While I liked how dogged Danny's pursuit of Jordan was this episode (recommendation letters!), I'm starting to get a little annoyed that TV endorses creepy workplace stalking and tries to pass it off as cute romantic comedy. Behavior like that in the real world usually leads to a restraining order at least and a violent pepper-spraying at worst (believe me, I know!) I'm okay with violence and drug-use on television, but this stalker stuff has got to stop. Right now, there's some goofball with a crush on the girl in the cubicle next to his that is planning a Danny-esque pursuit, probably in large part inspired by this episode. It's going to end badly. If you're reading this now, DO NOT EMULATE DANNY! Recommendation letters and courting even in the face of a blocked number are only cute and endearing on TV.

Matt and Harriet. I think I have this figured out. Harriet has sold her soul to the devil. Seriously, think about it. It explains why someone with no visible charisma or comedic chops or notable beauty would be the center of so much unwarranted attention. It also explains why she's so religious. She's trying to pray her way out of a deal with the Lord of Darkness! I can see it now: the last episode of the show is going to be a viola battle between Kim Tao and the devil (played by Ernest Borgnine, happy 90th Ernie!) with Harriet's soul at stake.

Okay, maybe not. But without the devil thing, I'm still hard pressed to figure out what the whole world sees in Harriet. I mean, the dolphin laugh was cute, but is anyone buying an online bidding war for a date with her (and do charities actually still do this kind of thing? I'm beginning to think that people only bid for dates with one another on television). I thought the guilt that Matt was feeling that the money was going to a teen abstinence charity was funny and his giving $4002 to the polyamorous group was hilarious, but of all the relationships on the show, this is clearly the most strained. It's just not working. I'd be much happier with this show if next week's plot is that Harriet is killed by a violent anti-abstinence teenager and Matt celebrates by writing nine sketches about God.

Our final relationship is the one I thought felt most real and is the one I'm really rooting for: Tom and Lucy. I'm a big Lucy/Dawn fan and I guess the fact that she has fallen for not one, but TWO average looking guys (Tom/Tim) has given me hope that if, one day, I'm ever transported to TV world, I could maybe get Lucy myself! That's a piece of wish fulfillment for me and, I'm sure, plenty of other guys that have harbored crushes on Lucy Davis since the first time we saw her at Wernham-Hogg's reception desk.

Speaking of wish fulfillment (hey, what a segue!)...

A lot of people criticize Aaron Sorkin for not writing characters so much as writing wish fulfillment. He writes writers like he wished he was (Matt) and he writes presidents like we all wish we had (Bartlet). Jack and Wilson are two people that at the beginning of the season I thought would be actual, real, fleshed out characters and not the standard Sorkin nobility. They're not. And you know what? So what!?

I like wish fulfillment. I don't want to see what would actually happen in real life regarding this FCC thing (which would be that the network would pay the fine with money they made from the DVD sales of "When Caged Animals Attack Children 9"). I've wanted someone to take down the FCC and the stupid "Save the Children" letter writers my whole life (or at least since I was ten and found out that people were trying to take Married with Children off the air). It seems, however, that so long as Janet Jackson has nipples, I'm never gonna get to see that fight in the real world. So, yeah, I know it's unrealistic that Jack and Wilson would put themselves on the line like that, but I went with it.

(And I mean I really went with it. I totally understand people not buying into this. Zhang Tao's daughter a great viola player. Okay. She wants to drop out to be in an improv group? Really? Well, okay. She's in love with Tom Jeter? Huh? What? Sure, fine, I'll go with that. The entire fight with the FCC is gonna hinge on a dinner between the two of them. Listen, Sorkin, you're really pushing it...)

A few other notes:

I actually thought the idea for All You Need is Love is not a bad one. I'd watch it. Of course, I also watch Flavor of Love so maybe I'm not the best judge of what's good reality TV.

A Fruit of the Loom sketch? Take that, mid-eighties commercials!

"Well lord, Massa Simon, you sho is good to us field n******" -- was anyone else shocked when this line hit? This is why you have to love a show like Studio 60. Yeah, it's overwrought and overdone, but you don't hear dialog like this anywhere.

(PS this is my first review for Studio 60 -- I'm the new guy -- so please be gentle in your comments. I'm not really expecting you to be, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask...)

(PPS did anyone get what the deal was with the 48 Laws of Power book? Is that just a Sorkinism, or was there some kind of subtext that I was missing?)