Since I've already spent a great deal of time gushing about this in another web location, instead of repeating my long-winded ramble about Sorkin's new show, I'll just link you to my livejournal entry on the topic.

Comments are welcome either here, or there.

So how do you really feel about the man, Tony?

I never got into the West Wing. I watched a few episodes, but it just wasn't my type of show. Maybe I'll give it another chance sometime, but I have so much TV that I watch now and so little free time these days

I will say that about half of the Sports Night episodes were very good, and I'm guessing those were the ones he wrote (there were lots of episodes where the dialogue slowed down - those weren't nearly as good).

I agree, Matt. I watched some of The West Wing, and it was well-written and all, but the thing that I disliked about the show is that it constantly felt like a bunch of people talking at a bunch of other people, none of whom had ever met each other before. There was no rapport of any kind among those actors and it really irritated me. On the other hand, I really enjoyed Sports Night, despite not being a sports fan at all. Those people really seemed to have relationships. I'm looking forward to Studio 60; I hope I'm not disappointed. Although I am curious about two shows debuting this season both dealing with behind-the-scenes SNL.

The works of Joss Whedon come a distant second,

No way.

They come in second, agreed, but certainly not a distant second!

tanstaafl.

Maybe I'm just a typical *MAN*, in that I can do without the touchy-feely stuff, but I felt almost exactly the opposite as you. "Sports Night" lost me toward the end of its run, when it became just another sitcom about who would sleep with whom, whereas "The West Wing" was about people who had all-consuming passions of a totally different nature and significance, and hence far more interesting to me. I liked the fact that it was light on the interpersonal relationships and heavy on the socio-anthropological commentary. If you wanted to see a group of people having totally inappropriate sexual liaisons, there was always "Friends" on the same Bat-channel the next night. But to Tony's point, he's right about one thing: not even Joss Whedon, good as he surely is, can write crackling, rapier-witted dialogue like that dope-smokin' Sorkin!

???

The only who-slept-with-whom plotline I can think of is the one where Josh Malina's character is dating the porn starlet, and that had a lot more to do with exploring his personality and relationships than it had to do with "inappropriate sexual liaisons". Also, it lasted, I think, two episodes.

And it's not that I need "interpersonal relationships" in the way that I think you mean it, but, rather, that the characters portrayed need to seem like people, not robots. I think the dialogue was excellent, but it takes an extraordinary actor to make it work, especially in a dramatic setting, and The West Wing "only" had a couple of extraordinary actors, which meant that only about 20% of the cast were up to the dialogue. IMO. But even those actors couldn't make me feel like I wasn't watching a dozen different people all recording their segments without ever having met each other.

One of the problems with Sorkin's dialogue is that it's hard for others to imitate -- many of the early episodes of Sports Night tried to mimic it by having people talk fast, but just repeat whatever the other person said, which made me stop watching it in its initial run -- so he either has to script every episode, which isn't going to happen, or he the show has to be inconsistent.

All that said, I still have high hopes for 30 Rock. Uh, I mean Studio 60.