching faux Chicago sitcoms sweating through my Sudafed-induced haze and City Sports track pants, I realize, branded entertainment isn't the worst thing in the world and I could use people like Jamie Tarses as role-models in my life because I'm in the Midwest, watching TBS, with a cold because of the Republicans.

L.Y.L.A.S.

Ladies, you love Aaron Sorkin. And he loves you too. He may be the unanimous King of the TV drama over the past 8 years, inheriting the throne from such heavy weights as Dick Wolfe, Steven Bochco and David Milch, but Aaron Sorkin, as sm-ugly as he probably is, knows how to do the ladies. Between Amanda Peet's current character on Studio 60, Mary Louise Parker's feisty feminist on The West Wing and Felicity Huffman's TV sexecutive on Sports Night*, the Sorking has figured out how to write the sweet, rose-smelling shit out of his female characters.

In an industry continually blamed for propagating images of sexy bitches clamoring for the man and neurotic, single 30-somethings stressing over spinsterhood, Sorkin's mature, smart and sassy treatment of the women who populate his pages has become an indelible mark of his work. From Demi Moore in A Few Good Men to Annette Benning in The American President. From Stockard Channing to Allison Janney. From Anne Deavere Smith to that blubbering bitch Sam Seaborne. The verdict is clear like a mistrial against Colonel Jessup. Ladies Love A.S., and deep down in places you don't like to talk about at parties, you do too.

Yes, he's a smug ass-hole whose pedanticism rides that fine iline between intelligent and arrogant. Yes, his characters place far too much emphasis on institutionalized education (Simon Stiles went to Yale Drama School!), standardized test scores (Josh Lyman got a 760 on his SAT verbal!) and bourgeois tradition (Leo drinks Scotch!). Yes, Matt Albee is probably named after that dude who wrote "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." But when Aaron Sorkin does Aaron Sorkin right he's the man who writes Josiah Bartlett's speeches, Lt. Kaffee's cross examinations and, most recently, this past Monday's Holiday episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

I'll admit I criticized the first leg of his foray back into television. But can you blame me? Crazy Christians this. Jerry Falwell that. Matthew Albee as an avatar of me implies I not only got laid a lot but was probably high when I won my Emmies. That shit can get grating like Debra Messing doing arias.

But now everything seems to be falling into place. Monday night's episode saw deft story-telling married with that staple of Sorkin sensibilities - sincerity. We love you the most, Aaron, not when you're cynical characters lambaste the Christian right, but when you make us believe in the better side of hetero male partnerships, corporate responsibility, federal machinations and strong, independent women who still want to get down. I hate to say it, Aaron, but we Love You Like A Sis.

*TV on the INTERNETS couldn't think of a gratuitous pun to describe how awesome C.J. Craig as press secretary was but "sexretary" was briefly considered. Briefly.