The Jay Tarses of the 1990sAaron Sorkin. From the godawful script of A Few Good Men (I guess between Nicholson's rendition of the "you can't handle the truth!" speech, which is constantly replayed on TV as a "classic scene," and Pacino finally winning the Oscar for Scent of a Woman, the moral of the story is that scenery chewing pays!), to his self-righteous White House posturing (The American President and TV's The West Wing), Sorkin continually sounds clever, while not actually being so. A specialist in the category of "dialogue no actual human would ever say," Sorkin's barrage of verbiage and many wise casting choices have beguiled critics, who really ought to be able to discern how second-rate and hollow his material actually is.
The only Sorkin creation I could stomach longer than five minutes was the first season of Sports Night. But in retrospect, I think that had more to do with an extraordinarily gifted cast - Josh Charles, Peter Krause, Josh Malina, and especially Felicity Huffman - transcending the torrent of words, and less to do with Sorkin's words themselves. Quality control on the second season fell off dramatically (Dan's sudden Jewishness being the most egregious "wtf?" example), so I went right back to hating Sorkin again.
Like Sports Night, The West Wing also featured a pretty darn talented cast, and I'll always be grateful that the show gave veteran character actor John Spencer his long-overdue day in the sun. But here we not only got the Dialogue No Actual Human Would Ever Say, but it came in deadly combination with Heavy-Handed Moral Posturing (see also Sorkin's script for A Few Good Men). I'm not against tackling tough moral issues on TV; heck, favorites like Homicide and the new Battlestar Galactica sometimes cover six such dilemmas before the opening titles. But Sorkin doesn't seem to know how to do such things subtly and naturally like the aforementioned shows did; instead, every "important" plot might as well have a flashing red light attached, screaming at the audience "IMPORTANT! HEY, OVER HERE! WE'RE DEALING WITH REAL ISSUES HERE! HEY!" Sheesh, it makes me tired just thinking about watching that show. No wonder that I watched the sublimely silly Drew Carey Show instead.
While The West Wing straddles the 1990s and 2000s, I'm not going to let a technicality like that deprive Mr. Sorkin of this much-deserved honor. So Aaron Sorkin, congratulations! You are the Jay Tarses of the 1990s! Don't spend that Arby's gift certificate on something I wouldn't!
Tomorrow: we reveal the Jay Tarses of the 2000s! Plus honorable mentions!
By : tatank,
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