I’ve now watched three episodes of NBC’s buzzed about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, from the pen of wunderkind Aaron Sorkin, and though the concept is fresh and the content passably amusing, it’s yet to reach me on any level. And I can be reached, I assure you. The characters may be vessels for witty banter. But it’s not that witty, and I don’t buy a single one of them (aside from Bradley Whitford’s Danny, but that’s all him). The drama is forced, the characters’ behavior amped up and near hysterical. Am I actually supposed to believe these people exist, even in a heightened reality? Or that there’s anything at stake here aside from some half-cocked ideals?

I don’t doubt for a second that Sorkin is both intelligent and creative. What I question is whether he has the discipline to take his ideas and extract plausible, genuine drama and actual, compelling characters from them.

I really don’t get the love. And I really, really haven’t gotten the love for David E. Kelley for some time now. But we can rest assured that anything he slaps his name on will have TV columnists and Emmy voters lining up like pigs at the trough to sing its praises. Boston Legal? Yeah, pretty funny for a few episodes. God I love James Spader. Bill Shatner being Bill Shatner, and then suddenly going all serious on us? Hilarious. But I quickly realized there’s nothing more to it. Spader’s a shameless horndog. Snappy, sassy laugh lines aplenty. Saucy, jazzy music underneath keeping things moving. But that’s it, folks, there’s nothing more substantial here. The legal quandries the firm’s lawyers find themselves in weekly are about what I imagine rejects from the 18th season of L.A. Law might have been like.

I’m not going to touch Joss Whedon, because I haven’t exposed myself to enough of his stuff to make an honest judgment. And frankly, I’m scared. But the point is, I’m really starting to believe that some of our most celebrated TV writers are coasting by tickling the right funny bones in the right way. And the immense flaws — theories and viewpoints passing for story; lazy, samey characters spouting the same platitudes over and over — in the stories they choose to tell are overlooked.