Unpopular fannish opinion

[rivkat]

Really. No, really. It's about Studio 60, and it's not favorable.

Aaron Sorkin loves not us. Gertrude in her ratty bathrobe? Fat, unpopular, jealous Gertrude who can't spell? That's you and me, babe. That's who he's writing for, because TPTB are gods and we are Gertrude.

Sorkin is a genius with dialogue, and when the plots involved serious world issues I cut him an awful lot of slack because I was so happy to see characters who cared about broader issues on a non-genre show, but tonight I actually told my TV, "I don't need your disrespect" and turned it off.

The thing is, Aaron -- and does it invalidate the sentiment that I learned it from Farscape? -- you can be more. But until you respect the audience the way you want them to respect the storyteller, you and I are done.

Comments

TWOP incident

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh, dearie dearie me. I wish there were somewhere on line that gave a play-by-play, the way fandom_wank sometimes does.

To make a VERY long story very short.

Sorkin actually JOINS the TWOP message board for West Wing. His identity is verified; it's really him. For a while, he loves talking to the fans, and the fans love talking to him. He has his own thread where people can ask him questions.

There are people on TWOP who don't fawn all over him; in other threads, they (perfectly legitimately) talk about things they didn't like on this or that episode, or how they're displeased with the general direction of the show, or the lack of internal continuity in storyline or facts, or this or that. Like any message board.

Sorkin gets into it with one fan, then the next, then the next....

The moderator points out that Sorkin, famous or not, has to follow the rules of the posting board just like everyone else.

Things deteriorate.

Things deteriorate more.

Things... you get the picture.

Someone at West Wing, or the production company, or the network, forbids Sorkin from ever posting to or reading the internet ever again. I think they even gave him a handler to make sure, but that could be rumor.

Sorkin then writes subplots into *two separate episodes* of The West Wing:

a) a fat, ugly, crazy woman who smokes packs upon packs of cigarettes all day while sitting around in her bathrobe running a message board like a Nazi (lemonlyman.com)

b) a temp at the White House who is wearing a Federation Communicator pin on her lapel, and Josh has a diatribe at her about it. (I'm not even going to go into how many ways his diatribe is ridiculous and wrong and the IRONY of it being in the same episode in which Toby and Sam argue over whether or not Sam can take a baseball team's pennant off the wall and pack it to go to California with him).

And now he's done it again, in his *second episode* of a new show. Why not just have a character look right into the camera and say "Anyone who bothers to give a damn about televisual narrative, stop watching now, because I fucking hate you."

Uh, if you want more of my opinion, you can see it here (http://tzikeh.livejournal.com/279436.html).

Re: TWOP incident

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

The only thing I have to say is that it is awesome that the lemonlyman.com address resolves to a WB page. If only it were a mock message board it would be perfect.