TVSquad

About a month ago, I mentioned my television summer project. The West Wing was such an excellent series that I stampeded by way through the episodes and am done already. In fact, if you summed up the quality of every reality show on television, it wouldn't come close to the quality of The West Wing (thus furthering the argument that writers are mandatory for good television).

I agree with most of the critics that the series took a drop in quality in Season 5. With the departure of Sorkin, the characters began to make decisions that seemed inconsistent with the first four seasons (I'll write more about that in a separate article). Seasons 6 and 7 saw an upswing in quality, mostly due to the change in the whole premise of the show (making it about the Presidential Election rather than the Presidency).

The West Wing was a very deep and intelligent program and probably better than we deserve. Next up: Aaron Sorkin's other television contributions, Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

If Jay Leno isn't the answer for NBC prime time, perhaps the network should think about booking President Obama. NBC News devoted two hours, on Tuesday and Wednesday night, for Inside the Obama White House and the ratings were strong. Better than the insipid I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, which acted as a lead-in. Of course the season finale of Law & Order: SVU on Tuesday didn't hurt the news production.

Having watched the two hours, NBC should sign the president ASAP. There's always the curiosity factor when a viewer is being given access behind the scenes, and that's what Inside the Obama White House did. It was a look at the real West Wing, which reminded me a lot of the fictional, Aaron Sorkin West Wing creation, and that was quite cool. President Obama still fascinates me, and it's well past 100 days.

According to PopWatch, Aaron Sorkin might be returning to television. And for the third time, it might be a television-show-within-a-television-show (his first two in this vein were Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). This time, the fictional world would be a cable news program such as the one hosted by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

His last show utilizing this concept, Studio 60, didn't fare so well and was cancelled after a single season. However, this program concept would also incorporate the discussion of politics, which Sorkin excels at, as proven in The West Wing. We may have a winner here.

Sorkin is certainly a multi-talented writer. He's written movies and plays as well as television. I believe he can make this sort of program work. I even confess to liking an earlier incarnation of this concept, Al Franken's Lateline.

So what do you think? Do you welcome a return by Sorkin to television or is his reputation overblown?

Ten years after ABC prematurely cancelled Rob Thomas' dramedy Cupid, the alphabet net has decided to give it another go. The new version of the show, which premieres Tuesday at 10 PM ET, now stars Sarah Paulson and Bobby Cannavale in the roles originated by Paula Marshall and Jeremy Piven, respectively.

The premise is the same: Trevor Pierce claims to be Cupid, exiled from Mt. Olympus, and he needs to find true love for 100 couples before he is allowed back home. After Trevor is arrested for one of his stunts and sent to a psychological hospital, singles self-help guru Dr. Claire McCrae is assigned to keep track of him as he makes his way in the outside world. This time around, the show is set in the fast paced and cynical world of New York, complete with all the modern touches of dating in the late '00s (Maybe Cupid will have a Twitter account).

I spoke to the stars of the new Cupid last week. While I was on the phone, I asked Paulson about what happened on her previous series, Studio 60. I got a pretty interesting response...

One of my favorite parts of the summer press tour was the last day, mainly because a busload of critics got to go to the Warner Bros. lot and tour sets from ER, Chuck, and Pushing Daisies (we also saw the Dollhouse set on the Fox lot later that day).

On the Pie Hole set of Daisies, for instance, all the stars and producers were available for interviews. Kristin Chenoweth held court right outside the pie-shaped diner's entrance, sporting a splint on her right hand from a recent bat bite (I kid you not... wonder what scene they were shooting at the time). But I was there to ask her about how she felt about being the model for Harriet Hayes on Studio 60 two years ago. And she was very candid about the situation,especially in light of the fact that her former (and current?) boyfriend, S60 creator Aaron Sorkin, never was.

First, though, a question about Jeff Probst; Chenoweth dropped the tidbit that the two of them dated when she announced his Emmy nomination the week before. Audio is after the jump.

Last month Bob Sassone mentioned a rumor that a 10th anniversary Sports Night DVD set was in the works. Fans will be happy to learn that the anniversary edition of Sports Night: The Complete Series has a release date of September 30. Shout! Factory is releasing the eight-DVD box set, which includes all forty-five episodes of the series as well as two discs of new bonus features.

The box set costs $69.99 and contains a 10th anniversary book, behind-the-scenes featurettes, new interviews, blooper reels, commentaries by the cast and creative team, and deleted scenes. A complete series box set has been available since 2002, but that version had no special features.

The world of primetime TV are primarily set in the real world. The real world based on the fiction they create. So, Law and Order -- in all its incarnations -- is set in New York City, but it's not the real five boroughs. The newspapers they read are not The New York Times, the Post or the Daily News. For contemporary TV fiction, reality is on the margins of the storytelling because you can't really set those characters in a real world. However, when the two worlds intersect, the results can be magic. Here's 8 big-time, primetime examples:

1) Cowboy Up Time
Remember the episode of Lost when Ben wanted to convince Jack that he was in communication with the world outside the island? To prove that he was telling the truth, he showed Jack a video of the Boston Red Sox winning the world series in 2004. You can't get more real than that, right? And yet it was used in one of the most out of this world shows on the air. In fact, using Lost's own terminology, the Red Sox video is a constant truth in a universe that's a complete fiction.

If you are avid readers of TV Squad you know that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is taking a little break. Okay, it may be taking a long break. All right, the next time we see it may be on the Brilliant But Cancelled website! Regardless of whether or not it returns to the NBC schedule (which is should, since it does have a full order) I am still rooting for the show. Not because of Aaron Sorkin, or the subject matter, or even for the walk-and-talks. I am rooting for Studio 60 to succeed due to one cast member . . . Sarah Paulson as Harriet Hayes.

Oh, wait a minute. That's for my 'The reason I'm NOT rooting for Studio 60' post. Who I meant to mention was Matt Perry as Matt Albie. Well, also Bradley Whitford as Danny Tripp, Amanda Peet as Jordan McDeere, D.L. Hughley as Simon Stiles, and pretty much everyone else on the cast except Harriet Hayes. But, mostly I'm rooting for Matt Perry.

Something isn't right in Sorkinland. In last Monday's episode, Matt Albie and Andy Mackinaw are feeling nostalgic. In a scene early in the show Andy asks Matt if he remembers his first office . . . the one that was so small that you could write on both walls if you reached your arms out with pencils in your hands. Matt mentioned that was his second office, and that his first was actually the floor in the middle of the hallway.

Now, the reason methinks something is afoot is because I just finished reading Gasping For Airtime, the excellent Jay Mohr autobiography that chronicles his two year stint on Saturday Night Live in the mid-1990's. In this book he talks about the dressing room that he had during his second season on the show. . . the one that was so small that he could take a pencil in each hand, stretch his arms out, and write on the walls. He also mentioned a conversation he had with SNL alum Mike Myers about his first office. It turns out that it was on the floor in the middle of the hallway.

Hmmm.

After viewing the frighteningly accurate parody of Studio 60 that MADtv performed I got to thinking (which is always a bad thing). I can't remember a producer/creator of any television show in recent history who has carried so many of his or her trademarks from one program to another. I guess you could say Dick Wolf does this from show to show, but the Law & Order series is probably considered a franchise. Aaron Sorkin has produced three different shows that have had similar structural elements, including actors and actresses. When viewers watch these shows they anticipate those features and are disappointed when they don't see them.

So, with that in mind, here are the five trademarks that Aaron Sorkin puts in his shows.

The walk-and-talk: Others shows have people walking and talking all of the time, but usually slowly down a straight hallway. Aaron has taken this concept and perfected it, making it all his own. His walk-and-talks feature characters going up-and-down stairs, through security gates, behind bleachers, and around corners. He sometimes makes these strolls seem like a relay race: two people will talk for a while, then one person will tag-out and a new conversation will begin with another character. Meanwhile, as they walk they begin and end conversations with so much information that you need to record the show so you catch everything missed. And, speaking about those conversations . . .

I was trying to figure out how to review this set. Should I even mention how great the series is (brilliant cast, brilliant writing, brilliant direction, blah, blah, blah)? And then I figured, no, I'm not going to review certain episodes or the series as a whole. Everyone knows how good the show was, and if you're a fan you already know all that stuff, so you really want to know how the rest of the set is and if it's worth upgrading from the individual sets to this new set.

One of the constant complaints from both fans and critics of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is that we never get to see much of the actual sketches that make up the show-within-the-show. I always felt this was kind of a silly complaint since we also never saw much of the actual show-within-the-show on Sports Night but I guess expectations are different for Studio 60. Bob disagrees with me but points out that shows like Entourage, which is about a great actor who we never see actually acting, have the same issue.

Well, if you've been wondering about what those sketches mapped out by Matt Albie, Harriet Hayes and others might look like, the Employee of the Month sketch comedy troupe in Los Angeles is trying to provide a theoretical glimpse. They've taken the snippets of "Crazy Christians," "Nancy Grace" and others from the fictional show and expanded them to full length form. Check out "Employee of the Month Celebrates The Comedy of Studio 60" starting Friday the 17th.

If any of our LA readers go see this be sure to send in reports.

I'm happy to join the group praising NBC for giving full season orders to both Studio 60 and Friday Night Lights. Many of us are quick to get our dander up when a network hits the cancellation button too quickly, so it's great to see one of them actually giving shows a chance to grow. They should be applauded for that. That said, I hope that the memo regarding the pickup for Studio 60 came with a friendly suggestion not unlike the one that Jordan gave Harriet in last night's episode. For the next six weeks Aaron, just pretend that God, gay marriage, crazy Christians... hell, anything remotely to do with religion, just pretend that none of it even exists in the Studio 60 world.

Ray Richmond over at The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip creator and head writer Aaron Sorkin today and found out that not only have the ratings for the show the past few weeks made the execs at NBC happier than they were, but that a full season order for the show might be coming any hour or day now. Another source at the network said they would be very surprised if the show wasn't picked up this week.

Here's a quote from Sorkin that is interesting, especially since it addresses something that is often talked about here in our comments section:

To paraphrase a famous quote, rumors of Studio 60's death may have been greatly exaggerated.

An NBC spokesman says that not only is the show not canceled, it is actually profitable, and last week's ratings were up from the week before. The network likes the show, and they are going over the ratings numbers, but it looks like the show would be moved to a different time slot instead of just canceled outright.

One thing the article says that I don't agree with is this: if Friday Night Lights got great ratings last night (haven't seen the numbers yet), that could spell trouble for Studio 60. But that's not true. CSI: Miami was a repeat last night, so you would expect whatever NBC had in the time slot to do well, or better. Though if the numbers aren't great...now that would be interesting, and might prove it's a time slot thing and not the show itself.

[via TV Tattle]

Update: Friday Night Lights got its best ratings yet.