Dallas: “A House Divided”

Season 3, Episode 25

Original Airdate: March 21, 1980

Writer: Rena Down

Director: Irving J. Moore

Executive Producers: Philip Capice, Lee Rich

Cast: Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray

The first thing to note about “Dallas” is how big it is. Those opening credits, with the sprawling theme music and helicopter shots of the city and South Fork, present the viewer with an introduction to the biggest poker table in the world. Everything is up for grabs – all you have to do is want it enough and not be afraid to get a little blood on your hands. It feels like a big-budget movie, not an episode of television.

It’s a shame that the series is remembered today more for its cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs stunts more than its excellent storytelling. I came to this series after becoming a fan of the fantastic sequel show, which underlines that a good soap opera does not have to be done with camp or over-the-top slap-fights. In many ways, it’s more difficult to write a good, character-based soap than many other genres – here, all the drama must come from within while still allowing the characters to grow, mature and revert.

“A House Divided” presents us with the most memorable season-ending cliffhanger of all time: Who shot J.R.? J.R. (Larry Hagman) is ultimate villain – viewers loved to hate him just as much as “Dallas’” characters simply hated him.  The episode opens with J.R. having pulled off the neat hat-trick of managing to save his company from going belly up while systematically bankrupting almost every other oil baron in Dallas. I’m not exaggerating by writing that the first ten minutes of the episode involve character after character entering J.R.’s office, threatening him and then leaving just in time for the next character to come in and start screaming.

But then again it isn’t like his home life is going much better. He’s attempting to get his alcoholic wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) institutionalized. I’m not an expert on the mythology of the show, but I have a feeling J.R. probably drove his wife to the bottle, and I can’t really blame her. His mistress is trying to backstab him. Even his dear ‘ole Mama Miss Ellie (Barbara Bel Geddes) is cross with him after J.R. manages to drive Bobby (Patrick Duffy) away from Southfork. Sure, Miss Ellie seems soft on the surface, but anyone who watches “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” knows she is not one to be trifled with.

And let’s not forget the reason Bobby decided to leave Southfork. Ewing rival Cliff Barnes (a wonderfully oily -- sorry for the pun -- Ken Kercheval) has found legal documentation that he is entitled to half the profits from a hugely profitable oil field. J.R.’s response to the news? He immediately shuts down the wells and refuses to turn them back on. Sure, this screws him out of millions in profits, but he wins, so whatever. When Bobby finds out, he’s livid, and responds by wanting to get himself and his wife as far away from J.R. as possible.

Sure, you can see the machinations of the plot twisting in every scene of the episode, but that does not mean the writing is not inspired. The episode (and the series as a whole) is all about those machinations, and it feels like a more fanciful version of “Dune,” with oil substituted for the spice. And yes, that was sarcasm. J.R. seems to have the ability to be completely emotionless about his shady dealings, snaking back and forth whichever way he needs to, damn the consequences for everyone around him. He appears to think that everyone capable of decency is really “weak.” He never seems to ask a question, only make statements that he treats as facts, no matter how insane they are. In other words, he’s a monster. In an odd way, it becomes fitting that an act of emotional rage is what brings him to a halt (albeit only for a little while).

As terrible as J.R. is, I can see why he became so beloved: He’s the only one on the show unafraid to crack a smile. Everyone else on “Dallas” has their emotions cranked up to an 11 at all times, but J.R. spends at least as much time coming up with wisecracks as he does plotting the downfall of [Insert Character Here].

Take this line, said to his mistress:

“It takes brains to know when to be scared, honey, and since that’s something in short supply around here, I’m gonna help you. Now is the time to be scared.”

Or this exchange with his wife:

Sue Ellen: “Tell me, J.R., what slut are you going to stay with tonight?”J.R.: “What difference does it make? Whoever it is has got to be more interesting than the slut I’m looking at right now.”

The aforementioned scene where Bobby lets Miss Ellie know that he’s going to leave is surprisingly poignant, a reminder that sometimes morality and honesty can be just as engaging and powerful as villainy. Duffy is excellent in the loud and emotional scene, and it proves why his character is such a great foil for J.R.

The dynamic of the series at this point seemed to be a great triangle of power between Bobby, who represented good, J.R., who represented evil, and their father Jock (Jim Davis), who was the pendulum that swung between the two. That triangle is echoed on the new show in a similar way, with Cliff Barnes’ family representing evil, Bobby’s family representing good and J.R.’s brood representing the pendulum.

Yes, there’s one or two “I’ll kill you for this, J.R.!” too many peppered into the episode, but I’m surprised it holds up as well as it does today. When you hear so many times how campy and over-the-top these ‘80s soaps were, then see those shoulder pads, then watch this compilation video, you begin to believe that they were horrible. And yet “A House Divided” is tightly scripted, the characters are memorable and that cliffhanger still packs a punch. And did I mention that theme song? Wow.

“A House Divided” is available on DVD and iTunes. The “Dallas” sequel series is on TNT Mondays at 9 p.m.

Thriller - "Pigeons From Hell"

Season 1, Episode 36

Original Airdate: June 6, 1961

Writer: John Kneubuhl (adaptation), Robert E. Howard (original story)

Director: John Newland

Producers: William Frye, Maxwell Shane

Cast: Brandon De Wilde, Crahan Denton, David Whorf, Boris Karloff

“Pigeons From Hell” is a masterpiece of slow-burn horror. At first glance, its creators seem content to embrace all the usual trappings that are trotted out to achieve cheap, impact-less scares. But instead of the cheap scares, we are instead treated to slow tension building over the course of the hour, deliberately paced to get under the viewer’s skin and linger there.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Two brothers (Brandon De Wilde and David Whorf) find their car broken down on an abandoned highway in the middle of nowhere. They come upon a nearby abandoned mansion… and then the horrors begin to happen. But instead of a bunch of scares straight out of the Universal B-horrors of the 1940s, writer John Kneubuhl and director John Newland aim to create the best movie Val Lewton never produced. It is an adaptation of a great short story by Robert E. Howard (a writer who inadvertently was the cause of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career by creating “Conan the Barbarian,” but don’t hold that against him), and in his adaptation Kneubuhl makes two distinct but very smart changes.

In the original story the young men are just friends, but here they are brothers. When Whorf’s character gets an ax to the skull, there is much more emotional resonance for both the audience and De Wilde’s Timothy. The original story worked fine without it, but here it gives the death extra significance, especially considering we only have five minutes with the characters before one is murdered.

Second, the short story takes place over the course of two or three days and nights, but Kneubuhl condenses the story to a single, endless night of horrors. That way the atmosphere is relentless – the characters cannot escape the dark and neither can we.

The most overt horror in the episode comes early: The aforementioned ax murder. While his brother sleeps, Whorf’s Johnny is drawn up the stairs of the deserted mansion by ghostly singing. When Timothy goes searching, he finds Johnny’s skull cracked in two. But that doesn’t make Johnny any less mobile – his brains still bleeding all over, Johnny chases Timothy out of the mansion, waving about the ax that was used to kill him. Despite the grisliness of what I have just described, the scene is played almost entirely by suggestion. While Johnny stalks Timothy in the hallway, we never actually see the split skull or the brains… all we see are drops of blood streaming down the front of his face. Everything else is hidden by the shadows.

Timothy manages to make it a few hundred yards away from the mansion before passing out. He is brought to the nearest Sheriff (Crahan Denton) by a town hick, and when the Sheriff decides to take the boy back to the mansion to investigate, we get the single inadvertently funny moment of the episode: The hick busts out of the house they are in and rushes off into the nearby woods like the Roadrunner escaping the Coyote. De Wilde, who many will remember for saying “Shane!” a thousand times in the film classic, also has the task of attempting to explain what happened to him in the mansion while being overcome with grief for his brother, and though his line readings might come off as hackneyed in another film, his innocent looks and inability to properly articulate himself actually works in favor of the character.

The Sheriff takes Timothy back to the mansion to investigate, and instead of a bunch of boo-scares and chains rattling, Newland provides viewers with a single, indelible image. Every time the duo enter the room where Johnny died, their kerosene lantern will not stay lit. The moment they exit the room, it comes back on. Any fan of a good horror movie knows the darkness is much scarier than seeing what is in the darkness, and that is never more obvious than here. Also, because there are no silly noises or faux-climaxes in the sequence, the viewer is consistently on the edge of his seat. There is no end to the tension until they leave the house – the threat of something bad happening ensuring the viewer cannot relax.

The atmosphere is only aided by the black-and-white cinematography, shot by Lionel Lindon (who also shot the incredible “The Manchurian Candidate” and the minor noir classics “Whirlpool” and “The Blue Dahlia”). I doubt there’s a shot in the film where everything in a given set is fully lit. Lindon uses the shadows to play with our expectations of terror, especially considering a character says early that the swampland is crawling with snakes. The lighting also makes some old-man makeup that would doubtless look hackneyed in color into something downright creepy.

Kneubuhl and Newland approach the episode’s climax with the same slow-burn mentality, refusing to ratchet up the pace for no good reason. As a result, Timothy’s slow, zombie-like walk up that decrepit staircase toward his destiny becomes excruciatingly suspenseful.

It's all about those eyebrows.

I got the “Thriller” boxed set for Christmas this year and have been consistently surprised at the quality of the episodes. It’s the only hourlong anthology series I’ve seen thus far that makes good use of its entire running time (unfortunately, “The Outer Limits” often feels like a half-hour show stretched to its breaking point to fill its hour) on a regular basis. I’ve watched about half the series (the first season is 37 episodes, so it’s not like I’m being lazy) and find that even the lesser episodes are still of legitimate quality, and Jerry Goldsmith’s musical scores are feature-film worthy, even eclipsing Bernard Herrmann’s scores for “The Twilight Zone.” The show pays homage to the Universal classic horrors of the 30s, especially with its use of host Boris Karloff (whose eyebrows here are epic, matched only perhaps by Larry Hagman’s in the “Dallas” reboot), but takes most of its inspiration from Lewton’s horror films of the 40s. Still, every now and then you can see the viciousness of the 50s Hammer films sneaking in. Since I love all those eras of fright, I feel like a kid in a candy shop every time I insert a new disc. “Pigeons From Hell” is my favorite, but I could have easily chosen “The Grim Reaper,” “Parasite Mansion,” “Late Date” “The Hungry Glass” or “The Purple Room”…and that’s just from the first season. It’s such a shame this show doesn’t exist in the public consciousness in the same way “The Twilight Zone” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” does, because it certainly deserves to be.

“Pigeons From Hell” is available on DVD and YouTube.

Mission: Impossible – “Encore”

Season 6, Episode 2

Original Airdate: September 25, 1971

Writer: Harold Livingston

Director: Paul Krasny

Executive Producer: Bruce Geller

Cast: Peter Graves, Lynda Day George, William Shatner

I had never seen an episode of “Mission: Impossible” before this one. So I have no idea if “Encore” is a good representation of the rest of the series, but I really hope it is. Everything about it is legitimately insane, and yet the story is told with such style and conviction that, in its own weird way, it’s pretty close to perfect.

We begin with IMF (a super-secret government branch where all the agents have really awesome hair) team leader Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) getting his assignment of the week: to ascertain a confession and evidence against a murderer/mobster/all-around-evil-guy Thomas Kroll (Captain James T. Kirk…er…William Shatner). Kroll is in his 60s and just exploded a hospital where a little ‘ole lady was about to snitch on him, so we know he’s bad to the bone.

So IMF decides to (wait for it) make Kroll believe he has traveled back in time to save some humpback whales to 1937, the date he first met the woman he would ultimately kill in that hospital.

Yes, you read that right.

Okay, let’s break this down for a minute, shall we? They drug Kroll with a hot towel and kidnap him and give him a makeover. How can they make a 60-something guy with a limp appear to be in his 30s again, you ask? Well, they cover his face with wax and other magical elements and shoot his bad leg with a drug that will take away his limp. Phelps has rented out a film backlot and meticulously recreated at least two blocks from Kroll’s old neighborhood, right down to the buttermilk in his icebox. Oh, and I should mention that all of this appears to have been done in about 24 hours.

Like I said, this is nuts. And it would be completely laughable if it wasn’t done with complete conviction from everyone involved. Also, the viewer has to take a huge leap of faith, but as far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to watch a show called “Mission: Impossible” without muttering “that’s impossible!” to myself at least twice in a given episode. And even though the premise is…uh…farfetched, writer Ron Livingston creates some really smart complications among the impossible leaps. For example, the magic face wax and leg drug will only work for six hours.  And Kroll doesn’t act stupidly for a man in his situation. He scrubs his face thoroughly to ensure there’s no makeup to make him look younger. He rushes to a window when he hears a plane overhead (It’s a 1930s plane Phelps had fly over to help with the cover. These guys think of everything). More than that, above and beyond the time-travel trick, what we are witness to is a very elaborate mind game – almost a game of chess between a mostly unseen Phelps (who only interacts with Kroll once) and Kroll’s better instincts.

Yes, there are a thousand different ways this story is implausible and also a thousand ways that Kroll could make the team. I don’t care, because while the episode is playing, it’s all too much fun. Livingston actually takes more time that one would expect at turning Kroll into a legitimate character. Of course any 60-something guy magically back in the body of a 30-something-year-old would immediately want to chase some tail, and that’s what Kroll does, taking the “woman” he will eventually kill to a movie and making none-too-subtle remarks about wanting to get with her. That’s just creepy on so many levels.

“Encore’s” director, Paul Krasny, keeps things seeming much bigger than they really are. For most of the episode we are in cramped, period sets that Krasny and his director of photography look rich and lush. It really feels like a movie more than an episode of television, never moreso than at the climax:

Kroll has just inadvertently given up the evidence, and suddenly everyone around him seems to evaporate.  Everyone has been pulled out, you see. One would also expect cops would be storming in, but go with it. Kroll wanders out into the period street, so bustling with life just moments prior, and it is now empty and abandoned. Kroll begins running, searching, and as he does so we see the ink put in his hair to shade it run down his cheeks. His wax begins to loosen. His limp returns. But he keeps running…until he runs all the way off the set and onto another one on the backlot: an street from classic shoot-‘em-up Westerns. It’s a wonderful, metaphorical image to end our story. Indeed, we don’t see Phelps apprehending our villain or even anything close to that. Instead, we see Kroll’s second in command, a man in his 60’s like Kroll, approach him – a reminder of who he really is and a mirror image Kroll does not want to look at. That is more of a defeat for him than being hauled off in handcuffs. And also, from the writing to direction, beautifully realized.

Back when I wrote about “Battlestar: Galactica” I noted how awesome it was that they share a sneak preview of what’s to come in the episode, and here I was just as excited to see the same in the opening credits. The show’s iconic theme music plays as we are shown tiny snapshots of exciting moments in the episode to come. Yes, setting Lalo Schifrin’s music against anything, even “Heaven’s Gate,” would make what we are seeing the most exciting action film ever made, and I think that’s the point. It jazzes up the viewer and ensures that he or she will be back and ready for more just as soon as the commercial break is over.

I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to watch the original “Mission: Impossible” television show. I’m a huge admirer of the film series, and now have set my DVR to tape the show’s nightly airing. From glancing at several articles, it appears that “Encore’s” craziness is the exception in the series, not the rule. But even if the show remains (relatively) grounded throughout the rest of its run, that won’t mean I love it any less. I can’t help but love the smoke-and-mirrors game it plays with its viewers and villains every week…and that theme song will never get old.

“Encore” is available on DVD and YouTube.

The Outer Limits - "Demon With a Glass Hand"

Season 2, Episode 5

Original Airdate: October 17, 1964

Writer: Harlan Ellison

Director: Byron Haskin

Producer: Ben Brady, Leslie Stevens

Cast: Robert Culp, Arline Martel

“Demon With a Glass Hand” is a wonderful, complex science fiction story hidden underneath a beautifully shot film noir. It was “Blade Runner” long before that huge Geisha appeared on the skyscraper…and has better voice-over to boot. Writer Harlan Ellison sued the studio behind “TheTerminator” for plagiarizing his other (lesser) “Outer Limits” episode “Soldier” in a move that, to this writer, seems like quite a stretch. But though the mythology here is much different than “Blade Runner,” it’s impossible to not see all the inspirations, from the emotionless hero to the final twist.

Despite my obsession with all things “Twilight Zone” and love for anthology series in general, I’ve never before watched “The Outer Limits,” despite having the original series on DVD for a few years now. After finally digging in and watching several of the most popular episodes (“The Zanti Misfits,” “The Chameleon” and “Soldier,” among others), I was very much let down. Despite gorgeous cinematography and some good acting, the one-hour format stretched most of these science-fiction stories to their breaking point, despite very good ideas at their core. When half of your episodes feel like filler, you have a problem – the same one that “The Twilight Zone” dealt with when it expanded to an hour in its fourth season.

That’s one of the reasons why “Demon With a Glass Hand” (whose name doesn’t really make sense in retrospect) feels like such a breath of fresh air. Instead of filler scenes placed upon other filler scenes, writer Ellison provides us with an ever-changing Rubik’s cube of mythology, often so dense that the viewer is playing catch-up. It begins with a man named Trent (Robert Culp, purposely wooden) lost in modern times with a partially-constructed glass hand and several alien killers on his tail who are recognizable because they wear panty hose (not kidding) on their faces. Trent has no idea who he is, only that he supposed to be humanity’s savior, and he must retrieve the three missing fingers for the glass hand to understand entirely what has happened to him and what he must do to save the humanity of the future. And trust me, I’m just scratching the surface here. There’s more, lots more.

The first ten minutes of the episode feel like an exposition bomb has gone off. First Trent gets a boatload of information from the mysterious panty hose aliens, then more exposition from his hand, then he meets up with a woman and explains even more to her. It’s difficult to keep everything straight and would usually signal very clunky writing, but because Trent is almost as confused as we are, the exposition dump actually works to the episode’s advantage. We go along for the ride, waiting for pay-offs to mysteries we only half understood to begin with, and when those pay-offs come they are both surprising and fascinating.

Everything speeds up once Trent gets to an office building where the aliens are headquartered. Though director Byron Haskin and his fantastic cinematographer Kenneth Peach employed the shadows of noir from the first frame of the episode, the noir look goes into overdrive in this beautifully rendered building, filled with fantastic architecture and maze-like hallways. It reminds me a lot of the office in Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” and I wasn’t surprised to read that Ridley Scott used the sameplace to film the third act of “Blade Runner” (there’s that movie again).

Trent runs into a woman named Consuelo (Arline Martel) who was working late and turns her into his companion, not by choice, but because the aliens have put an invisible barrier around the building. Together they move up the several floors of the building, ultimately to the roof, before Trent descends back into the danger below as Dante did into the inferno.

"Cowabunga, dude!"

Many of the more sci-fi elements of the episode are almost laughable, and this is true of the show in general. The killer ants in “Zanti Misfits” had cute teddy bear faces and were obviously horrible models swung on strings during the final siege. The aquatic monster in “Tourist Attraction” would have fit better as one of Ariel’s pets in “The Little Mermaid” than on “The Outer Limits.” Here Trent’s glass hand isn’t the most impressive prop (and, for a long period of time, is stuck in a “Cowabunga, dude!” position). The aliens all wear a big necklace that, when torn off of them kills them and sends their bodies back to the future – and yet none of them think they might be safer if they just tuck it into their shirt. And I did mention the panty-hose faces, right?

I’m willing to forgive many of these in part because of the show’s budget, time period and that, yes, “The Twilight Zone” had many shoddy effects too. But what really saves the more eye-rolling parts of the production are the film noir elements. Even the most laughable costumes look awesome when shot in shadow, and the kookiest villains look menacing when you can barely get a good look at them. It’s inspired that Trent and the aliens use guns, actual guns, to do their battle. Ellison apparently was horribly unhappy with that decision, but seriously, what adaptation of his work has he not all-but-disowned after the fact, and here the guns bring a unique level of urgency to the storytelling missing from other science fiction (the guns used here are infinitely scarier than, say, the ray gun from Ellison’s other episode “Soldier”).

The twist at the end of the episode is a genuinely surprising one that hits the viewer on both an emotional and intellectual level, and fits perfectly in the world of noir. It is also darker and self-defeating than one would expect from an anthology, a trait that seems to be repeated throughout almost every “The Outer Limits” episode I’ve seen. Humanity always sucks, things never get better, and our heroes must consistently suffer for little reward. It’s a very dire notion for stories whose imagination is supposed to reach from the inner mind to the outer limits, and perhaps that’s another reason why I haven’t become fully invested in the series. The ending worked beautifully here, that’s for sure, but in the other episodes I’ve seen it just felt tacked-on, as if it was trying to prove a point. Ah well, the show still has many great qualities and I’m looking forward to diving into the remainder of the episodes. I will say one thing about it: the opening credits are much cooler than any of those in “The Twilight Zone’s” history. So that’s, uh, something.

“Demon With a Glass Hand” is available on DVD, AmazonInstant Video, Hulu, iTunes and YouTube.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - "Pilot"

Season 1, Episode 1

Original Airdate: September 18, 2006

Writer: Aaron Sorkin

Director: Thomas Schlamme

Executive Producers: Thomas Schlamme, Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet

The teaser of the first episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” feels like a sledgehammer to the chest. It’s one of the most powerful, impactful openings of any series, and possibly the best. Writer Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme were obviously inspired by the classic film “Network” (and say as much later in the show), but for my money this sequence transcends the movie. It’s so awesome, in fact, that the good will it builds allows Sorkin to take some major chances with structure and character development throughout the remainder of the episode.

The show focuses on the Los Angeles equivalent of “Saturday Night Live,” a live sketch-comedy show called “Studio 60.” Exposition is set up beautifully in the first few seconds as show cast member Simon Stiles (D.L. Hughley) informs the studio audience (and, by proxy, the viewers) about the history of “Studio 60,” the studio and how live television works. But then we begin to realize that the show is past its heyday, and the thousands of small stresses and sacrifices creator/head writer Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch) has made finally cause him to have a nervous breakdown. By walking out on set. Live on air. And going into a rant about the slow disintegration and bastardization of the television industry.

That is all great, but what takes the sequence to another level is that we cut between the rant and the show’s director, Cal (Timothy Busfield) making the decision to keep Wes on air as long as possible, despite network executives screaming at him some variation on “you’ll never work in this town again!” Both threads are equally gripping, but the back-and-forth editing perfectly showcases the escalating chaos, climaxing with a smash to the show’s intertitle at the moment Cal finally gives in and cuts away from Wes, leaving the viewer gasping for air. Now that’s how you cut to commercial.

From here on in, Sorkin begins to play with the structure of most television pilots. The two main characters, Matt (Matthew Perry) and Danny (Bradley Whitford) don’t even appear until 20 minutes in. Instead, Sorkin uses the time immediately following “the event” to focus on new network executive Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet) as she deals with the fallout on her first day of work (technically she doesn’t even have to start work until the following Monday, but decides “what the hell?”) and butts heads with another executive, wonderfully played by Steven Weber.

Jordan, along with Peet’s interpretation of the character, is one of the most fascinating, refreshing parts of the series. Peet was attacked by many critics for her “romantic-comedy” take on the roll, but I think that criticism is woefully misguided. The easy route would have been for Sorkin and Schlamme to cast an uptight “bitch” type for the role, but instead they did something much more interesting: They cast Peet against type and had her just act like a smart, normal woman doing her best in a bad situation. Instead of dealing with the dozens of lesser executives all looking at the mess on a micro level she sees the macro version of the problem. She doesn’t want to keep plugging the dam, she wants to build an entirely new one, and goes out of her way to accomplish that by being honest and forthright, two values none of the other characters seem to believe or, hell, can even comprehend in the television industry. When she tells Danny she knows he had cocaine in his system, he immediately believes she’s trying to blackmail him when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Whoops. Because she’s so forthcoming and honest, I’m guessing that’s why critics’ gut was that Jordan was underwritten, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sorkin’s writing throughout is sharp, and his script never talks down to the audience. When there might be exposition that goes over our heads, he finds ingenious ways to make it come through without seeming like exposition, like Simon’s aforementioned introduction to the audience. His now-famous Walk-and-Talks conversations remain a thing of beauty, and many of his recurring storytelling tics pop up again here and are used well.

Many of his storytelling techniques bleed freely from one series to another. Turn on any Sorkin show and you’ll be likely to find two soul mates working in the same place who just can’t quite admit to themselves that they love one another (Casey and Dana on “Sports Night,” Will and Mac in “The Newsroom,” Matt and Harriet here). There’s usually an evil boss character who we later learn isn’t all that bad (Weber here, Jane Fonda on “The Newsroom,” William H. Macy on “Sports Night”) and loads of conservative characters (Will on “The Newsroom,” Harriet here) who serve as soapboxes to preach or be preached to. Oh, and he borrowed the opening nervous breakdown from “Studio 60” for the opening of “The Newsroom.” I mention these not as criticisms, but as observations. He goes back to these watering holes because they usually work well and he manages to find fun variations each time he does it.

Another thing Sorkin often gets criticized for is the lack of realism in his shows, which I find ridiculous. Just because his shows use real-life news events and politics as the backdrop for the storytelling does not mean that they must be gritty and real. Look at the pilot to “Studio 60,” where anchors on every cable news channel not only mention that the rant came from “Network,” but name check its writer, Paddy Chayefsky. As a screenwriter, it’s nice to think that might happen, but seriously? In what world? And his characters, despite speaking eloquently about politics, owe much more to the screwball comedies of the ‘30s and ‘40s (“Bringing Up Baby,” “His Girl Friday”) than reality. And, no offense to the gritty/shaky-cam/dark/topical/whatever shows, that’s the way I like it. If I’m being preached to, I want some escapism and I want some hope.

Over the course of its 45 minute pilot, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” manages to create an entire world, populate it with a diverse, multi-dimensional cast and then topped it all off with a Queen song for good measure. It remains one of the most literate, engaging hours of television I’ve had the pleasure of watching. Screw what the critics say.

The pilot of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” is available on the Complete Series DVD, Amazon Instant Video and iTunes.