I don’t have television service, yet I watch television, sometimes a great deal of it. How, you ask? On Hulu and Netflix Instant Watch. On demand, as much as I want, pretty much whatever I want, except for anything live, like sports or political speeches or news. I watch series, and the best way to watch series, I’ve found, is serially, after the show has been scrapped, or at least the current season wrapped. Watching episodes one right after another gives television a cinematic sweep, a continuity it loses when you’re waiting that lonely week between eps—sometimes two weeks or more, if the networks are pulling their ratings shenanigans.
A couple of years ago, Laura and I watched every episode of The West Wing in succession. Yes, we took breaks, and yes, it took weeks, but by the end we had a firm grasp of what was going on on the show, and a fair amount of attachment to the characters, so that we were torn between relief that the series was finally ending and sorrow that it had to end. Shows also wear out their welcome faster, unfortunately, when you saturate your consciousness with them.
Another of Aaron Sorkin’s brainchildren, one I could have stood to watch a few more seasons of, is Sports Night. I just finished retracing its two-season run, and I have to say I came away somewhat more attached to its characters than I had been to The West Wing‘s. How could this be, given that TWW had the gravitas, the heavy-hitter stars, the high stakes of America’s role as leader of the free world?
Because politics sucks, and sports doesn’t.
I’m actually quite mad at Sorkin for choosing TWW over Sports Night when offers came in from other networks to continue SN after ABC cancelled it. I think he made the wrong call. This despite a few misgivings about what I will call the Sorkinization of television. Here are the elements of Sorkin’s brilliant formula:
- The dramatic focus of each episode is an event with great emotional significance for mankind in general, one that makes us feel alive, reaffirms our shared values, and instructs us to not sweat the small stuff and to be better people.
- Everybody on the show talks with kinda the same voice.
- The voice everybody talks with is preternaturally sharp-witted and sardonic, yet cooperative with everyone else’s so as to foster fluid, witty repartee.
The first element is not unique to Sorkin. Everybody in television does it. The phenomenon is more pronounced in a Sorkin joint, however, more transparently manipulative of the viewer’s emotions. It can be effective when not noticed, and indeed the infuriating thing about Sorkinization is that, once we are numbed to its ham-handedness, we allow it to wash over us and have its effect.
The second element, the One True Voice, is not unique to Sorkin either. Another show that debuted in 1998, Dawson’s Creek, is perhaps the ultimate monovocal (yes, pronounced muh-NAH-vo-cuhl) show of all time. Yet with a Sorkin joint, I know whom to blame, and it’s hard to imagine that the One True Voice belongs to anyone but Sorkin himself.
Here’s the kind of repartee I’m talking about, taken from the SN pilot ep:
They’re gonna cut Santori.
The place-kicker?
He’s made eight field goal attempts in three games and has connected on a grand total of none of them.
He’s a good guy.
He can’t kick.
He is a good guy.
He can’t kick.
He’ll get picked up by another team.
No, he won’t, and you want to know why?
Why?
‘Cause he can’t kick.
Hahahahaha! Good stuff. And yet, when I provide the sympathetic attention Aaron Sorkin knows I’ll provide, when I imagine those lines being said by real people who really mean them, it works.
It just works. I never said it didn’t work. I know you thought I wouldn’t think that it works, but I’m here to tell you, it works. Why, you ask? Why does it work, are you asking, or why am I here to tell you it works? I’m here to tell you it works, because it works. And lemme tell you why it works: It just works.
See what I’m saying?
Nobody talks like that, of course, unless they find themselves Sorkinizing their own speech. That malady is known as sorkinosis, and I’m pretty sure no one suffered from it till the late ’90s. But the objection that nobody talks like that can’t be used to malign Sorkin’s oeuvre, because the same could be said of much of Shakespeare. I ask you, who goes around saying, “The quality of mercy is not strained”?
Nobody. Nobody goes around saying that.
So, even though I hate to admit it, I find myself driven to an inescapable conclusion: Aaron Sorkin is the greatest literary figure since William Shakespeare.
(Harold Bloom was right. The greatest poets are the ones that force us to overhear our own speech.)
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