How Things Work: I’ll miss Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which lasted half a season, more than I miss writer Aaron Sorkin’s previous show, The West Wing. I know Studio 60 was trivial, about the inner life of a late-night comedy show, while The West Wing was momentous, about Politics, History, the President.

But as Raymond Chandler said: “Other things being equal, which they never are, a more powerful theme will provoke a more powerful performance. Yet some very dull books have been written about God, and some very fine ones about how to make a living and stay fairly honest.”

The West Wing was so high-minded. Even when they hinted at some sleaze, the show’s stalwarts always chose principle. You just know that isn’t how things really go. It was like that Trudeau biopic where young Pierre and his pals stand around a party saying lines such as, “The way to stop separatism is to prove that federalism works.” Thud. They talk like At least Studio 60 claimed to be revealing the nuts and bolts of getting a live show on air — though it never seemed to quite deliver, and there was too much high-mindedness again, and the ultimate retreat: into the privates loves and passions of its characters.

But I’m a sucker for How Things Work. That was the name of a book I loved. It described “things”: a plunger, a nuclear reactor, on each page, with a diagram facing it. It was translated from German: Wie das funktioniert, which sounds even better. I once had a prof who’d walk down the halls at school telling us: Lean against that wall and see if anything’s holding it up.

I wrote a play for kids about an anti-magician; he goes around giving away the trick. I wanted to do a stage version of How Things Work that ends with how theatre works. It’s all about pulling back the curtain. It’s the difference between a focus on how things are (noble, evil etc.), which tends toward myth and fable, such as The West Wing, versus how they work, which aims to expose practical reality, even when it misses the mark, as in Studio 60.

What’s appealing is the intention to take us behind a façade — because it acknowledges there is a façade and a behind, even if there’s another façade behind that, like the large doll’s house in the living-room set of Edward Albee’s play Tiny Alice: When you look in the living-room window of the doll’s house, you see another doll’s house, and if you look in its living-room window, there’s another etc. The endless penetration is mesmerizing. I don’t know whether we like peeling back the onion because of what Freud injected into the modern psyche, or if he just caught the wave of something deeply human.

U.S. TV critic Tim Goodman said Studio 60 failed because “most Americans didn’t care at all about the career woes and personal crises of pampered Hollywood writers.” I don’t agree; I think its error was to focus on all that private stuff rather than the details of how things work on a TV show. Wie das funktioniert,. It’s the essence of curiosity, which, in turn, is the essence of human, and also of many animals, for those of you with cats etc. Maybe it’s the essence of life. Only a stone is utterly uncurious.

The record: I hear the buzz (definitely a “how things are” kind of concept) in Ottawa is that Stéphane Dion is a dud. Makes me think of the buzz on previous Liberal leaders. In 1984, insiders said new leader John Turner had “the royal jelly.” He campaigned wretchedly and lost to Brian Mulroney. In 1988, they said he couldn’t even control his own caucus. In that election, he brilliantly outperformed Mr. Mulroney and NDP leader Ed Broadbent, though he didn’t win.

In 1993, they called new Liberal leader Jean Chrétien “yesterday’s man,” just before he won the first of three straight majorities. He didn’t fall to the “refreshing” new face of Kim Campbell, who reduced her party to two seats. That same election, they said Preston Manning and his Reform Party had “peaked too soon” and would never amount to anything.

In 2004, new Liberal leader Paul Martin had a “juggernaut” that couldn’t be stopped. If you’re a Liberal leader, you might prefer not to be anointed by these prophets.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.