He’s not a bad writer, but I get the sense from his material that he’s a relic of a bygone time. He has written so many of these crotchety and tortured (and male) geniuses, like Will McAvoy in The Newsroom, or Toby Ziegler from The West Wing, or Zuckerberg in The Social Network (the list goes on). If you want to view any of his fatherly “authority figure” characters as a representation or offshoot of Sorkin’s persona (which I do), or even if you don’t agree with that specific analysis, one thing is undeniable: he frequently depicts these male protagonists talking down to almost all of the people around them (he has so many of those “telling it like it is” moments) and this often includes the younger female characters. This is all over The Newsroom and I’m still alarmed 8 years later that he found McAvoy’s casual misogyny and racism charming and/or comedic. And the fact that he makes these men his heroes is very telling, because even though he crafts these stories with characters with solid convictions and values who mostly do the right things, on a social level, his feminism is definitely stuck in the 90’s. Like, maybe don’t create characters as a means to grind your own personal axes. (Or maybe that’s all writing is?)

Also, the Sorkinisms Supercut video on YouTube, while in dire need of an update, changed my perspective on him a bit:

https://youtu.be/S78RzZr3IwI