I HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT SORKIN IN A WHILE...

Listen not to the man quoted below. He clearly isn't thinking things through. He wants Aaron Sorkin back on TV, but he wants it wrong. He sayeth in the San Francisco Chronicle:

This is 2009, and the United States has just gone through a riveting presidential campaign, a historic election and now seats the first African American president. Not everyone may buy into the rhetoric, but in dire and dour times there's hope again in the White House. And judging from news headlines, we might need all the hope we can get.

Which is precisely why Sorkin, who created "The West Wing," should be writing about politics - for television. Specifically, about the White House and the presidency.

Obama as a cult of personality - his face on T-shirts, the messiah to the cynical and the disenfranchised. It's like you dreamt it, wrote it and nobody could believe it would ever happen.

And now it has. And you're late....get started, Sorkin. Get back to the West Wing.

-Tim Goodman

First of all, whatever he does in this particular realm will ultimately regarded as inferior to The West Wing. How do I know this? Because with each successive season of The West Wing while he was on it, more and more people regarded it as inferior to the season that came before. (I disagree. I found the quality to be largely steady, but there's the whole "people hate change" thing at work and the first season was idealized).

Secondly, I rather think that The West Wing worked because it stood in stark contrast to the actual presidency...both late Clinton and the First Epoch of Bush The Terrible. Billy Bubba was getting all bogged down with overt politicalness and - you know- cooties. And Bush...well, he's not even American. It gave us a President that at that time we never though we'd get. Smart, fair, and nerdy-cool. Yeah, well, now we've got one that has at least two of those.The show Goodman wants is an Obama reality show. Which would be awesome, but ultimately self-defeating as well. We really don't want to see what he and Rahm are talking about late at night. We don't.

If -big if- if I were to think that Sorkin coming back to go to the well again was a good idea, I think he'd somehow have to get his head in a weird place, because the only thing that I'd want to see and the only thing that might pick up enough steam and be as different as West Wing once was and is no longer, as evidenced by Goodman pointing out by noting the pilots Inside The Box (read it, s'okay) House Rules (didn't read) See Cate Run (read part of it, ...ehn) and The Body Politic (didn't read).

What weird place? Republican White House. An idealized Republican White House. Show us that Republican's don't have to be assholes. Go back and get Alan Alda or something.

I want Sorkin back on TV. You know I do, but not retreading the same damn thing. Yeah, he is a wonk and he does political well, but it should be something different. I'd like to see Sorkin take on a show set in the upper echelons of the CIA. A Sorkin spy/political show. I'm so there.

If only he were.