OK, ok, I'll weigh in

I've been hesitant to join the dog pile on Aaron Sorkin over Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I feel like constructive criticism isn't something we should keep to ourselves. It's the litany of complaints most people are writing that I can do without.

I've got thoughts. And I'm going to write them here. I just really, really don't want Aaron Sorkin to miraculously get over here and write me off as a lonely woman with 5 cats who's writing this in her pajamas while increasing the profit margin for both Ben and Jerry. It's only 2 cats. And I'm fully dressed...except for my clogs.

OH GOD PLEASE LOVE ME AARON, I'M SORRY!

OK, I'm back now.

I think he's on the wrong coast.

I know, sounds both simple and stupid but I'm sticking by it. A long while ago I saw the Sork interviewed on I think it was Charlie Rose. He talked about how he doesn't actually know very much but all his friends are experts in their chosen fields. So apparently sometimes when the conversation is more than he can fathom he closes his eyes and listens to the music of it. Later, when he writes about whatever it was his friends were talking about he writes the music he heard, the cadence, the tone. From form follows content.

Go to Sports Night. Listen to Danny's homage to New York City. Go to the pedeconferences of the West Wing, for instance the election day episode where we follow 2 or 3 conversations that end in Josh walking smack into Charlie's enormous football player friend. It's like a song. You get as much information from how the rhythm hits you as from what they're saying. Sometimes there are so many words you have to go back to figure out what they were even though you know exactly what went on in the scene already.

Now there's also the cocaine issue. I've got a theory that some people, the geniuses, the ones that really are channeling messages from beyond tend to self medicate. It's not an entirely bad idea. Gregory Hines used to say that if they wanted to steal a step from Savion Glover they had to tape him and play it back at half speed. I've met Glover a couple of times and he tends to self medicate. Rather a lot. What I think is that if the divine information is coming at you as fast as it must be coming at him you might need something to slow everything down so you can interpret it and use it.

Same deal is possible for Sorkin and the words. He's clean and sober now, right? Maybe he's on antidepressants. I think this might be impairing the flow. I hate to admit it, I really do, but he is off his game. Now, could just be regular old slump that happens to everyone, too. Whatever it is he needs to get out of it and I'm thinking back to basics is a good plan. He doesn't strike me as the type that's going to check out The Artist's Way from the library so I propose a change of location.

He's from the East Coast, born in New York City, raised in Scarsdale, went to school in Syracuse. The rhythms of his own speech and his brain and his blood are from the East Coast. California is different. I don't care what you tell me, it is. I don't think it's in him. I think if he comes back East he can find the music and the content will follow.

Come home lonely wanderer, I think the answer is here. I'll share my ice cream and you'll get used to the cats.