This episode exhibits so many of the traits that make an Aaron Sorkin show almost unbearable. Everyone talks like robots, acts like robots, emotes like robots, you almost wonder where Stanley Kubrick is. Among the many problems Sorkin has is his incessant need to make his characters jabber endlessly nonsensical stuff. Hence, you have to listen Dana's quest to buy a camera while she rattles off its specifications again and again; you have to listen to Jeremy apologize for the length of the show for his unwillingness to give blood. Okay, Jeremy, we get it, we get it, your sorry, you really wish you could give blood, you know it's for a good cause, but you just have a problem with giving it, you really wish you didn't, but you just can't help it, your sorry about it, and you insist on personally apologizing to everybody about it, and personally explain yourself to them for the purpose of making sure they understand your reason, that it isn't for a silly reason, that it's just something you can't bring yourself to do ...
If that last sentence had you pulling your hair out, join the club. Presumably Sorkin doesn't write this stuff because he thinks it's great material, but because he has to somehow produce enough lines of dialog to fill the show's allotted air time. That's a lot of incessant jabbering to have to sit through.
The other thing I wanted to point out was Sorkin's bone headed goof in the beginning. When Dan and Casey are talking about Napoleon, Dan says that Napoleon died on Elba. Casey (i.e. Sorkin) responds by saying that he is a Phi Beta Kappa, and therefore knows better than everyone else, and "corrects" him by saying he was really murdered on Elba. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. While Napoleon was initially exiled on Elba, he subsequently escaped, regained his throne, and then rather quickly lost the Battle of Waterloo. He was then sent to one of the remotest places on Earth, St. Helena, where he died 6 years later. In fairness to Sorkin (oh, how I hate to write that), since the show aired the theory that he was murdered (by arsenic poisoning) has been largely discredited. But he still got the Elba thing wrong. (But he's a Phi Beta Kappa! And he's smarter than everybody else!)
1 out of 6 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
