"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" has by now established itself as perhaps Aaron Sorkin's weakest work (well, except for Malice). But it's certainly the weakest of his TV series, falling well behind "Sports Night" and "The West Wing" in terms of character development, creativity, storylines, and everything else. Sorkin is even up to his old tricks when it comes to dropping storylines whenever they begin to bore him; wasn't the "Studio 60" set supposed to be redesigned, like, months ago?

But the biggest change is perhaps in Sorkin's newfound cynicism for his characters that believe in God. Of course, Sorkin's distaste for zealots is hardly new; the pilot episode of "The West Wing" revolved around Josh almost getting fired for pissing off the religious right, and when the smug representatives of that movement came to the White House, the president smacked them down by quoting the Ten Commandments. This set two important precedents for the show: First, the religious right was going to be a pretty standard whipping boy for Sorkin's idealistic Bartlet administration. Second, Bartlet would be a man of well-reasoned, compassionate faith.

Sorkin's diatribes against narrow-minded religious extremists first appeared on "Sports Night," as in (for one of many instances) Casey McCall's on-air insults aimed at Jerry Falwell. Attacking the right-wing nutbars that are destroying the public faith of a lot of Americans is fine and dandy, it really is. However, the important thing on "The West Wing" wasn't just Bartlet's strong stance against the religious right, but his balancing that with his own yearning, personal faith. In the show's mythology, Bartlet minored in theology at Notre Dame, and his struggle to reconcile his faith in God with the horrible choices he faces as president added tremendous depth to the first few seasons of "The West Wing." The first season's "Take This Sabbath Day" shows Bartlet's spiritual vulnerability as he debates the commutation of a convict's death sentence, decides to let the sentence stand, and ultimately talks to his boyhood priest and asks forgiveness for his acts. Bartlet's spiritual vulnerability came to a head in Season 2's "Two Cathedrals," in which Bartlet curses and shouts at God as he reels from the death of Mrs. Landingham. Bartlet's soliloquy in Latin is heartrending, but he's not abandoning his faith: He's reasoning with it. There's never a sense that Bartlet is turning his back on his beliefs.

Which is what makes Sorkin's newfound bitterness toward Christianity in general so perplexing. He's got a track record of respecting characters of honest faith, yet Matt Albie is becoming an increasingly bitter spokesman for what one can only assume is Sorkin's developing animosity for people who believe in God. Entire episodes have revolved around the fact that Matt doesn't respect Harriet for having faith. The pilot episode revolved around a sketch called "Crazy Christians." And yes, both the sketch and Matt's mockery of Harriet are related to the religious right. But there is no Bartlet on "Studio 60," no man or woman who seems to represent the non-insane swath of believers out there. Sorkin keeps mounting attacks, but there's no one to respond with apologetics. I'd thought Sorkin respected people more than that, but I'm starting to think I was wrong.

So I leave you with this:

Of all the random little motifs floating through film and TV, none guarantees a specific kind of heartbreak quite like the story of a man who, against the warnings of friends and pretty much all common sense, gets involved with a woman who makes a living by selling herself to some degree. (At first I thought all these stories were just coincidences, but it seems to be a legit little sub-subgenre of dramatic storytelling. I mean, it's not like I sat on the floor in front of my DVD shelves, listening to The Heart of Saturday Night and waiting for a pattern to appear. I was watching "Sports Night" and the whole thing just kind of fell into place.) The characters and specific situations may vary, but things always wind up turning sour, and eventually lead to pain, loss, and/or bloodshed. Given those built-in dramatic elements, it's easy to see why writers keep re-using the same tale in different permutations. And it works for a variety of reasons. Using the male character as a combination of coldness and vulnerability — he's willing to pay for sex, but also dumb enough to romanticize it — wouldn't work if it was a female character; for starters, she wouldn't be fool enough to make anything more out of it, and she wouldn't likely even go after it in the first place. What's more, the story is a reversal of the stereotypical roles usually found in film/TV: Instead of the callow man breaking the woman's heart, this is a vulnerable man getting gutted by an often equally vulnerable woman. It's unexpected, and it breaks with the messiah/martyr complex bred into every man that inevitably makes its way into fictional male characters. (TV being littered with men who go to great lengths doing stupid things for women they deem need saving; off the top of my head, Jack Bristow blowing Stephen Haladki's head off springs to mind.)

But what seals the deal is that the viewer knew things would never work out. From the first frame, no matter how great or different or unique this version of the man-loves-whore story seemed to be, it was bound to fail. Some might argue that romantic pap like Pretty Woman would contradict me, since everything ends well for that particular man and his prostitute. But that's because that story's a lie (if for no other reason that most women in L.A. don't look like Julia Roberts, least of all the streetwalkers). That movie won over audiences because it turned what should have been a tragedy — man hires hooker for a week, she gets raped by George Costanza, fade out — into a cheesy film that dilutes the legitimate power of romance in other works. Pain, as the man once said, is where the best stories hang their hat; that unavoidable moment of the relationship's dissolution that always hurts but somehow never kills, but instead makes things oddly okay. That's what I'm talking about, and that's what these scenes have.


"Sports Night" — "Draft Day, Part II: The Fall of Ryan O'Brian"

In the second season of "Sports Night," Jeremy (Joshua Malina) and Natalie (Sabrina Lloyd), the resident cute couple, have broken up, and Jeremy meets a girl named Jenny (Paula Marshall) when he's out drinking away his blues. Jenny turns out to be a porn star, and Jeremy being the decent guy he is, and Jenny being apparently one of the idealistic adult film actresses, they start seeing each other socially. It's awkward from the start, and barely gets off the ground before Jeremy begins to unwittingly sabotage things by condescending to Jenny because of her profession or else outright mocking her. Jenny visits Jeremy at the office, after he's already lied to his coworkers about what Jenny does for a living; he says she's a choreoanimator, some nonsense profession. Jenny meets Natalie and gives a sad, sad, sad little monologue about why she wound up in her chosen profession. Sad. Jeremy and Jenny exchange a few more words, but really, this one's been over for weeks. As is always the case with these stories, he couldn't get past her day job.


"Battlestar Galactica" — "Black Market"

The second season of "Battlestar Galactica" put all its characters through major emotional changes, particularly Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber), who gets his heart broken by Starbuck and decides to briefly shack up with a prostitute named Shevon (Claudette Mink). (Bonus martyr points: Shevon has a kid.) The episode ostensibly revolves around Apollo's investigation of the black market thriving within the fleet, headed up by awesome character actor Bill Duke, but it's really about his sad, doomed relationship with the hooker. The cold open throws the viewer into the middle of the action, and at first you're wondering if Apollo hasn't just moved on and found some nice healthy relationship. It's morning in Shevon's quarters, and Apollo gives her daughter a teddy bear. Things get a little weird when Lee says, "Look, I'm not sure when I'll be able to make it back." But then Shevon delivers the killer: "I know. Oh. Um … I'm gonna have to ask for an extra hundred since you spent the night." And all the desperation and guilt and self-loathing and horrible mix of emotions that led Apollo to Shevon's rented bed shoots across Apollo's face, and it's heartbreaking. The kid gets pretty predictably kidnapped, and when Apollo finally rescues her and attempts to barter Shevon's freedom from Duke, Shevon does what you can tell for Apollo is the unexpected: She tells him to get out. Apparently she isn't okay with Apollo projecting his past relationship failures onto Shevon — which way to be a holier-than-thou working girl — and makes him leave. But as bad as this is, it's just the merciful closure that's been coming since Lee had to fork over extra cash for actually sleeping with Shevon. Never a good idea to fall in love with a public commodity.


"The West Wing" — "The State Dinner"

Aaron Sorkin loses a few marks for originality by recycling most of his man-loves-hooker story arc from "Sports Night," but he did that with pretty much every major character. In the first season of "The West Wing," Sam (Rob Lowe) liked Laurie (Lisa Edelstein) enough to sleep with her, after which he found out she was a high-priced call girl; being a pretty prominent political figure, Sam decided that the best career move would be to continue seeing her surreptitiously, since D.C. is full of tolerant people who are happy to let White House advisers get away with that kind of thing. He gets all puppyish and insists that she do her best to get through law school and quit her night job, and she agrees that she needs the change. But it all comes skidding to a messy halt when she shows up at a state dinner on the arm of a rich Democratic fund-raiser, who introduces "Britney" to Sam and his coworkers. Sam's face falls in a wrenching and predictable way, and it only gets worse (of course) when he talks to Laurie later. She tells him: "You know, I'm sorry, Sam. But this isn't exactly your business. I'm not here because of you. I'm just here because I'm here. I would be here even if you were here or not. You're just some guy who happens to know me." Man. Twist the blade a little, too. Sam then offers her $10,000 not go home with her date, at which point she walks away offended (way to be picky about who pays your tab, lady). Sam and Laurie aren't done with each other yet — Sam, like any good Sorkinian male character, is a huge glutton for emotional punishment — but the state dinner catastrof**k is the first nail in the coffin.


Moulin Rouge

Even in Baz Luhrmann's world, love can't overcome the world's obstacles: Money, class, tuberculosis. In Moulin Rouge, Christian (Ewan McGregor) enters a relationship with Satine (Nicole Kidman), knowing full well she's a pricey hooker, because he's romantic enough to think that it's worth the risk of 19th-century venerial diseases to sleep with a girl in a sparkly hat. They have an inevitably tortured relationship, made even harder when Satine promises to love Christian forever even as she's leaving to go sleep with the Duke (Richard Roxburgh) to secure financial backing for a play. The best number of the entire musical is the darkest one, "El Tango de Roxanne," a reworking of the Police song into a mournful, screaming elegy for Christian and Satine's polluted and dying relationship. The rousing finale doesn't hold a candle to the haunting tango at the center of the film, in part because it's only prolonging Satine's unavoidable and messy death by consumption. But the finale is all smiles, and only regains its credibility when the curtain closes and the doom that was promised in "Roxanne" finally comes calling.


Paris, Texas

Wim Wenders' 1984 masterpiece Paris, Texas follows Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) as he tries to reconnect with the young son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), he left several years earlier. Travis, an amnesiac, is taken in by his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), who's been caring for Hunter since Travis' abrupt departure. Travis and Hunter set out together to find Jane (Nastassja Kinski), Travis wife, and Travis eventually finds her working at a weird little sex parlor. The film is deliberately paced, and has been building to this reunion the whole time: Jane in a small room, with Travis watching her through a two-way mirror, talking to her on the phone. She doesn't know it's Travis talking to her. They have a long conversation there in the peep-show room, and another one the next day. Their exchanges are heartbreaking because it becomes clear just how much they loved each other, and how much pain they managed to inflict for no real reason. Travis' old jealousy flares up briefly — he badgers Jane, asking if she goes home with any of her clients — but eventually dies out as he finally starts to bury the past. When I was putting this piece together, this scene, this example, seemed to fit in with the rest. But I realize now that this is the one that transcends the others, and almost redeems them. Jane didn't start to sell herself until Travis left, and it's with his return that things start to maybe change. It's not clear where things will go, but it doesn't need to be. This is the one where they just might able to save each other after all.

I know, I know: Most of you think I should lay off "Studio 60." But let me reiterate that I'm not out to bash the show, which I still think is better than most other programs on the air (it certainly beats people yelling at briefcases). It's just disappointing that the show is having trouble finding its voice. Granted, it could likely find it in time; "Seinfeld" wasn't even "Seinfeld" until its third season or so, all Chinese restaurant trips aside. But TV is a horribly numbers-oriented business, and I'm afraid NBC execs aren't willing to let shows grow anymore. But anyway:

Somebody a lot smarter than I am figured out that all great dramas have three players. Whether it's two men and the woman between them, or any one of a dozen other stories, the three players can ultimately be boiled down to two opposing forces and the conflict that defines their relationship. That conflict is a vital thing, since it drives the characters to interact and influences their decisions, while also acting as its own storytelling element. Aaron Sorkin's first show about TV, "Sports Night," has this in spades, and it's another in the list of things missing from the new "Studio 60" that, if things continue unabated, will keep the latter show from reaching the heights of the former.

"Sports Night" dealt with a sports news show on a third-rate cable net that was constantly trailing Fox Sports and ESPN in the ratings. From the get go, the producers and anchors struggled to do their show while putting up with interference from their corporate owners. Sorkin set the tone in the show's second episode, "The Apology," in which Dan Rydell gets a slap on the wrist from corporate after supporting the legalization of marijuana in an interview with Esquire. Sorkin's druggy moralizing aside (and believe me, I'll get to that another time), the episode highlighted the opposition between the heartfelt aims of the creatives and the ratings-oriented world of the corporate chiefs, and the role that executive producer Isaac Jaffe played in mediating the demands of both. For his public misstep, Dan is forced to issue an on-air apology to his viewers, and in the process reveals crucial elements of his emotional backstory. In a series full of great episodes, this one's still one of the best.

The second season upped the stakes, thanks to Sorkin's willingness to let the show reflect some of the offscreen struggles he was having with ABC. The fictional world of "Sports Night" had to deal with a ratings expert, played by William H. Macy, who was hired by the show's corporate owners to shake up the program and bring in more viewers. It was a great story arc precisely because it drove home the conflict that had been brewing since the show's inception. The resulting drama worked because the consequences felt real and immediate.

But "Studio 60" exists in a world without these consequences. The pilot episode dealt with executive producer Wes Mendell's on-air breakdown, and the subsequent hiring of Matt and Danny to turn the show around. Yet after that, things seemed to settle down at the show-within-a-show. Steven Weber's appearances as network exec Jack Rudolph have been sparse at best, and his threats have been rendered toothless by the show's apparent ratings growth (though how a cold open featuring a horrible Gilbert and Sullivan rip-off is supposed to bring in viewers is beyond me). That's the problem: The fictional "Studio 60" is having too much success. There's no conflict, no battle to overcome small odds and big foe to achieve something great. That's not to say "Studio 60" can't or won't change. But with nothing to fight for or struggle against, the show will have nothing to do except revel in its own apparent glories. I'd rather see a good fight than an easy victory.

I think I should point out that I don't hate "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," despite my previous observations of its flaws. It's still one of the better shows on TV, despite the fact that the old Sorkin spark seems to have gone missing. These periodic posts about the show aren't meant to disparage it, but to take a closer look at just where things started to go wrong, to pull it apart in the hopes of putting it back together.

"Studio 60" does have its strengths, chief among them the interplay between Matt and Danny. Sorkin writes good dialogue because he understands how friends relate to each other and is gifted at creating a quicker, wittier, more coversationally nimble way of communicating than the fumbling half-sentences and vocalized pauses that most people use. Like the post-grads of Kicking and Screaming, Sorkin captures the way we wish we talked. This is nowhere clearer than in the endless banter between the men on Sorkin's shows.

On "The West Wing," Sorkin relied heavily on the interplay between Josh, Sam, and Toby, whose rapidly paced conversations lent the show a boys' club air, as if these guys got really carried away at pretending one day and wound up running the country. (Even C.J., for all her intellect and skill, was forever the outsider, and not because she wasn't smart, but because men on their own revel in the strong clique-ish vibe they naturally produce. It's a long story.) But it was Sorkin's first show, "Sports Night," where he had the most success exploring the ups and downs of modern male friendship.

In the truest sense, Casey McCall and Dan Rydell were that show's anchors, giving the stories an emotional center and resonance. Their relationship was the driving force for the show, whether it was dealing with interference from the corporate level, counseling each other about women, or acting as the protective older brothers for everyone else at the show. I could go on about the amazing ways these guys played off each other and dealt with their own faults and strengths with love and humor — the "hip-deep in pie" exchange at the end of "Dana and the Deep Blue Sea" is never less than moving — but the best example was the story arc in Season 2 where Dan struggled with depression and a personal breakdown. Dan and Casey's strained relationship was the most powerful way to upset the balance of the show, to underscore just how high the stakes had gotten. When Dan begins his atonement by leading a seder and apologizing to Casey in "April Is the Cruelest Month," the sense of healing is palpable.

So why bring all that up? Because "Studio 60" is missing some serious man love. Matt's position as head writer and Danny's role as executive producer means they will inherently spend more time apart than any other male pairing in Sorkin's history, and that's bad news. They work at the same place, but they rarely work together. There are precious few opportunities for Matt and Danny to be around each other and riff back and forth on the palpable fun of just being themselves, and that's going to take a toll on the show's chemistry. Casey and Dan wrote together, and the Josh-Sam-Toby team were constantly in each other's offices and feeding off the energy of the group, but Matt and Danny are by their nature separated for most of each episode of "Studio 60," and that will only have negative effects for the show in the long run. Sorkin's men need to be around each other, or else it just won't work.

This was, perhaps, inevitable. I had quite a bit of emotional investment in this season's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," having fallen violently in love with "Sports Night" when it aired and having been a similar fan of "The West Wing." I even stuck with "West Wing" through seasons 5-7, or what is better known as The Years That Didn't Happen. Sorkin's latest behind-the-scenes venture, this time at a late-night sketch-comedy show, was supposed to be a return to greatness, a chance for phenomenal programming to once again take to the airwaves, and another show for me to take to my heart. (This season there are only two other shows like that, so it would have been nice to have a third.)

And, well, despite the many issues with the show that I will no doubt address in the future, the show has a major problem: Sorkin can write good, humorous dialogue between characters, but he can't write a funny sketch to sace his life.

Apparently, the fact that Mark McKinney ("The Kids in the Hall") is working on the sketches isn't helping at all. Last week's episode revolved around a purportedly stolen monologue that turned out to be NBS property after all, but no one stopped to think that the speech, which included a bit about dropping Hot Pockets along with bombs, wasn't funny in the first place. Last night's episode featured a cruelly, blatantly, powerfully unfunny Nancy Grace sketch, which (a) you have to really suck to miss the natural humor of an idiot like Grace, and (b) it made the recent Nancy Grace sketch on "SNL" look funny by comparison, which is a startling accomplishment. Still, the worst offense came in the second episode of "Studio 60," when the show-within-a-show's cold open was an abysmal rip-off of Gilbert and Sullivan. More than just typical Sorkinian recycling (cf. "And It's Surely to Their Credit" for a much better use of the music), the sketch was just stupid. Hearing the fictional studio audience laugh and applaud the lame song was almost painful. I sat and watched, unmoved, realizing that Sorkin is still a talented writer-producer, but his best work may well be behind him.

From the moment it started, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" pretty much had me. Everything old was new again: The show had the same look and feel of the fourth season of "The West Wing," the last year Sorkin worked on that show. The credits even used the same typeface, which is extremely satisfying to person like me. But "Studio 60" is about a weekly sketch comedy show, and as such bears more similarity to Sorkin's first show, "Sports Night."

Sorkin even uses the same phrases, like he always does. Having someone say "I hate his breathing guts" or that they'll do "whatever I damn well please" isn't so much a line of dialogue as it is a tried and true Sorkin standby. Half the reason I watch now is not see what's new but to see how he'll use the stuff he's said before. In this way, Sorkin is one of the most consistent writers in modern television: He will always return to the same themes, the same ideas, and examine them through the same worldview.

Even the names get recycled from show to show. Matt Albie and Jordan McDeere echo Albie Duncan and Jordan Kendall, and Danny Tripp is Danny Concannon is Dan Rydell. And I'd bet all the money in my pockets that "Studio 60" will make good use of Lisa and Simon in the future, whoeever they might wind up being.

Granted, the pilot episode wasn't perfect; it lacked Martin Sheen's sheer screen presence or Peter Krause's ill-advised 7th-grade skater 'do. But it had enough pop to see it through an hour, which is more than you can say for most shows.

It's just too soon to tell where this thing will head: whether it will sink, succumb to its own sense of importance, or manage to walk the high road and provide some genuinely good TV. No matter what, I'll be with it all the way.

I don't think at this point that I need to remind anyone of my geek-level fandom/love for Aaron Sorkin. There are already other clips up for his new show, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," which has received a 13-episode pickup for NBC this fall, but this one's the longest. It's worth putting up with the crappy video and out-of-sync audio to get a glimpse of the show.

It's good to see Judd Hirsch as the angry producer, since Sorkin actually pictured Hirsch playing the role of Leo McGarry, who was originally called Leo Jacoby. And of course Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield are practically contract players for the guy at this point; Busfield even directed a few episodes of "Sports Night." All that to say that it looks like Sorkin is at least playing to his strengths. It's also my sincere hope that one of the characters is a Jew from New England who sees a therapist about dealing with the death of a sibling. That's pretty much a Sorkinian standard.

After seven years on the air — three stellar, one amazing, one horrible, one tolerable, and one not bad — "The West Wing" took its final bow Sunday night on NBC, and I, for one, am glad to see it finally go.

The show has had its fair share of ups and downs, not to mention the most flagrant disregard for dramatic continuity in recent TV memory. Major characters disappeared without a mention: Emily Procter as Ainsley Hayes was slowly phased out in Season 2; John Larroquette as the White House counsel made only a brief appearance early on, and Oliver Platt took over the job and actually stuck around for a few story arcs; but the biggest vanishing act was easily Moira Kelly as Mandy the Annoying PR Woman, whose character was poorly defined to begin with and served no purpose during Season 1 except to help the viewer realize just how much Kelly as an actress was dragging the show down. So without a word, between the first and second seasons, she disappeared. The first year ended in an assassination attempt cliffhanger, and when the second year picked up in the middle of the action, Mandy was gone, never to be mentioned again. I can understand the showrunners' willingness to eliminate her, but come on, at least toss out a line about why she left.

And yeah, sure, the series played pretty fast and loose with time, flowing pretty steadily during its first few seasons but somehow skipping a year to get to the next presidential election, as if the producers knew they'd have to wrap things up soon. But that's just a minor symptom of the bigger problem: When creator Aaron Sorkin departed after the show's fourth season, the series suffered a dramatic drop in quality. Under the guiding hand of producer John Wells, "West Wing" started to soon look like Wells' "ER," which is to say poorly lit, full of film-student camera work, and heavy to the point of being soporific. Sorkin took the show's heart and soul when he left, and it showed.

No great show can ever sustain its momentum, and on the heels of the recent death of "Arrested Development," which still stings a little, I'm reminded of how I would have been happy if "The West Wing" had ended after Sorkin left. Actually, I would have preferred it if NBC had just looked the other way when it came to Sorkin's substantial coke habits and just let him keep running the show. Come on guys, just pretend he's an athlete. You let them get away with anything.

All that to say that I'm glad Sorkin is returning to the air with this fall's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." It's set to air on Thursday nights, right against the newly moved "Grey's Anatomy," and it's my hope that "Studio 60" is either amazing for its entire run or canceled before it gets too old. Two great seasons is preferable to five mediocre ones.

"Because what does it remind you of? 'I believe in hope, not fear. I'm a leader, not a politician. It's time for an American leader. I before E except after C.' It's the fortune cookie candidacy! These are important thinkers, and understanding them can be very useful, and it's not ever gonna happen in a four-hour seminar. When the president's got an embassy surrounded in Haiti, or a keyhole photograph of a heavy-water reactor, or any of the 50 life-and-death matters that walk across his desk everyday, I don't know if he's thinking about Immanuel Kant or not. I doubt it. But if if he does, I am comforted at least in my certainty that he is doing his best to reach for all of it, and not just the McNuggets. Is it possible that we would be willing to require any less of the person sitting in that chair? The low road? I don't think it is."

Back before "The West Wing" turned into "E.R. in the Beltway" under the clumsy hand of producer John Wells, creator and showrunner Aaron Sorkin wrote some amazing stories during the first four seasons about people too virtuous to actually work in real-world politics. Many of the most emotionally resonant story lines were carried over from "Sports Night," and I could go on at length about that, but my focus today is elsewhere. Simply put, "The West Wing" was political porn for progressives, an emotional pleasure-ride about a well-educated president who grappled with religion and complex thought while striving to do his best to lead the country. Bartlet was re-elected in the fourth season, facing off against Southern Republican candidate Robert Ritchie, a fairly obvious nod to the George W. Bush. Sorkin said his guideline in the debate episode, in which Bartlet righteously destroys Ritchie, was the 2000 elections, and that he wanted to show that intelligence wasn't a vice.

Sometimes I'll just put on an old episode, like "20 Hours in America" or "Take This Sabbath Day," and try to forget the world for a while. It doesn't always work, but I still try.

Dear Mr. Zucker,

First, congrats on "The Office" and "My Name Is Earl." Even if you had to rip off a great show to get a hit, still, it's nice to see you putting your weight behind single-camera shows with no laugh tracks and unique senses of humor. Granted, going from first to fourth place after losing your cash cow probably opened you up to new possibilities, and I respect that.

Also, I'm happy to see that you offered Aaron Sorkin a hefty payment for his spec pilot, formerly titled "Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip." Sorkin's "Sports Night" was amazing but underviewed, and the first four years of "The West Wing," with Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme at the helm, were the best of the series. Some moments in the show's second season are the best in TV. So I'm glad you bought "Studio 7," and that you've cast Matthew Perry for the new show. He was great but inderused in his guest spost on "The West Wing" a couple years ago.

But here's the thing: You need Josh Charles.

"Sports Night" was the distillation of Aaron Sorkin's philosophical and emotional worldview, and the sometimes clunky beginning to his comedy. Most of the plot lines were grafted onto "The West Wing" when "Sports Night" was canceled after its second season: Sam Seaborn's (Rob Lowe) parents got divorced for the same reasons Jeremy Goodwin's (Joshua Malina) did, etc. And White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) was an almost direct transfer from Sports Night co-anchor Dan Rydell (Charles). Both Dan and Josh faced possible suspension/firing early in their respective series ("West Wing" pilot, "Sports Night" episode 1.2), they were both Jewish men from New England with dead siblings; etc., etc. But Dan Rydell was the heart and soul of the cast of characters, acting as both moral compass and sense of humor.

Having Charles on the new Sorkin show would just be right, you know? Plus, it's not like the guy's actually all that busy; aside from some small roles in recent films, he might just be hanging out at home, living off Dead Poets royalties. Hire the guy.

Well, that's pretty much all I had. Just stand back and let Sorkin do his work. And this time, if he gets into the blow again, just let it go. Your network needs him.

Sincerely,

Daniel Carlson

P.S. All your other shows suck. Except for "Scrubs." That's good. But everything else: bad.