”Invisible Space Daddy says I should hug you, infidel.”

Esteemed comic book auteur, and one of my fave writers, Warren Ellis continues his breakdown of the new NBC show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and delivers the pull-quote of the month... nay, the year... on all those rational and loving religious consersative types.

Studio 60 looks awesome, btw. But I've dug Sorkin's writing since Sports Night.

STUDIO 60: 2

And who are those occupying powers? Judd Hirsch’s [Who's plays the Exec Producer of an SNL-type show who loses his shit, a la Howard "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" Beale in Network, on live TV. - Rob] rant at the top of STUDIO 60 1.01:

“We’re all being lobotomized by the country’s most influential industry which has thrown in the towel on any endeavor that does not include the courting of 12-year-old boys. And not event the smart 12-year-olds, the stupid ones, the idiots, of which there are plenty thanks in no small part to this network.

“…there’s always been a struggle between art and commerce, but now I’m telling you art is getting its ass kicked, and it’s making us mean, and it’s making us bitchy, and it’s making us cheap punks and that’s not who we are. …We’re eating worms for money, ‘Who Wants to Screw My Sister’, guys are getting killed in a war that’s got theme music and a logo. That remote in your hand is a crack pipe…

“…and it’s not even good pornography. They’re just this side of snuff films, and friends, that’s what’s next ’cause that’s all that’s left. And the two things that make them scared gutless are the FCC and every psycho-religious cult that gets positively horny at the very mention of a boycott. These are the people they’re afraid of, this prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed-filled whorehouse of a network you’re watching. This thoroughly unpatriotic– ”

What interests me is that Sorkin’s working in a country that takes its television a hell of a lot more seriously than it takes its government. He could catch a lot of flak if he really goes after his theme. And plopping in Harriet Hayes, the WEST WING/Ainsley Hayes (hey!) character there to remind us that middle America is full of good honest downhome sensible conservatives and non-insane people of faith (”Invisible Space Daddy says I should hug you, infidel”), as a shield against knee-jerk rightist criticism just isn’t going to soak it all up.

I’ll be watching STUDIO 60 because Sorkin can write very well, even though the eventual produced pilot is a little slicker than I’d like. The thing that’ll keep me watching is whether or not Sorkin strips the thorns off the rose before he proffers it as his Valentine gift to television.