New Sorkin Trailer

And hey, Leona is Luther Sachs. We never got to see Luther Sachs on screen.

 

I've probably spent too much time thinking about this, but I want to throw something out there:

What if The West Wing is the aberration?

What if Sorkin just doesn't develop characters very well?

When I think back, the characters from A Few Good Men aren't memorable -- Nicholson's performance, sure, but the character is pretty flat. The characters on Sports Night weren't particularly great, either.

What if Martin Sheen and Richard Schiff and Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford and Dule Hill just MADE those roles on TWW, and their great acting was what made the show? And let's not forget that TWW had Mandy and Sam Seaborn, among other pretty flat and dull roles.

We all know Sorkin writes great dialogue, but maybe he needs tremendous actors to sustain a great television series. That wouldn't seem implausible, to me. He's a playwright by trade, and that doesn't require that much character development. And I know I have read comments by him along the lines of... "I don't understand when people say, "Would CJ do something like that? CJ does whatever I tell CJ to do.""

 

I've been watching "Sports Night" again recently and I actually think it contained some of Sorkin's best character work. The people on that show seemed more real than in any of his other material, at least for me. But that may also have been a virtue of the cast over the writing.

I do think his characterization - which does tend to be shallow if you really sit down and examine it - works better in film format than a long-running series. "The Social Network" and "Moneyball" managed to draw fairly interesting people, but I'm not sure how compelling they would've been to live with for more than two hours. They were also based on real individuals (though his Mark Zuckerberg is probably an almost entirely original creation), which I'm sure helped flesh them out in both the writing and acting stage.

 

You think the characters on Sports Night were more fully realized than The West Wing? I can't agree with that at all.

 

I think Daniel Kaffee is a lot more fully realized than you're giving him credit for. I think he's actually the best character in the play/movie.

 

I don't think The West Wing is an aberration. Its characters were certainly more fully-realized than in Sorkin's other work, by virtue of the length of the show's run as much as anything else. What I like about Sports Night is that it managed to draw its characters well in a way that was at times pretty subtle, which is atypical of Sorkin.

 

That might be fair. Been a while since I read the play, and Tom Cruise might well be clouding my judgement.

 

Yep. The similarities between Newsroom and SportsNight are striking.

rb

 

I think one problem is, in every Sorkin vehicle, characters talk a mile and minute and expound on complex subjects off the cuff. On West Wing, this was believable, because it was the White House, and we at least want to believe the people there are the "best and the brightest." But on Studio 60, it seemed odd and forced, and it's a little that way on The Newsroom. Because not every assistant producer is a Rhodes Scholar. I'm not sure Sorkin can write for characters who think and act like "normal" people.

 

ww wasnt necessarily an aberration for sorkin. but many young writers find it hard to ever matdh their eariy hit works. see it in songwriters all the time, right?.

 

Was ready to bail midway through episode 2 but to be honest, I liked the 112th Congress a lot. And while the parading the girlfriends trough he newsroom was a little odd, it reminded me of sports night in a good way, if that make sense. And I think the byplay between Sam Waterston and Fonda brought up a few salient points about the relationship megacompanies that have a much larger portfolio than just the news division wants that news division to behave (fox, cough, cough). Though I did find the tone similar to the end of sports night when, once Sorkin knew it was getting cancelled by ABC, went on a six episode rant about broadcast tv networks and the evil things they do.

 

It's good television, but horrible political pandering. You can tell that the liberals that run the show -- particularly Sorkin -- are incredibly upset that the Tea Party has gained great traction and turned some states red. The idea that so many "conservative" Republicans were ousted by Tea Party candidates is just a lie. Moderate Republicans were ousted. No one on the left seems to mind that there are no moderate Democrats.

As for why no one was commenting on last week's episode (which I'm watching right now, actually) is because this thread should be titled "The running The Newsroom thread" rather than some esoteric "Sorkin Trailer" thread.