LOS ANGELES—Though they harbored serious reservations about his proposed ideas and considered nearly all of them to be formulaic rehashes of story elements and dialogue he’s used in his previous work, staff writers for the HBO original series The Newsroom nevertheless nodded in agreement at every horrible suggestion Aaron Sorkin made during brainstorming sessions this week, the team of terrified writers reported. “Good idea,” said the staffers who were scared to death of disagreeing with Sorkin, even though they all reportedly felt that his thoughts on season two were lame, idealistic to a nauseating extent, and basically just a way for Sorkin to use his characters to bark his clichéd platitudes at television viewers. “That’s a smart direction. I hadn’t even thought of that.” Before silently going back to work, sources confirmed that every writer in the room was privately thinking that if they only had the balls to stand up to Sorkin and fight for the fresh ideas and storytelling techniques they brought to the table they could make the show immeasurably better.

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