The Good Wife Sticks It to Aaron Sorkin and The Social Network

Last night on The Good Wife, the relentlessly Zeitgeist-y lawyers of Lockhart Gardner took on a client who may sound familiar: a twentysomething computer programmer turned billionaire looking to sue the makers of a film based on his life — and more specific, the founding of his now wildly popular website — for defamation. Yes, it’s The Social Network, and while Good Wife made a few small attempts to acknowledge its movie inspiration (“He’s another Zuckerberg,” notes Christine Baranski early on), the episode still unapologetically borrowed the movie’s entire backstory, right down to the fictional ex-girlfriend who inspired the website’s creation.

Case in point: the screenwriter very obviously based on Aaron Sorkin, whose scene is available here, at the 16:20 mark. Vulture can’t speak to the real-life Sorkin’s sartorial preferences (beyond his love of being tan), but we’d guess that he actually does enjoy turtlenecks, because everything else here is spot-on. Obnoxious and arrogant fast-talk! Former drug problems! Feuds with blog commenters! And major points to Good Wife writers Robert and Michelle King for re-creating the Social Network deposition scene while denying Fake Sorkin any zingers on the level of “Have I adequately answered your condescending question?” If only they’d thrown in some pedeconferencing. Anyway, now we’re really looking forward to Sorkin’s 30 Rock appearance, because it’ll be a similar roast, but to his face. Game on.

https://www.vulture.com/2011/02/the_good_wife_aaron_sorkin.html

Last night’s “Good Wife,” on the other hand, presented the Mark Zuckerberg/Aaron Sorkin/”Social Network” story more or less as it happened in the headlines from which it was ripped. The only tweak was the lawsuit itself, but the firm’s client was clearly Zuckerberg, the douchebag screenwriter was clearly Sorkin, etc. The show tried to get around that by having a character compare their client to Zuckerberg, which was just silly; a universe in which this guy and Zuckerberg co-exist makes as much sense as a universe in which the fictional “Studio 60” and “Saturday Night Live” co-exist. It’s there as an attempt to place some distance between you and what you’re imitating, but it’s a distance nobody buys.

So because there was no real change, the whole thing played out like the show both trying to glom onto the success of “The Social Network” and just bashing Sorkin for an hour. I’ve bashed Sorkin a time or 20 in the past (go read my old “Studio 60” reviews), but it got to the point where I was wondering exactly who on the show hated Sorkin this much. (Other than Josh Charles, has anyone in the cast or crew worked on a Sorkin show or movie?) So unless you just enjoy Sorkin being called out for his less endearing qualities, I found the whole A-story an example of how not to do this particular trick...

https://uproxx.com/sepinwall/the-good-wife-net-work-ripped-from-the-sorkin/