Do Not Adjust Your Set

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In fact, looking at how two smart writers approach similar settings and conflicts is a study in how to deal with ideas on TV. Start with Studio 60 (Mondays, 10 p.m. E.T.), which is all about Big Important Subjects. Whither television? Whither social discourse? Whither this red-blue divided nation? The producer (Judd Hirsch) of Studio 60--the long-running sketch-show-within-a-show--is forced to kill a controversial sketch about Christians. He goes all Network on his network, launching an on-air tirade about how gutless corporations are "lobotomizing" America. (If there's no two-minute-plus speech, it ain't a Sorkin show.) After he is fired, the new network president (Amanda Peet) persuades former Studio 60 writers Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) and Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) to take over and revitalize the show. Complicating their job are a meddling corporate boss (Steven Weber), Danny's announcement that he tested positive for cocaine and Matt's history with star Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson), a born-again Christian he broke up with because she appeared on The 700 Club. (Sorkin, who has had drug run-ins and dated devout Christian and West Wing actress Kristin Chenoweth, is also writing what he knows.)

As always, Sorkin proves he can make dialogue skip rope. When a detractor calls Matt and Danny "Barbra Streisand--loving," Matt asks, "Was she calling us Hollywood liberals, or was she calling us gay?" Danny: "It's a fine distinction." Perry and Whitford have fantastic chemistry; squabbling but loyal, Matt and Danny are like a long-married couple but with more passion. (The women characters are much weaker: Harriet is a pretty billboard who serves as the token religious voice, while Peet drifts through with weird detachment, as if she were playing the princess of a small country.) And some details are spot-on: one invented sketch, "Peripheral Vision Man," is a dead ringer for the kind of lame skits that have long plagued SNL. I mean Mad TV.

In terms of craft, Studio 60 is very good. Sorkin is probably incapable of writing a bad show. But self-satisfied, self-serious and self-congratulatory--that he can do. From the mood lighting and stirring music to the hot-button story lines to the characters' arias on the august legacy of their show, Sorkin makes running a comedy program seem like negotiating an arms treaty. Is your beef with sketch shows that they used to be daring social critiques--("Chizzburger! Chizzburger!")--or that they used to make you laugh? Worse, Studio 60 fails to show us that Matt and Danny are actually funny. (Witty, yes, but so was President Bartlet.) In Episode 2, Matt has to come up with a knock-'em-dead opening sketch for his first show. His idea is--wait for it--a Pirates of Penzance parody. Studio 60 treats it like comic genius.

You might assume that 30 Rock, the sitcom, is the more lightweight show. But Fey began comedy writing with Chicago's Second City troupe, where, she says, "your starting place was always current events and social issues." Her hit movie Mean Girls was a mainstream feminist entertainment that was steeped in ideas but not overwhelmed by them. And 30 Rock is at heart about the race-class-gender triangle among its three leads: Liz, a talented but headstrong woman; Jack, a conservative suit who's not as dumb as Liz wishes he were; and Tracy, a loony--but cannily so--black celebrity who came from nothing.