As the finale of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom approaches, questions abound. Can lovebirds Maggie and Jim overcome the obstacles in their way and convert their furtive glances and hallway shouting into some good old-fashioned smooching? Will we learn more about Charlie’s mysterious contact at the NSA? Does Will finally succeed in haranguing the world into civility? On Sunday night at 10PM, All Will Be Revealed.

Until then, though, we offer Newsroom watchers another question to ponder: Where the Jews at? The show has many signature Sorkin-isms: lots of walking-and-talking, lots of messy workplace romance that spills into the hallways, lots of impassioned monologues about Big Ideas. But, alas, none of his classic mensches to speak of.

In Sports Night and The West Wing, Sorkin weaved issues of Jewish identity into his narratives in ways large and small. Just recall the tension between Josh and Toby—arising from their shared faith but drastically different upbringings—with Brooklyn-meets-Connecticut smackdowns of a distinctly Jewish flavor. And who could forget the religious and cultural exchanges on Sports Night that come with Jeremy and Natalie’s romance? Starting his foray into WASPdom, Jeremy takes his first sip of Eggnog at his girlfriend’s behest. Once she’s left, he spits it out all over the control room floor. Alas, a valiant attempt.

Let’s revisit some of the most beloved Jewish characters from Sorkin’s earlier series.

Dan Rydell (Josh Charles, Sports Night):

From Sorkin’s perennially over-cited and under-watched debut series, Sports Night, meet Dan. He’s co-anchor of a cable sports show, an alum of Dartmouth (where, did I mention, he threw some ball…), and, oh yeah, the first Jewish character introduced on a Sorkin series. Dan is less obviously Jewish than his junior colleague, Jeremy (more to come!), but there are some indicators that he read Torah at one point or another. Hearing news of the birth of Isaac’s grandson, he shouts not “Congratulations” or “Dude, that’s frickin’ awesome,” but “Mazel tov!” And after he screws over his partner on the air and falls under a spell of discernibly Jewish guilt, how does he seek to come to terms with his deeds and find a more authentic self? By hosting a seder. What were the alternatives, really?

Jeremy Goodwin (Joshua Malina, Sports Night):

Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. As an associate producer on the sports show that Dan anchors, Jeremy has many responsibilities—identifying Greek Gods and ghosts, preparing the control center for Y2K (remember that? Sorkin’s been doing TV for a while now…), and “decreeing” fights with his girlfriend, Natalie, officially over. What more can I tell you about him, having already penned a 600-word ode to him on this very website last month. Suffice it to say, he’s quite the mensch. With an ego the size of Montana, it’s true that Jeremy can be exasperating at times, offering his two cents when begrudging silence might have served his colleagues better. But his unwavering loyalty and biting wit—and, oh yeah, those super-cute, pre-nerd-chic hipster glasses—endear him to colleagues and ensure his spot on the Jewcy-approved bachelor list.

Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff, The West Wing):

A proper analysis of Toby, arguably Sorkin’s most psychologically complex character, is the stuff of monographs, not blog posts. But for now, the basics: The communications director and Bartlet’s chief speechwriter, Toby grew up in Brooklyn with a father who worked for “Murder Incorporated” and politically radical sisters who took him to labor rallies. The most liberal of Bartlet’s staffers, hyperarticulate, a master of high and low tongues, Toby is not one to suffer fools lightly. He’ll start a shouting match with just about anyone, including the President. And he is undoubtedly the most Jewish Jew to grace a Sorkin show—which is to say, he can identify not just Yom Kippur but also Erev Yom Kippur. In one episode, he even goes to temple!

Joshua Lyman (Bradley Whitford, The West Wing):

Josh is one of those Jews who comes to us by way of Connecticut. In one memorable episode, Toby says to Josh, “You know, the Ancient Hebrews had a word for Jews from Westport. They pronounced it Presbyterian.” Zing! Josh may lack Toby’s storied Jewish pedigree, but he has other things to boast of: the ear of the president; a legion of adoring followers who confess their lust on a tribute site called LemonLyman.com (which, shockingly, does not exist on the real World Wide Web); and, most importantly, the pure and eternal love of his assistant, Donna. That last dynamic makes for the most tantalizing of Sorkin’s will-they-wont-they workplace romances (Jim and Maggie of Newsroom could learn a thing or two). Oh, yeah, and he went to Harvard. What more do you want?

These are just our four favorites; there are others, too. We wanted to include West Wing’s Will Bailey, the speech writer who joins Toby in the communications office after Sam leaves the White House to “run for Congress.” (In Sorkinian terms, Congress is that farm in Florida where all of your childhood pets live.) Setting aside the crassness of counting two characters played by Joshua Malina on the same list, we realized that the show never tells us whether Will is Jewish. That said, Malina certainly is. The actor once recalled during an interview that he missed the first day of shooting for West Wing because it fell on Rosh Hashanah. (Allison Janney reportedly quipped, “Oh, so today is not a Jewish holiday? You can actually do some work?”)

Also entitled to consideration are Will and Eliot of Sports Night, who, Dan tells us, were planning to attend the seder even before it became a multi-denominational affair. And if we’re looking at minor characters, why not count Toby’s rabbi? From his brief appearance, he seemed like a pretty cool guy—rewriting an entire sermon to persuade one congregant that “vengeance is not Jewish,” on the heels of a death row verdict in which he hopes Toby will intervene. Of course, Toby does not—nearly all Sorkin characters who are religious are also avowed secularists when it comes to matters of state. Even so, it is undeniable that Sorkin has frequently used the subtleties of religious identity to add nuance and texture to his characters. It makes the absence of any Jewish characters on Newsroom all the more conspicuous.

But perhaps I speak too soon. There is, after all, one episode left.

The finale of The Newsroom airs at 10PM on Sunday, August 26, on HBO

Writer’s Note: A commenter and astute viewer of The Newsroom has drawn our attention to a potential oversight. Might Don Keefer—bad-bad boyfriend to Maggie and executive producer for another anchor on Will’s network—be Jewish?

We’re undecided. If you want to make the case, turn to Episode 7, when Don asks the anchor, “What is this compulsion you have to look on the bright side? I can never count on you to be Jewish.” It seems likely that the anchor is Jewish. Might Don be, too? Let us know what you think below.

Previously: Jeremy Goodwin, the Wide-Eyed Wunderkind on Sorkin’s Sports Night

(Art by Margarita Korol)

The post Sorkin’s Jews of Yore appeared first on Jewcy.

Once upon a time, Aaron Sorkin made a series about the bright and energetic staff of a television news program, determined to restore television—and art, and people, and the world—to former glory. They battled short-sighted, money-driven executives who knew nothing about journalism and treated ratings books like sacred texts. Many scenes, an implausible number, began or ended with someone yelling in a conference room.

The year was 1998, and the show was Sports Night. It served as a testing ground for the traits and motifs that have become signature Sorkin-isms, on full display in his most recent series, HBO’s The Newsroom, another show about the making of a television show. Sports Night follows the anchors and producers of an eponymous cable sports show as they write scripts, splice film, and make painstaking decisions about what deserves to make it into their one-hour program. We never know what exactly makes their show superior to its competitors on ESPN and CNN Sports—but we assume it is, because surely no one is better at their job than these folks, and they want to succeed so damn badly.

No one loves his job more than Jeremy Goodwin (Joshua Malina), the nerdy, nervous, Jewish boy-verging-on-man who joins the team as an associate producer on the series premiere. Though Jeremy’s title makes him decidedly middle class within the staff hierarchy, it is his journey that to a large extent frames the series. We squirm when his first segment assignment ends in unmitigated disaster (spoiler alert: Bambee dies!); we swoon during the candlelit picnic he sets up for shiksa-goddess Natalie, which he accidentally sleeps through; we watch with dread as he then diligently wrecks his relationship with said shiksa goddess, whom he’s always feared was too pretty and too cool for him. Even as Jeremy comes into own as a character and a producer (more snark, less twitching), he never loses that sense of wide-eyed wonder we see in the first episode—a genuine awe at the chance to make something great. On Sports Night, that means the best damn sports show out there.

Whatever the virtues of the show—and I would say there were many—it is not the place where Sorkin makes his most nuanced points about Jewish identity. For that, viewers had to wait for The West Wing, which premiered the same year Sports Night ended, in 1999 (see: Toby Ziegler and Joshua “Lemon” Lymon). Jeremy’s Jewishness is mostly the stuff of passing asides, like when Dana, the the show’s hyper-competent, whip-smart executive producer (who’s also something of a basket case), refers to him as “matzo ball” in a staff meeting. But there is also the episode deep in the second season, when Judaism takes the fore—sort of. Dan (one of the two co-hosts) asks Jeremy to join him in a no-frills Passover seder he’s organizing for the few Jewish members of the staff. Jeremy quickly agrees, but insists on writing the pageant.

DAN: The pageant?

JEREMY: Well, there are sections of the Haggadah that, quite frankly, could use a polish.

DAN: You’re gonna do a rewrite on the Haggadah?

JEREMY: It’s not written in stone, Danny.

DAN: Actually, some of it is.

The result of Jeremy’s efforts is a distinctly unorthodox affair, held—where else?—in the conference room. For one thing, most of the participants are gentiles. For another, Pharaoh has a personal assistant named Maggie. Theological revisionism aside, the seder is not meant to make groundbreaking points about Judaism. Instead, in typical Sorkin fashion, it serves as a kind of community affirmation, a chance for the staff to come together and remember how much they care about one another, as their corporate parent’s foundering puts the beloved show in jeopardy, along with all of their jobs.

Though Newsroom has borrowed extensively from Sports Night, so far it has failed to reproduce its wit and charm. The effort to make the best television show out there, so earnest and inspired on Sports Night, drips with condescension in the hands of Will McAvoy, the unapologetic patriarch of Newsroom. His manic, inept executive producer—I’m sorry, I meant “former war correspondent”—doesn’t help.

On Sports Night, Sorkin mixed quirk and competence in just the right amounts. It’s been twelve years since ABC killed the series, and I can say only one thing: They don’t make them like Jeremy Goodwin anymore.

Previously on Network Jews:

Harry Goldenblatt, the unlikely Casanova on Sex and the City

Max Blum, Happy Endings‘ solution to the Joey problem

Seth Cohen, The O.C.’s loveable dork

The post Jeremy Goodwin, the Wide-Eyed Wunderkind on Sorkin’s Sports Night appeared first on Jewcy.