sorkin-logue

So here we are.

Tomorrow night, Aaron Sorkin’s latest series, The Newsroom, premieres on HBO. I figure that this occasion is as good a time as any to pull out one of my dusty old scribblings from a decade ago: my Ode to an Aaron Sorkin Monologue.

This was written in 2002, during the height of The West Wing, when the Sorkin monologue still seemed magical and new, even after I’d already been charmed by Sports Night. Then came the dark days... the Studio 60 days. We don’t speak of those days. Especially with people who loved Studio 60. (I’ve worked in television for a long time, with intelligent and educated people, and never once has an entire crew casually chatted between takes about Molière. And seriously, retiree parents not knowing who Abbott and Costello are? But no... no... I’m not getting into that now.)

Anyway, I know that some advance reviews for The Newsroom seem to indicate that the Sorkin monologue, alive and well, may have swelled more than a bit on the pomposity scale. But for now, let’s take a trip back a decade and remember a simpler time and a simpler (but never simple) monologue, and sing its praises:

ODE TO AN AARON SORKIN MONOLOGUE

It’s never less than half a page

Near act break Two or Three

It guarantees a statuette

And peer validity

Felicity H. and R. Guillaume

Would certainly agree

They’re often hard to memorize

And lean to left a wee

They boil the blood of suits, from

Networks A -- or N -- BC

But on the coasts, both East and West

Hailed by the industry

And Martin Sheen, though he’s a star

Scours every script to see

If that week’s stirring, raving rant 

Goes to Rob or Brad or he

For be it sitcom, feature film,

Or prime time dramedy

An Aaron Sorkin monologue

In stereo or HD

Sounds mighty nice, but more than that

I say sans irony

Because you know what’s coming when

They wax historically

The well-trod territory’s such...

...It gives you time to pee

I never said it was a good ode. It would have been better if I could have figured out how to rhyme “Landingham.”

Yes indeed. Welcome to me.