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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 9, 1961
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Just on the sheer strength of the number of TV shows he’s shepherded onto the screen, Aaron Sorkin deserves his elevated perch. Not necessarily because they’re uniformly excellent, however. With a lineup of Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom, at least one of those shows was an unmitigated disaster, and several of them are on some level unwatchably smug at times. But in a way that’s been nearly unmatched on television, Sorkin’s style has been so readily recognized that even his failures are endlessly fascinating.
Only a few TV writers end up in this position. Sorkin is one, David E. Kelley is another. But while Kelley creates SO much TV that his brand ends up getting diluted, Sorkin TV is still concentrated Sorkin. It’s why videos tallying up his most oft-repeated dialogue are so fun.
But whether you are a West Wing partisan, a Sports Night fanatic, a Newsroom defender, or one of that rare species of contrarian who sticks up for Studio 60, it’s hard to deny that Sorkin hits a nerve because he writes with an almost obnoxious level of self-confidence (“almost”?) in not only his worldview but in the elevating power of language. On almost every one of his shows, there is at least one character who speaks up for the value of poetry in everything from government to broadcasting (to, if we’re going to include his movie scripts, computer science). It makes Sorkin an easy target for being a blowhard, true, but it also makes his characters and shows incredibly memorable.
So happy birthday, Aaron Sorkin. You really are quite something.
