bryant

Bravo started airing reruns of West Wing today with a six show marathon, so of course I watched the whole thing. Now I really recognize the vibe Mr. Sterling failed to achieve. Yep, that’s Sorkin, all right.

I liked it OK. Snappy dialogue, noble and honest politicians and staffers. My new theory is that Democratic resentment of Bush arises from his failure to live up to the example set by President Bartlet. (Sure, I’m joking.) But it’s a good show, and I like the impossibly witty characters.

So here’s my million dollar TV show idea. It’s a one hour drama, set in, say, Chicago. It focuses on a few families which are linked in some unlikely fashion; some are rich, some are poor, but all of them are doing something that matters. Oh, I know: it’s a newspaper drama! So you can have the spunky young hungry reporter and her husband and the editor and the owner and so on.

Half an hour of each show is written by Joss Whedon. Half an hour is written by Aaron Sorkin. Whedon owns the teenage kids. Sorkin owns the grownups. They can always throw plot twists at each other; Sorkin has to have the owner react when his daughter is caught smoking pot with the son of the hungry reporter, for example.

Ratings gold. The only problem with it is that David Kelley will be very miffed at being left out.