When I Grow Up

An addition to the list of People I Want To Be When I Grow Up:

Mark McKinney. Not only worthy of rescue from the Studio 60 Island of Death, but insanely enjoyable in Slings and Arrows. I don't remember his years on Saturday Night Live, but there's the whole Kids in the Hall thing. I'm adding him to the emulation list, which needs reviewing anyway.

By the way, if you haven't watched Slings and Arrows, you're doing yourself a disservice of the highest order.

Oh, and I broke my foot over the weekend.

This is the Jump.

You Have Failed Me For the Last Time (Probably.)

Dammit, Aaron Sorkin, you and I are through. I'm breaking up with you. It was good for a while; we had a lot of good times, you and I. Your friends Tommy Schlamme and Snuffy Walden were cool to hang around with, and they brought a lot to the table, but it's just not working anymore.

I just got done watching the series finale of Studio 60, and this is the decision that I have made. Much like actual breakups, I miss the way things were, but you can't reclaim the past. The potential for greatness remained, but it's just not the same. Suddenly, there were obvious axes to grind and morality to preach and a really boring/irritating relationship arc to get bogged down in. Everything was so promising, and for a while, I thought it could be like it was in the past, but alas... Somewhere, buried, is the stuff that made me want to work on a Sorkin show so badly I'd stab a man, but it's not that sort of relationship anymore. Lately, all we do is fight, and I rail against the fates asking why things can't be the way they used to be. I'll pop in the West Wing DVDs, or hunt for Sports Night, or even gain some solace in the bits of S60 that were good. All it does, though, is prompt me to ask why it can't be like that all the time.

This is all probably a pointless excercise: I'd probably come back to Sorkin, if given the option. You don't forget that kind of thing, and there's always, quietly, the hope that you can get back to where you were when things were good. Josh Malina's going to come walking down the hall, talking quirkily with Brad Whitford, and it'll be like nothing ever changed. But you can't count on that, and I've gotten mad too many times at Sarah Paulson and Matthew Perry barely salvaging conversations that real people don't have to fall back into it that easily. Sorkin's going to have to prove to me that it can consistently be like it used to be, or that we can at least meet somewhere in the middle. Perhaps I'll see other television shows for a while, but when the name comes up on my screen, it's likely that it'll still hurt. We'll see. I don't wish him ill - I just want it to be better.

Sorry, Aaron, but it's for the best.

Dammit, why couldn't that show be good? I really liked... everything I've said in previous posts. We almost made it. Damn.

This is the Jump.