The best thing about The Descendants?

In The Descendants, George Clooney plays Matt King, a lawyer whose family has lived in Hawaii for generations.  Right away, we learn a) that he has to decide whether to sell off a large parcel of land owned by his family; b) that his wife has just suffered a terrible boating accident that put her into a coma, forcing him to take care of their two daughters; and c) that said wife was cheating on him before she became unresponsive.

Heady stuff, and worthy fodder for a flick.  Unfortunately, it wastes the opportunity.  It’s a small point, but the first problem comes right away, with the opening voice-over.  Seriously, something needs to be done about voice-overs in movies lately.  In Time either believed that its audience was idiotic, or it was just too lazy to convey the characters’ situation without Justin Timberlake explicitly laying it out. (Did Children of Men need opening V.O. to tell us that people no longer had kids?) Similarly, Clooney’s V.O. here does not show, but rather tells us:  ‘This is my wife.  She is hurt.  I have kids.  I need to change.’  This writing is the worst form of laziness.  Inserting exposition into a film while still being entertaining is one of screenwriting’s biggest challenges, something that writers usually spend endless days slaving over, but this is one of the worst cop-outs I’ve seen.  (Note that I’m not saying voice-over should never exist; American Beauty, quite possibly the best script of our lifetime, used it, as did The Shawshank Redemption, Million Dollar Baby, and a host of other great movies.  But not like this.)

The V.O. is a minor flaw, but The Descendants errs, much more critically, by minimizing the conflict in its story—a death knell.  It’s difficult to imagine any scenario in which you want to reduce a film’s conflict.  Here, Matt has to take care of 10-year old daughter Scottie and 17-year old Alex.  The latter makes for the film’s biggest relationship, but, as she tells us, there’s nothing wrong with her.  She does fine in school.  She’s not a drug addict or pregnant.  Her boyfriend is harmless enough.  She cares for her sister.  She does think her dad is a bit of a sap, and drinks occasionally, but so what?  What does Matt need to do with her?  The answer is ‘Not a whole lot,’ and that’s devastating for this movie.

The Descendants acts as though it’s going to imply rebelliousness by providing a boyfriend that Matt doesn’t like, but he’s perfectly fine to her, and the edgiest thing the screenplay can have him do is laugh at an elderly person’s Alzheimer’s.  Nothing against that scene, but, really?  That’s all we’ve got?

Likewise, Matt’s decision about whether to sell his family’s land to developers is not mined for maximum tension and conflict.  At one point, he learns that his wife’s lover would benefit from the proposed sale—a revelation that could have been interesting, could have forced a difficult choice, except that you already assumed he wasn’t going to sell.  Therefore, learning this information makes the decision easier, not harder—and that’s boring.

I also think the story would have greatly benefitted from excising the younger daughter entirely.  Firstly, it would aid from a convenience standpoint, as she’s constantly having to be watched or dealt with while the adults go off and do their thing.  But more importantly, giving Matt just one daughter to reconcile with might have made that relationship sparkle more.  (Recall the expression that a single death is a tragedy, while a million is a statistic.  Focus on specific, individual relationships in order to move people.) Furthermore, the potential dynamic of Matt-Alex-Alex’s boyfriend would have felt imbalanced (that’s a good thing) and would have highlighted the mother’s absence.

Finally, the film suffers from hitting the same emotional beat over…and over…and over again.  Almost all of the best movies take you through a roller-coaster ride of different emotions.  The Descendants projects the same melancholy tone throughout.  Clooney, in a rather wooden performance, walks around with essentially the same expression for two hours.  That dreary music accompanies nearly every scene break.  There’s little to no humor.  No fewer than three people deliver angry monologues to Matt’s bed-ridden wife.  It all blurs together, it all feels the same, and it stops us from truly feeling it.  There’s a reason philosophers say that uninterrupted happiness would cease to satisfy humans after a while.  In cinematic form, any uninterrupted emotion stops resonating.

None of this is to say the movie is awful.  Once we got past the painful voice-over, and I came to grips with the fact that there wasn’t sufficient conflict, I was able to go along with the second half without checking my watch.  The scene where Clooney goes to ask his wife’s friends how much they knew about her affair was well done, and his father-in-law was a strong character.  Wisely, the film builds the anticipation before allowing Clooney to meet his wife’s lover.  And, as mentioned, I know that plenty of people have responded positively to it.  But, in my view, it’s a huge waste of potential.

The Ides of March – 3 stars

A solid, crisp, professional flick that, unlike Moneyball, is consistent in its quality throughout.  Ryan Gosling is an up-and-coming political strategist working a presidential campaign.  After he starts sleeping with an intern who has secrets, and takes meetings with rivals that he probably shouldn’t, he becomes embroiled in trouble.  It’s a relatively hook-free premise, but the film skillfully portrays everything crashing down on Gosling at once, which always makes for an interesting character.  The acting is strong throughout, especially from Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman.  There aren’t enough reversals to make this excellent—although Giamatti’s reaction when Gosling ultimately comes to him was nice—but there’s not much to dislike either.  More Gosling:

Drive – 2.5 stars

An indie-esque movie that couldn’t deliver on its promise, Drive follows a skilled getaway driver (Ryan Gosling) who aids and abets criminals.  It opens with an excellent sequence—after Gosling escapes a nighttime police chase by driving into a parking garage as it’s emptying, I was hooked.  The elevator sequence is also touching.

But the rest is too sparse, too boring, too similar to Gosling’s Blue Valentine in its emptiness.  At some point, explaining/showing so little just becomes a cop-out, and there are numerous exchanges here where the characters need to actually say or do something instead of just looking at each other.  Most movies beat you over the head with their dialogue/theme, but be careful of the other side of that coin; we need something to hold onto.

Margin Call – 3 stars

A strong ‘talky’ movie that, like Ides of March, remains comfortably short of greatness.  Margin Call is a fictitious but plausible behind-the-scenes look at a Wall Street firm on the brink of instigating a large-scale economic disaster.  A strong cast, headed by an excellent Kevin Spacey, does well with dialogue that avoids character-cliches. (One example: CEO Jeremy Irons not dismissing Zachary Quinto’s theories because of the latter’s youth.)

The most obvious room for improvement IMO concerns the lack of debate among the higher-ups with the CEO’s decision.  I kept waiting for another twist or turn, for someone to stand up and float a different idea; Spacey disagrees with Irons, but no one seriously considers any other proposals.  Thus, you understand where this is going about halfway through, but that’s not a fatal flaw.

‘Be first, be smarter, or cheat,’ Irons says.  That’s life, ain’t it?

In Time – 2.75 stars

The definition of a ‘perfectly fine’ movie.  You can see the mechanism turning and feel the beats coming, but it stays enjoyable throughout.  In Time runs with an undoubtedly clever promise, though it would have benefited from having a stronger singular villain.  The sequence culminating in Olivia Wilde’s death is gripping and unusual, although I was slightly disappointed to see it recycled for the ending.  Timberlake is reliably solid as the masculine action star, although he’s probably more interesting as the refined and slightly effeminate type he does in The Social Network and Friends with Benefits.

J. Edgar – 1.5 stars

Sigh.  Leo, I know you like to do only Serious And Important movies, and that’s all well and good, but can we go back to doing ones that are also, you know, interesting?  Granted, 2010’s Shutter Island and Inception spoiled us, but that doesn’t excuse J. Edgar for a grossly clunky script that never finds clarity or a plot.  Numerous scenes lack conflict, the narrative is bloodless and insipid, and the framing device of Hoover narrating his biography is possibly the laziest I can remember, just an excuse for ponderous voice-over and exposition.  To any aspiring writers: the framing device of Slumdog Millionaire is the way to do it.  This is not.

This movie also minimizes its lead charater’s complexity and wimps out on saying much negative about him, by attributing so much to his (supposed) repressed homosexuality.  Compare with The Social Network: not only does that not wuss out on making Zuckerberg a douche, it also doesn’t provide a pop psychology ‘explanation’ for how he is.  In J. Edgar, the actors are good, but stay away.

Moneyball – 3.25 stars

Pop quiz: What do you get when you combine an interesting book that nonetheless felt nothing like a movie, a torturous development process that included a disastrous script draft, and subsequent work by quite possibly the two best screenwriters alive?  The result, amazingly, is a pretty darn good Moneyball movie.

Moneyball almost never happened.  Sony halted the project and fired writer-director Steven Soderbergh after reading where he wanted to go with it, and thank God; I know the man’s had success, but I’m sorry, his draft (you can find it online if you look hard enough) reads more like the output of an inexperienced 18 year-old screenwriter.  Take, for example, the introduction of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) to Peter Brand (Jonah Hill); in the finished film, this comes after the latter has just affected the course of a trade Billy wanted to make with the Cleveland Indians.  That adds context and conflict to the one-on-one meeting.  In Soderbergh’s draft, the very first scene has those two expositioning—I mean, talking—to each other in the most soporific way possible, with such humdinger lines of dialogue as “We’re getting close to a new stadium.” – “Which you need.” – “Which we definitely need.  So let me ask you: Can you work spreadsheets and all that stuff, like Excel?”  That’s so bad, I don’t even know what to say.

Thankfully, the final credited writers (Aaron Sorkin, Steve Zaillian) boast a joint catalogue that includes Schlinder’s List, A Few Good Men, The American President, Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Social Network, A Civil Action, “The West Wing,” Awakenings, and many other successes.  Though by all accounts Sorkin and Zaillian worked mostly independently of each other, they were able to cobble together a cohesive and often moving story out of this mess. 

Note how they impart more in a couple heartbeats than Soderbergh did in entire scenes.  Nothing in his script conveyed the  sabermetric philosophy as efficiently as “Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players; your goal should be to buy wins, and to buy wins, you need to buy runs.”  In Soderbergh’s script, when catcher Scott Hatteberg wonders about the fans’ reaction to him playing first base, Beane replies with “The fans run my ballclub?”  In the finished product, the reply is “Yeah, maybe we can try one of them out too.”  Less amateurish, more revealing, and funnier.

Brand’s first scene in the boardroom full of scouts is a masterclass of writing for multiple viewpoints, and Moneyball also succeeds in humanizing Beane’s character, largely through the effective subplot with his daughter (almost entirely absent in Soderbergh’s draft).  The last post-script is perfect, several lines are laugh-out-loud funny, and you feel something when Beane declares that their work will be discredited if the A’s don’t win it all.  The movie is warmer than you’d expect.

Yet…it’s tantalizingly frustrating too.  After a few viewings, the disjointed way that this script came together becomes evident.  The beginning and ending both drag, and the whole thing wouldn’t have lost much at 15 minutes shorter.  A few scenes don’t begin as late as they should or end as early as they should, and others (like Beane’s early meeting with the Cleveland brass) feel off.  There’s no Sorkin-esque rapid-fire dialogue, and that’s fine in and of itself, but the tone needs a few jolts of intensity.  But ultimately, I can’t be too harsh, because adapting that book would have been extraordinarily difficult.  The writers, and actors, did a solid job, and that’s commendable.

One of these days, Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys will release a bad album.

At least, that’s what history and convention would tell us.  One might have predicted that the mediocrity would have come with Favourite Worst Nightmare, the follow-up to their debut monster Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.  Or on the dreaded ‘transitional third album.’  Or, now, by album #4, a time when bands have gotten their label from the media and public and can do precious little to change perception.

And yet, it never happens with them.  Five years after Whatever turned the U.K. on its side, Turner and co. calmly drop Suck It and See on us and sit back with their arms folded, content to let their work stand on its own.  There’s no radical change like on 2009’s Humbug, but instead a supremely assured, don’t-need-to-prove-anything-to-anyone feel.

Suck It And See occupies a middle ground between the Monkeys’ early sound—manifest on the first two albums—and the ominous, slower Humbug.  And thanks largely to Turner, the balance works splendidly—there’s a dark vibe here, but the rousing melodic flourishes keep it alive, make the darkness analogous to the chic metallic black of a luxury car rather than a storm cloud.

The hooks—simple at first, complicated later—propel tunes like intriguing opener “She’s Thunderstorms” and the title track.  Musically, they continue Humbug’s slower paces, but guitarist Jaime Cook offers up juicier licks this time.  They still shine at keeping songs just off-center enough to remain compelling (“All My Own Stunts”), but, really, Suck It succeeds by confirming—for anyone who somehow hadn’t realized it yet—that Alex Turner is a premier lyricist of our generation.

Most of the time, he doesn’t make it easy on the listener; lines like “Somebody told the stars you’re not coming out tonight / So they found a place to hide” and “She looks as if she’s blowing a kiss at me / And suddenly the sky is a scissor” might make you pause in contemplation for a moment before you fall for them.  Similarly, on the effortlessly smooth title track, he fawns over a girl who’s “Rarer than a can of dandelion and burdock / And those other girls are just post-mix lemonade.”

On the other hand, sometimes he keeps it straightforward and incisive, as with, “You talk the talk alright / But do you walk the walk or catch the train?” or “I called up to listen to the voice of reason / And got his answering machine.”  If anyone out there has never felt like this, kindly return to your home planet before you scare any small children.

On Humbug, Turner began to express a desire for mature, adult connections, and that continues here—nowhere more so than on the exquisite “Love is a Laserquest.”  This is 2011’s “Cornerstone,” and while that one remains their all-time peak, “Love” finds Turner expanding his range like Bono did when he jumped from his laconic 80s love songs to the dense 90s ones.  Over a haunting bed of music that recalls Bruce Springsteen’s “One Step Up,” Turner spits out Conor Oberst-worthy lyrics about a failed relationship: “I can’t think of there without thinking of you / I doubt that comes as a surprise / I can’t think of anything to dream about / I can’t find anywhere to hide.”

Turner’s voice has never sounded more full, and yet you’re surprised that they’d go so sad, so deep; lines like “When I’m hanging on by the rings around my eyes / And I convince myself I need another / For a minute it gets easier to pretend that you were just some lover” almost make you think you’re listening to the Red House Painters.  Likewise, the breathtaking final verse of the album’s second-best track, “Black Treacle,” features the unexpectedly depressive lament “I tried last night to pack away a laugh / Like a key under the mat / But it never seems to be there when you want it.”

Of course, Turner maintains his playfulness much of the time.  “I’ve been feeling foolish / You should try it,” he teases on the opener, one of those Monkeys tracks that you think is a love song but keeps you in suspense.  Later, he hits with, “If you’re gonna try to walk on water / Be sure to wear your comfortable shoes.”  But the aforementioned moments on Suck It and See make you wonder how intense he’ll go in the future.

As on Humbug, a couple missteps keep this album from attaining the kind of legendary status their debut deserved.  Clunky lead single “Brick by Brick” irritates me for the simple reason that I can imagine a noob hearing it on the radio and saying, “Hmm, they sound kind of boring,” which makes me want to kill someone.  The last couplet of “Library Pictures” sneers with gleeful menace, but the track slides between fast and slow too many times.  A couple memorable lines help us overlook that “Reckless Serenade” and “Piledriver Waltz” are pleasant, but little more.

Yet, by the last three songs, you’ll have forgotten about these flaws.  You’ll have been taken in by the sound, their refusal to fade away, and Alex Turner’s remarkable lyrics.  The concluding trio constitute a thematic climax nearly comparable to the ‘suite of death’ concluding The Joshua Tree or the three-track travel through the end of days on Joy Divison’s Closer.

American listeners might infer the title track’s suggestion as a brawny middle-finger—and I have no problem with that—but the lovely harmony on that chorus hints that the band probably intended to invoke the British meaning of the phrase—‘Give it a try.’  “That’s Where You’re Wrong” deserves its New Order comparisons, as few other bands do smooth, bass-heavy, mid-tempo ballads quite like this.  Then again, Bernard Sumner, for all his gifts, never approached the lyrical prowess of Alex Turner.  When the latter sings, “There are no handles for you to hold / And no understanding where it goes…Don’t take it so personally / You’re not the only one that time has got it in for,” with an ecstatic guitar break in between and a sinewy melody holding it all together, you’ll be grateful that his conflicted youth means there are probably many, many more productive years to follow.

I have written many columns about the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. Some readers have suggested I stop. They ask: Why is one school so important?

Well, the U.S. News and World Report has had them as the best high school in the country every year since ‘07.  TJ’s average SAT score is 2,184, compared to the national average of 1,509 and the Fairfax County average of 1,664.  Per Wikipedia, “For schools with more than 800 students in grades 10-12, TJHSST was cited as having the highest-performing AP Calculus BC, AP Chemistry, AP French Language, AP Government and Politics: U.S., and AP U.S. History courses among all schools worldwide.”  This doesn’t seem particularly hard to grasp.

Here’s the situation. I am an education writer who focuses on the best teachers and best schools, as measured by how much value they add to students’ educations and lives. Jefferson is the most selective high school in the country.

I addressed this last time, but it’s worth repeating: I’m pretty sure the statement about selectivity isn’t true.  TJ may be the most selective public HS in the country, with an admission rate of around 16%.  But Stuyvesant in New York seems to have an admission rate under 10%.  Is Jay allowed to make up whatever he wants?

By many benchmarks — faculty quality, course level, equipment — it has to be considered among the best.

Not quite the best defense of the school, but OK.  Let’s not forget that Jay recently said that TJ’s teachers may not be any better than those at other FCPS schools.  Apparently faculty quality is now one of the primary pieces of evidence for TJ’s greatness.

That is irresistible to me. Now I have found a Jefferson graduate, Chelsea Slade, who has given me a way to drag into my Jefferson obsession everyone who didn’t go to Jefferson, which includes me and almost all of mankind.

That last sentence is practically a war crime. 

Slade sent me an e-mail challenging my view that it doesn’t matter whether you go to Jefferson or not. I think if you are as smart as the people who get into the school, you will find everything you need at any of Fairfax’s other fine high schools. Because the quality of high schools around here is so good, I would even argue that a Jefferson-quality student can get a Jefferson-quality education at most of the public and most of the private schools in the Washington area.

Jefferson does not make the students it admits more persistent, more intuitive, more charming or more gifted than they are.

This is veering dangerously close to a “Why even have great schools at all?” argument.  It’s one thing to say that other FCPS schools are pretty good themselves; now he’s just throwing in digs at TJ.  Also, more charming?  Really?  That’s one of the most important traits for a school to infuse into its students?

Jefferson provides great teachers, many learning options and smart, interesting classmates, but so do many other schools in this region that attract Jefferson-quality students.

OK.  It’s true that one’s own individual motivation greatly affects what he “gets out of” his education.  But Jay’s three pieces of evidence for TJ’s greatness were faculty quality, course level, and equipment.  He didn’t say they were its only benefits, but they were the first things he mentioned.  Wouldn’t those things set TJ apart?  That is to say, how could faculty quality be one of TJ’s biggest strengths if it doesn’t set it apart from other FCPS schools? 

Slade graduated from Jefferson in 2006 and from Brigham Young University in 2010, and she is a medical student at George Washington University. She said the environment at Jefferson is more conducive to achieving academic and career goals such as hers.

Here are her reasons, based on her impression of other schools, such as Langley and Marshall, which one of her siblings attended:

“1) Drug use at Jefferson is much less widespread, as far as I am aware, than at many other high schools. I felt my peers better understood the negative consequences of drugs and were smart enough to choose not to use substances. At other schools, the peer pressure to use drugs would have been much stronger.

I don’t have a huge beef with this, although it should be noted that upper-class adolescents use drugs a lot more than most people seem to think.  Also.  Nevertheless, this is her first point in TJ’s favor?

“2) Students at Jefferson use all of their spare time to study — lunch, between classes, in study hall, etc. At other schools, students are more inclined to gather and talk and gossip. I know when I have been in similar situations, despite being a well-motivated student, it’s much easier for me to give in and stop studying and start talking with friends. Whereas at Jefferson, people really did expect their peers to let them study during free time.

OK, I’m sorry, but now we’ve violently derailed.  First of all, the initial statement here is patently false.  Do you have any idea how many students spend not just lunch hours, but 8^th period, before/after school times, and, yes, even class time-gasp!-in senior lounge, playing ping-pong, playing video games, or just lounging?  A whole lot.  You know how many students found it amusing to figure out how frequently, and to what extent, they could be late for class without the teacher caring?  Or how many students snuck off campus during lunch-or class-when they weren’t allowed to?

Second, and probably worse, is this: if Chelsea’s claims were correct…THAT’S A GOOD THING?  To feel guilty about talking to friends?  To spend ALL of break time studying?  Are you serious?

“3) Students at Jefferson don’t tease each other for doing well. When my sister achieves a great score on an exam, she is mortified if anyone sees, because of the teasing and rude remarks that her peers make about her (“nerd,” “tight-wad,” etc.). At Jefferson, we got excited for each other’s high scores, and pushed ourselves harder to do better than our peers on the next exam. It was certainly a competitive environment, but that helped us all achieve much more than a degradative or rude environment would have done.

There’s something here, except for the bit about getting excited for others’ high scores.  False; fellow students are in competition with you for grades—no teacher is going to hand out 25 As—so you’re rarely all that excited to see someone excelling next to you.

“4) My peers at Jefferson had very high self-esteem. Eating disorders, self-mutilating behavior, and other things linked to low self-confidence in adolescents were much less frequent than what I have seen in other high schools. This environment of feeling good about ourselves helped us all feel and do better, be proud of our accomplishments, and help each other in achieving our goals.”

According to my Abnormal Psychology college textbook: “Research demonstrates that young women with eating disorders endorse perfectionist goals both about eating and weight and about general expectations for themselves.”  Doesn’t this sound a lot like TJ?  Also, “eating disorders are considerably more common among middle- and upper-class whites,” which makes up a considerable portion of TJ.

So, no, I’m sorry but I can’t subscribe to this one, either.  The TJ environment may preclude people from teasing others for good grades, but the uber-competitive environment doesn’t reduce behaviors like eating disorders.

It also would have been nice if Jay had noted that Langley, one of the schools with which Chelsea was comparing TJ, is one of the wealthiest high schools in Fairfax County-and thus similar to TJ in many respects.  But OK.

There are little or no data to buttress her view or mine.

An enjoyable statement on many levels.  First off, it’s not all that accurate.  Secondly, isn’t this a bad thing?  Shouldn’t people hold off on making proclamations without evidence?

Jumping off that a little bit…it seems that Chelsea was speaking from her anecdotal experience.  But relying on anecdotes is a prime way to get misled, for anecdotes lie easily.  I don’t care if Chelsea thinks this way–she’s not writing articles.  I mind Jay acting as though this is the best defense of TJ he can give us.

To the many observant teens out there, is your school so bad? Is Jefferson that good? Comment on my blog at washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.

None of this surprises me, of course: Jay Mathews came to speak to my journalism class when I was in high school, and we marveled at what a politician he was; he fawned on and on about TJ’s wonderfulness while in front of us, and then he would go back and spit out another column saying how nondescript we were.  Fun times.

By all accounts, he is one of the best math teachers in the country. The Mathematics Association of America has given him two national awards. He was appointed by the Bush administration to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. For 25 years he has prepared middle-schoolers for the tough admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the most selective high school in America.

Slipped into the end of this obsequiousness is the claim that TJ is ‘the most selective high school in America.’  Per its Wikipedia page, it accepts about 480 students of 3,000 who apply—16%.  Take a stroll over the page for Stuyvesant HS in New York: its total enrollment is 3,000 students, so we’ll assume the freshmen class is roughly 800.  Admission is based solely on an exam, which about 26,000 eighth-graders take.  800/26,000: 3%.  And this was just one school I checked because I’d vaguely heard of it; it all took about 60 seconds.  Am I missing something?  Or is Jay just allowed to make up whatever he wants?

Yet this year, when Vern Williams looked at the Jefferson application, he felt not the usual urge to get his kids in, but a dull depression. On the first page of Jefferson’s letter to teachers writing recommendations, in boldface type, was the school board’s new focus:

I’d just like to remind everyone here that, in Jay’s aforementioned piece, he bizarrely asked for TJ to use teacher recs—as though they didn’t.

It wanted to prepare “future leaders in mathematics, science, and technology to address future complex societal and ethical issues.”

So far, doesn’t sound particularly offensive.

It sought diversity,

Ahh, of course, here comes the juicy stuff.

“broadly defined to include a wide variety of factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), geography, poverty, prior school and cultural experiences, and other unique skills and experiences.” The same language was on the last page of the application.

“This is just one example of why I have lost all faith in the TJ admissions process,” Williams said. “In fact, I’m pretty embarrassed that the process seems no more effective than flipping coins.”

Effective at what?  That’d be nice to know.  As Mathews points out later, the process is producing absurdly high SAT scores among TJ kids; certainly, that doesn’t entirely vindicate it—but that’s more evidence than Williams provides for his claims of a bad process.

Last year, he said, Jefferson rejected one of only two eighth-graders in Virginia who qualified to take the Junior USA Math Olympiad test, six scary problems to be done in nine hours. At the same time, “students who had very little interest [or] motivation in math and science were admitted,” he said. “Some admitted students had even struggled with math while in middle school.”

Oh. My. God.  This was the part that made this post inevitable.  By Williams’s logic, everyone who takes the Junior USA Math Olympiad test deserves admission to TJ.  Really?  Taking 1 of 2 said applicants tells us anything?  Really?  And, Jay, you’re going to pimp the awesomeness of said Olympaid by describing it as “six scary problems done in 9 hours?”  If nothing else, that description makes it sound not that bad; more detail and specificity would have been lovely if you wanted readers to be impressed with it.

And “some admitted students even struggled with math while in middle school”—NOOOO!!  What a disgrace!!  We can’t admit any student who wasn’t able to take his middle school exams blind, with no studying, one arm tied behind his back, and half as much time as everyone else.  I mean, are you serious?  It’s a problem to ever admit students who may have struggled with math in middle school, for any reason?  This sounds like something from The Onion: “Teacher complains that elite high school accepted a student ‘who even struggled with math in high school.’”

Williams knows that the school board is concerned that less than 4 percent of Jefferson students are black or Hispanic. He is black himself and was born in the District. He is familiar with the failings of math education for low-income minorities, but he doesn’t think rejecting top math students is the best way to make the school more diverse.

I love how any discussion of anything vaguely race-related has to point out that its instigator is a minority.  You know, because that’s relevant to his intellect.

The solution, he said, is to “get rid of all warm and fuzzy math programs at the elementary school level and teach real academic content to all students.” Textbooks are dumbed down, he said, to accommodate allegedly math-phobic children. Don’t get him started on the overuse of calculators.

What’s particularly interesting about this paragraph is that it markedly illustrates the limitations of Jay’s column.  Williams’s philosophy on teaching can be found at the link, and a good portion of it makes sense.  There are few bigger critics of conventional American teaching than me.  Yet, Jay doesn’t explain Williams’s cogent points (needless repetition of old material, inflexible teachers, excessive group work, to name a few); he lets him ramble that ‘some admitted students have even struggled sometimes in math OMGWTFFAIL.’  And Jay’s BUYING IT.

He showed me a copy of a Jefferson recommendation he filled out in 2004. It asked him to rate the candidate on “interest in math,” “self-discipline” and “problem-solving skills.” There was no mention of ethnic diversity. This year, recommenders are required to assess three qualities: intellectual ability, commitment to STEM [science, technology, engineering, math] and whether the applicant’s background, skills and past experiences “contribute to the diversity of TJHSST’s community of learners.”

Last November, I wrote a column endorsing that approach. I said that if the school put more emphasis on character and less on math scores, more black and Hispanic applicants would have a chance. I still believe that. But I have been so taken with the power of Williams’s teaching over the years that I feel obliged to present his contrary view.

He has run into several cases of Jefferson ignoring STEM commitment.

By the way, how does Williams know all of this?  He’s a middle-school teacher, not a TJ insider.  Is it from Bush’s advisory panel?  Just curious.

Humanities types are being accepted, and stars of Mathcounts, the nerd equivalent of youth soccer, are being rejected.

“Humanities types.”  Thanks, Jay.  I’m sure they enjoy being talked about like they’re not sentient.  The latter portion of the sentence is typical Jay claptrap; it might be perfectly defensible to reject some stars of Mathcounts when considering everything else about them.  And?

“And yet how many minorities have this corrupt process scooped up? Barely any!” Williams said.

Ah, is this what we meant by saying that the process isn’t effective?  It’s hard to tell conclusively; but this is something; addressing whether the admissions procedures have increased racial diversity would be worth noting, I suppose.  But we’re about to shift gears to fawn over Williams’s diligence in writing recommendations.

“I usually write between 45 and 60 TJ recommendations and spend at least 75 minutes on each because I make them all totally unique. I felt like last year’s effort was a total waste of time.”

Too bad you don’t fully understand the meaning of the word ‘unique,’ which never deserves a qualifier.

The Jefferson admissions committee’s careful sifting produced last year’s average senior class SAT score of 2233, the highest in the nation by far. That is impressive. But at least one gifted teacher who knows Jefferson well thinks it could do better finding the students who come for the love of math, not prestige.

Students who come for the love of prestige?  That’s the concern about the admissions process—that it’s finding 13-year olds who want status?

Look, changing admissions procedures to admit more minorities is one issue—a completely separate one.  But freaking out over the mathematical attitude of intelligent tweens is overwrought hand-wringing.  Jefferson receives tons of applications—not as many as Stuyvesant, it looks like, but plenty–all of whom come from one of the most-educated areas in the country.  In other words, there are TONS of qualified applicants.  We can parse words on the application packet to favor students with a slightly different approach to math, but, really, what’s that ruining?  Is there any evidence that this approach is dulling the school or producing less qualified graduates?

Jay, there’s a way to present a contrary viewpoint to your own.  Highlight its strongest, most persuasive points (not done) and compare them with your own (not done), ultimately either telling us why you still prefer your own (not done) or modifying your position into some sort of hybrid/synergistic/new model (not done).  Instead, Jay wrote some Vern-is-wonderful filler, printed some of his dumber claims and ignored his stronger ones, and, as always, ignored the concept of a thesis.  Well done.

The Social Network’s top comparison among critics has been the beloved Citizen Kane, as both chronicle the rise and fall of a young, ambitious individual who shapes a new technological medium to his advantage.  After 4 viewings of the former (plus many more of certain scenes), endless reading of reviews, and discussions with friends, I’ve realized another crucial similarity.

Kane’s greatness, so goes the narrative, becomes more apparent the more you know about movies; its praised cinematography isn’t the sort of thing that captivates casual fans.  Likewise, Network seems to me a movie that looks better the more thoroughly you examine its craft.  The timing of the scenes, the way they flow together, the way endings seamlessly become the next appropriate beginning, the way certain lines of dialogue come back to relevance minutes or scenes later, the utter lack of meaningless moments and utter pervasiveness of conflict—it exhibits the peerless level of craft to which screenwriters aspire.

This says little about the emotion the story elicits, which I point out because the only blemish I’ve heard anyone pin on Network is that it’s a little cold.  To an extent, I wouldn’t disagree with that, though I can adore ‘cold’ movies (Closer, anyone?).  But I think there’s plenty of emotional resonance, and, more importantly, the level of craft demonstrated by the screenplay thrills geeks like me.

What’s most remarkable to me about Facebook is not the extent of its ubiquity within modern society—it’s how fast that happened.  The site launched in 2004; within all of 2 years, no self-respecting student could avoid having an account, and after 2 more years, that category had pretty much expanded to everyone too young to be elected president.  Thus it should be no surprise that, 6 years later, there already exists a book and, now, a movie chronicling the site’s rise.

21^st century communicators owe a great deal to Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the anti-hero of this film who created the site, albeit possibly with help from other people whom he did not credit and compensate.  A Harvard undergraduate in 2003, he channeled his utter inability to carry on a compassionate conversation into a creationist rage that became Facebook.  Problems arose, however, from his interactions with a couple of silver-spoon twins (both played by Armie Hammer) who claimed he stole their idea and with his best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), who donated initial start-up cash and then was gradually phased out of the site’s ownership.

The Social Network, thus, intersperses the story of the site’s development with depositions being taken in two separate lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg, one by Eduardo and one by the twins, a brilliant structural choice that not only provides incredible forward momentum but also allows for moments of penetrating drama.  This is a ferociously entertaining rush through scenes laced with conflict, characters who understand themselves better than they do others, and ideas disseminated, dismantled, and disavowed.

Aaron Sorkin’s script, which pointedly, poignantly captures contradictions of the modern era, begins in mid-sprint, unspooling a delicious opening scene that makes you wonder why so many movies open in such a drab fashion.  Zuckerberg and his then-girlfriend (Rooney Mara) talk a mile-a-minute, West-Wing-for-college-students-style, and if that description titillates you half as much as it does me, see this movie.  Those first five minutes introduce the powerful irony the film pushes—the greatest cultural marker of the past generation (if not longer) springing from the mind of someone who “doesn’t have three friends to rub together.”  Network has the guts to let you dislike its protagonist right away.

Maybe it’s because Sorkin has never apologized for catering to a smarter audience than most Hollywood writers, but The Social Network doesn’t succumb to the typical Hollywood convention of deriding smart kids.  With the contrasting shots of Zuckerberg frantically typing on his computer as Harvard revelers party around him, it’s not making fun of his aptitude; in fact, it’s admiring both his brains and the perseverance with which he carries out his pet project.  Of course, it relishes the other side of him too—the less noble one.

Speaking of something less than noble, the other key player, providing a boost of energy halfway through, is Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), who founded Napster, made nothing on it, and then grabbed hold of Zuckerberg’s ride.  A smart playboy, Sean manages to impress Mark with his acumen, even though the latter wants no trappings of success.  Some of his scenes—at a fancy dinner, and upstairs at a club—feature writing so sharp, dialogue so propulsive in service of both character and plot, that I had to lean forward in my chair as though I was awaiting the revelation of the villain in a suspense thriller.  Sorkin’s dialogue overflows with conflict and tension, and that, combined with his characters’ eloquence, commands your attention.

By this point, Sorkin—whose resume is getting a little absurd—has mastered all of the tricks at the disposal of screenwriters.  This tops A Few Good Men and The American President as his best movie, all of which ignores his contributions to TV—the decent Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (which, despite its critics, was about 90% of a great show), and, ahem, four seasons of The West Wing.

There’s not a single solitary moment here that’s unnecessary—something that, when you think about it, very few films can say.  Sorkin manipulates the audience so subtly, so craftily, so enjoyably that not only do you never see it coming, but you simply shake your head in admiration after he does.  The ability to, say, make a line like “And the water under the Golden Gate is freezing cold” hit us where it hurts does not reside in most people.  Sean’s explanation to Mark of the man who founded Victoria’s Secret combines a capitalistic rags-to-riches fable with a cautionary tale, and it illustrates some of the differences between those two and Eduardo.  And Zuckerberg’s follow-up question, regarding Sean’s first love interest, illustrates the differences between those two, and foreshadows the devastating final shot of the film.

By that moment, you’ll be surprised at how well Parker has been fleshed out, a trait that Sorkin shares with all his characters.  Note the way he defines Harvard’s president three-dimensionally in about 5 minutes, or how Mark ‘interviews’ candidates for internships.  It’s telling that, when Mark lets down Eduardo at one point, he doesn’t apologize—though you can sense he’s thinking about it—but instead re-directs him to the company’s latest innovations.  Much of the dialogue effectively conveys the conflicting sense that A Beautiful Mind did about its protagonist—were all of his insults cruel, or did he just not always know what to say in everyday conversations?

Network, too, is a phenomenally acted film, from the ancillary characters (especially Hammer as both twins) all the way up; all three protagonists deserved Oscar nominations and/or wins (deserving, of course, not always translating to “receiving”).  Eisenberg is viciously good, especially at capturing the disturbing aspects of Zuckerberg’s personality.  Timberlake makes Sean seductive, resilient, and dependent, teeming with vigor and liveliness, every word dripping with conviction.  Garfield, excellent in Never Let Me Go, gives a performance that shines through on repeated viewings.  Though viewers may disagree over the details of who deserved what, Eduardo is the most sympathetic character, and Garfield paints his devotion to Mark without relying on corniness.  His reaction scene to getting all but written out of the company should have gotten him the Oscar nomination alone.

Despite the subject matter, director David Fincher wisely does not beat you over the head with his movie’s modernity.  No significance is played by text messaging or video sharing or Skyping, and the colors seem dried out of most scenes, especially the Harvard ones: it all looks like they could be sitting in 1980s dorms, and that’s critical for emphasizing Zuckerberg’s alienation from the society around him.  The movie gets all the small details right, too, in particular the fantastic score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross–ominous and haunting, as though things are breaking all around it (which they are).  And the scene (pictured above) at the club, with pounding music, where you sort of have to strain to hear the words, but can still grasp everything, is a masterwork of sonics–and, I think, says something about the way a lot of people live today.

“I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth,” Sorkin recently said regarding his work here.  “I want it to be to storytelling.”  That sums up my thoughts exactly—I don’t go to movies for history lessons; I go for drama and entertainment, and The Social Network has both in spades.  It has them, above all, in its characters, who are all striving for something out of their reach.  Sean wants to get on board with something again.  Eduardo wants the approval of his father and his friend.  And Mark wants, not money or products or fame, but recognition as well, but only from the one person, out of millions, who won’t give it to him.

Jay Mathews writes, logic cries

Shutter Island: Live as a monster or die as a free man?

James Bond: Dying another day, film after film

The Raveonettes: Noisy Summer, in every season

Green Day, Live and Under Review

Joy Division: Don’t walk away in silence…

U2 – War (1983): Welcome to the big leagues

Brothers: Diffidence disguised as melodrama

Cruel Intentions: Actually, they’re too nice

Friday Night Lights: Football, not life

Jay’s latest piece addresses Thomas Jefferson High School in northern Virginia, the old stomping grounds for this site’s original editors (and my only reason to hope that Dan won’t delete this posting).  I very much believe that intelligent discussion of one of the country’s most prominent high schools is warranted.  This is not that.  (I gleefully lift my format from the peerless site firejoemorgan.com, except that my comments will be in bold and the author’s–verbatim–in standard font.)

Well, it's certainly a struggle.

My colleague Kevin Sieff reported last week that the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is not only the most selective public school in America, but one of the least diverse. After years of promising to reach out to the third of Northern Virginia students who are black or Hispanic, less than 4 percent of its students have that background, while ultra-selective colleges such as Harvard and MIT have about 20 percent.

First of all, as a former resident of NOVA and attendee of TJ, I can tell you that playing the race card for that school is such a tired story I can’t believe an editor allowed it.  But whatever.

Second of all, Jay, referencing 2 schools proves nothing.  Moreover, Harvard and MIT draw from, you know, the whole country, rather than a piece of one state that so happens to be one of the most wealthy—and concomitantly one of the least diverse—in said country.  Harvard and MIT have also been in the public eye as a ‘very selective school’ for much longer than TJ has, and thus have probably faced more pressure, for longer, to amend their admission’s criteria to ensure sufficient minority representation.  I hate when people assume two things to be comparable without taking into account the substantial differences that render said analogy moot.

That said, there may be a minor point to be made here.  But he doesn’t make it.

When you create a school based more on sorting than teaching,

What?  What in the world does that mean?

as Fairfax County did with Jefferson in 1985, it is hard to break the habit of picking applicants by their accomplishments and test scores at age 13, rather than their potential to benefit from Jefferson’s great teachers.

A) You went from “based more on sorting than teaching” to “great teachers” in like 40 words.  Just how good are these teachers, in your eyes?

B) Then what, pray tell, should we use to evaluate applicants, if not their accomplishments and test scores at the time of their application?

Don’t worry.  He’ll get to that point later.  I’m all of a flutter.

Four percent underserved minorities is not good enough. Public schools have to follow court guidelines on admission, but U-Va., also public, manages to have 13 percent black or Hispanic students.

Here’s another lazy analogy.  UVA by itself doesn’t come close to countering the notion that ‘public schools have to follow guidelines on admission.’ (Is it just me, or could one of the words “follow court” in that sentence be cut?) And, once again, UVA draws students from California to Texas to New Jersey, not just Tysons Corner.

Furthermore, he hasn’t told us what percentage of minorities he wants—though 4% is clearly too low—but his apparently-acceptable number has dropped from 20 to 13%.  Well that was easy, eh?  Let’s find a public school that’s 9% and pimp that one.  Nothing like having incredibly vague criteria that allows you to mold facts to fit theories, rather than the other way around.

Jefferson still rejects many qualified blacks and Hispanics.

And many qualified Whites.  And probably some qualified Tiger Woods-esque Cablinasians.  And maybe my cat.  Meaningless statement.

Last year, the school says, 52 Hispanics and 29 blacks reached the semifinal round of admissions, based on their academic records. But only 13 Hispanics and four blacks were enrolled.

First of all…enrolled does not mean admitted.  Thanks for skewing your data.  And I personally think ¼ of Hispanics going from the second round to enrollment isn’t a terrible number.  Roughly half of all students go from that stage to admittance, and since there were likely more than 13 admitted, that’s not heinous.  The numbers for Blacks are worse, yes, which gets at what I was saying earlier—that he might have been able to squeeze a small point out of this piece—but the sample size is ridiculously small; why not go back farther to have a larger sample?

The ability to benefit from the school’s imaginative teaching

I attended, and I’m glad I did.  But there is little to no imaginative teaching.

is not the main criterion for the admission people, I suspect.

As well it shouldn’t be.  Hmm, let’s see, what should we examine in consideration for admission—one’s tangible ability and achievements, as reflected in such meaningless dross as test scores, teacher recommendations, essays, and grades—or some vague ability, which everyone would define differently, to “benefit from [supposed, speculative] imaginative teaching”?

Like the rest of us, they are impressed by test scores. I have seen the Ivy League admissions process at close range.

If he would actually explicitly state how ‘close’ he’s been to said process, I doubt most people would interpret his proximity as positively as he does.

Applicants in the 95th percentile on standardized tests are not seriously considered because there are so many in the 99th percentile above them. Those colleges will, however, take a second look if you are a talented flautist or a ranked squash player or black or an alumni child or Hispanic or related to the family that just funded the new science center.

Finally, he gets to the meat of the piece, and it’s the most befuddling part.  Is he really defending the practice of admitting a lesser-qualified candidate because he happens to play squash or be related to a wealthy alumnus?  Is this what TJ is supposed to do?  These are better criteria than test scores and recommendations?  This is how you judge the intangibles of which he’s so fond?  Really?

Jefferson teachers tell me their admission committee is more handicapped by the fact that many bright eighth-graders, of all ethnicities, don’t want to attend their school or any like it.  Here is a relevant demographic fact: at many of our most selective public schools, students of Asian ancestry are the largest ethnic group. This is true of Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Hunter College in New York City, and Lowell and Whitney in California, all of whom draw from areas where Asians are a minority. At 46 percent, Asians are also the largest ethnic group at Jefferson.

With no transition or paragraph break after the first sentence here, the continuity makes no sense.  ‘Many students, of all ethnicities, don’t want to attend.’  ‘Lots of Asians attend.’  Um…?

Maybe if he’d said, “Because many talented students don’t want to attend [although this is speculative, anecdotal information in and of itself], the pool of applicants shrinks, thus allowing for more variance in the data; and that, combined with Asians’ apparent zeal for education, allows them to be disproportionately represented,” he would have made sense.  But he didn’t.

There are two ways to explain this. First, most parents have little opportunity or interest in sending their children to selective high schools, public or private. We think our kids can get just as good an education in the neighborhood school.

This is ludicrous.  If we’re talking about private schools, then fine, some parents won’t want to pay.  But you can’t possibly tell me that most parents wouldn’t send their child to a public school—with free tuition—that probably provides a superior education.  No chance.  Talk to me about whether the kids themselves want to attend TJ, and I’ll listen; don’t try to sell me on parents not wanting it.

In many cases we are right. Most Northern Virginia schools have teachers just as good as those at Jefferson.

Wait, I thought TJ had such “imaginative teaching” and “great teachers.”  He said this, like, 4 paragraphs ago.  Maybe that bit about TJ caring more about sorting than teaching should have hit the cutting room floor, eh?

Second, many Asian American families, particularly those more recently arrived, have a reverence for science, math and academic success not typical of this country, and remember prestigious selective secondary schools in China, Japan and Korea. They love what Jefferson offers and apply out of proportion to their numbers.

All of this is prolix; if he’d just said something resembling what I wrote above, he could have explained the Asian numbers with far less time and ink wasted.

Their children’s commitment to science and math may be particularly important to their being more likely to be admitted than other ethnic groups, because Jefferson principal Evan M. Glazer says interest in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math) is key. “A very bright student without a passion for STEM should not be selected for admission,” he says.

Welp, I guess I shouldn’t have been admitted.  Better shore up that loophole, guys.

To be fair, that wasn’t Jay speaking.  But it still has little relevance to his piece, and it vaguely offends me, so I’m going to attack it.

Asian-American children get terrific educations at these selective high schools, but they learn eventually that attending Jefferson does not guarantee admission to Princeton or Yale.

So?  God, these vague statements kill me; ‘Some qualified Blacks weren’t admitted,’ ‘TJ is no guarantee of admission…’

Again, with different wording, this paragraph might have sniffed cogency: “Attending TJ can provide a stimulating academic environment for the right student; however, because of restrictions on how many students from one HS will be admitted to one college, a gifted student might be better served, as far as college goes, to stand out at his local public school.”  Is that what he’s going to say?

Those colleges dole out admissions like Halloween candy, not too many to any one high school.

No, he’s going with a terrible analogy.  Jay, most houses dole out Halloween candy liberally—primarily because they don’t want two tons of it left over for the dog to choke on—so this couldn’t be more off base.

Broadening the ethnic profile of our nation’s best high school should not be that hard.

Actually, since affirmative action is one of the most controversial subjects in our society right now, I’d say it is/would be hard.  And what in the world does “broadening the ethnic profile” mean?  I hate euphemisms.

Many educators and students supporting Jefferson have formed a Diversity and Engagement Curriculum Team to recruit more blacks and Hispanics interested in science. I think the school should also keep in mind that success in America stems more from character than test-taking ability.

I guess I can just sign an affidavit at the end of my GRE that testifies to my exemplary character, which will raise my score 500 points.

Washington offices are full of brilliant people who lacked the patience, persistence and charm to rise as high as they hoped.

So?  The nation’s top positions are also full of people who possess little more than the good looks and/or charm to win over someone in the first 2 minutes of an interview.  This is how the world works.

Sadly, we haven’t figured out a sure way to teach character.

Well, then that makes this piece rather irrelevant, doesn’t it?

The largest federal study of character-building or social-development programs just reported little progress in improving student behavior or achievement.

There’s no attribution here, but I don’t mind so much, because he’s digging his own grave.

But we can tell which Jefferson applicants show signs of the determination and grace that produce great lives.

Can we?  Really?  So picking TJ applicants on the basis of their test scores and tangible accomplishments at age 13 is unfair, but by that age we should be able to descry “determination and grace that produce great lives”??  What in the world does that mean?

And who are you to define what a great life is?  I have utterly no idea how much ‘grace’ Isaac Newton had, so he must not have done anything for our society, eh?

I’m being intentionally annoying, I know, but statements like “we can tell which TJ applicants show signs of the determination and grace that produce great lives” represent the kind of vague and illogical claptrap that should never approach the pen of someone who’s paid to transcribe his thoughts for a prominent international newspaper.

Just ask their middle-school teachers.

Um, they do.  They’re called teacher recommendations.  They are required.

Many of the most promising ones will be black and Hispanic. Give more of them a chance, and Jefferson will not only be a more interesting school to attend, but more reflective of the values we want all of our kids to have.

How do you know how interesting it is or will be to attend?

And are there ANY values that “we all want” our kids to have?

Arg.  In retrospect, this piece exemplifies typical Jay hallmarks, namely that roughly 5% of it addresses the actual thesis—such as it is—and the rest features tangential filler riddled with inaccuracies and logical fallacies.  Oh well.  Back to your regularly scheduled programming later.  Maybe I’ll start firejaymathews.com.

Sigh.  It was all set up. The Arcade Fire could have stamped themselves as a legitimate nominee in the category of ‘best band debuting in the last decade.’  Certainly their first two albums revealed originality, intensity, and passion.  But, as I’ve noted before, a band’s third effort can be a critical one; and 2010’s The Suburbs, a 16-song, hour-plus masterpiece-by-design, does indeed seem to mark a discouraging transition.

Oh, to be sure, stretches of this album are OK, particularly if you truncate the final 6 (!) songs, but the entire work leaves you wondering three devastating questions: where’s the rock?; where’s the melody?; and what, in the world, is up with Win Butler’s relentless criticism of modern suburban life?

The last point occupies such a central place on the album that it’s worth addressing before any sonic details.  As this band’s first two albums proved, Butler was never a particularly optimistic fellow, although relegating him to the category of pure doom and gloom would be lazy, as his songs often snuck in a bit of nostalgic hopefulness amidst the tragedy.  Indeed, such complexity kept his sentiments from coming off as fatalistic.  Here, however, the lack of such complexity, combined with the shift towards an undeserving target of criticism, make his lyrics a prominent weak point.

The album’s title accurately reflects Butler’s area of concern, as most of the album finds him bemoaning the corrosive influence of modern suburban life.  Clearly, childhood was so much more stimulating and invigorating when he was growing up; now it’s all just “endless suburbs stretched out thin and dead,” where “all we see are kids in buses longing to be free.”

What’s the cause of such numbing oppressiveness?  Aside from vilifying shopping malls, Butler never provides one, although he makes it clear that the offspring of modern suburban life bears the marks of its flaws.  The kids, nowadays, “seem so wild but they are so tame,” declares the annoying “Rococo”; and on “Month of May,” he laments that “the kids are still standing with their arms folded tight,” evidently implying that we just don’t appreciate beauty and art the way they used to.

As multiple songs indicate, Butler wants more “wasted hours,” lazy days like when he “spent the summer staring out the window.”  But by failing to specify what’s so deleterious about modern life, and couching his depressiveness in bland near-clichés, he makes the critical error in persuasive discourse—he pushes us towards the opposite viewpoint.  Wasted hours are all well and good, but summers spent in contemporary society, with iPods the soundtrack for Skype chats, can be pretty damn fun, too.

Butler’s worldview, sadly, tarnishes even the more successful tracks here.  On “Half Light II (No Celebration)”, he ponders, “This city’s changed so much since I was a little child / Pray to God I won’t live to see the death of everything that’s wild.”  The latter sentence, in particular, expresses a viewpoint that’s by and large reasonable—poignant, even.  But here we see why the album has so much negative synergy; given Butler’s attitude expressed elsewhere, the unstated implication that he thinks he might indeed live to see the death of everything that’s wild tempers one’s enjoyment and appreciation.

Given these problems, it becomes incumbent upon the music and the melodies to make us forget about the lyrics; unfortunately, they only marginally succeed.  I read more than one proclamation from the nearly-universally adoring critics that The Suburbs is the hardest-rocking AF album to date, which makes me wonder whether I was mailed a different album from everyone else.  Everything after track 10 suffers from overwhelming flaccidity, desperately requiring some of that Funeral-esque piquant guitar.  Considering the band’s reputation for orchestral bombast , it’s surprising how many passages suffer from sounding sparse and repetitive.  The opener, about twice as long as necessary, saunters along like a leaf blowing idly on a lake; “City With No Children” (redeemed only by the killer line “Do you think your righteousness can pay the interest on your debts?”) clunkily plods through its bass-heavy instrumentation; and the strings on tracks like “Half Light I,” rather than enhancing anything, merely kill time.

Even the best tracks suffer from similar problems.  “Empty Room” begins, to be sure, spectacularly: pulse-pounding drums and a guitar that sounds like a train whistle bursting their way through rhythmic strings; but then everything stalls.  Overall, it’s still the most propulsive track here, but the melody falls off with the insipid chorus, and by the two-minute mark, when it should be hitting a new gear, it’s already beginning to fade away.  The same could be said for “Month of May”—a mercifully jaunty change of pace, but its riff needs changing up after about a minute, and that never happens.

This band has never minded dramatically switching gears within a song (see “Wake Up,” “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” “The Well and the Lighthouse”), and there are so many instances here when a song sounds ready to explode…and it doesn’t.  That’s most painfully true on the underdeveloped “Suburban War.”  It’s an acceptable track, but even when the piano and guitar pick it up, everything sounds too restrained, and the band members are done no favors by Butler’s overly-unassuming vocals.  Likewise, “Ready to Start” carries with it initially a groovy, dominant bassline, but by the midpoint, the sparse instrumentation and forgettable chorus have soured us; and “Modern Man,” pleasant despite more simplistic pessimism, builds up its bridge section to…quietude.   So bizarre.

Where, oh where, are moments as spontaneously invigorating as the “Oooohs” in “Keep the Car Running” or the introduction of “Wake Up”?  Now, it’s as though Butler, so intent on delivering  his somber criticisms, just can’t open up.  Apparently with so much ‘suburban war’ going on, no one can have any fun.

It’s important to note that I’m not inherently averse to bands addressing problems they see in modern life; I’ve recently been praising Green Day left and right for how effectively they’ve done this in the 00s.  But Billie Joe conveys the message that he’ll fight for the best possible society, that he’s just tired of people fucking things up; Butler sounds like he wants to be transported back to the 1950s, a yawn-inducing, narrow-minded worldview that merits no counterpoint.  Likewise, the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner has had great fun chastising modern, obnoxious teenage prepsters, but he’s done so with wit, exceedingly clever wordplay, and a sense that he doesn’t actually believe the world is collapsing.

And, perhaps even more importantly, those successful bands surround their observations with cathartic tunes and the sort of melodic grip barely present on The Suburbs.  Putting those pieces together is the Arcade Fire’s next challenge.

It’s a shame that—as most popular entertainers tend to get—Sorkin has received his fair share of backlash over the years.  His rapid-fire dialogue style has been parodied and mocked by those who don’t seem to realize that it succeeds not really because of its structure but by the quality of the words.  His last movie, Charlie Wilson’s War, was met with yawns, even from me, and his last TV show, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” was saddled with unfair criticism and never given the chance to succeed.

Yet none of that dampens my interest in The Social Network, largely because the man’s peak is so high, and because he has so frequently reached it.

For most people, it started with A Few Good Men, the Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson courtroom drama that was actually dramatic.  Aside from some unnecessary foreshadowing, Sorkin’s script thrived both in its structure and individual pieces of dialogue. (“You can’t handle the truth!”)

But for me, it all started with The West Wing, the immensely-acclaimed political drama centered around a fictional president’s inner circle of advisers.  With a group of competent and devoted public servants representing something of a utopian vision, Sorkin created three-dimensional characters, challenged viewers’ intelligence, and infused episodes with comedy and wrenching drama alike.

The show was aided by superior acting across the board (not only by the principals but also guest stars like Timothy Busfield, Ron Silver, Oliver Platt, Mary Louise-Parker, and Matthew Perry), with special mention given to the actors who played, not coincidentally, the two most well-rounded and interesting characters: Bradley Whitford as Josh, the Deputy Chief of Staff, and Richard Schiff as Toby, the Communications Director.

While Sorkin wrote very few mediocre episodes, WW’s best moments typically featured one of those two characters.  The exceptional Christmas episodes in the first two seasons softened both of them up with nary a hint of melodrama or pop psychology.  The episode in which Toby learns about the president’s concealed multiple sclerosis not only captures a pitch-perfect tonal dichotomy—his anger contrasted with the levity of the rest of the staff—but also features a blinding, devastating monologue wherein Schiff blasts the president for his lack of foresight.  Does he go too far?  Conceivably, but he’s right, too, in and of his points.

The relationship between each of those characters and the president always represented the most fascinating dynamics.  Similarly, the best staff conflicts occurred between Josh and Toby.  In 4-1, an outstanding hour-and-a-half double-episode that merits multiple viewings despite its running time, they debate the philosophical nature of their candidate’s campaign style matched against a challenger whom they do not respect but who nevertheless has political potential.  In 4-10, Toby doesn’t understand why Josh would give the former’s scarred father a second chance with him, but Josh comes back with, “You don’t know what I know—that I’d give anything to have a living father who was a felon or a sister with a past.”

Part of Sorkin’s gift was the way he infiltrated his episodes with deeper philosophical questions about governance.  He was particularly intrigued at concepts of muddled authority; who would be in charge if the president was suddenly incapacitated for any reason?  This notion informed the beginning of season two, Toby’s MS episode, and the brilliant end of the 4^th season.

Said season—the best of his 4, a truly remarkable achievement—represented the end of Sorkin’s tenure with the show, as a contract dispute with NBC forced him off the air.  The concluding storylines left him retiring at the top of his game; the birth of Toby’s children and Zoe Bartlet’s kidnapping provided incredibly powerful moments, and the final shot capped it all off.

When I told someone that, by that season’s end, the lack of a vice-president was going to matter, the response was, “Oh, God, they’re not going to kill the president, are they?”  And that, of course, would have been lame.  Instead, Sorkin wrote his own metaphor.  The final image of Martin Sheen walking out of the oval office, having abdicated power to his political enemy but leaving before the coronation was complete, angry and frustrated and resolute at once, was the perfect way for Sorkin to walk away.  There might have been a show beyond that, but there didn’t need to be.

Sorkin returned to TV with “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” a drama that aired on NBC for just one season back in 2006-07.  Thanks to the success of WW and the strong cast, including old Sorkin hands Perry, Whitford, and Busfield, the show was one of the season’s most anticipated.  For whatever reasons, though, it never gained traction with an audience, blogs trashed it so much that Sorkin became fed up with the Internet, critical reaction seemed muted, and NBC canned it after just one season.

To be sure, S60 was not its predecessor.  But it, without question, deserved another season.  Especially when considering that the baseline for network television appeals more to advanced primates than humans, the fact that S60 didn’t succeed can perhaps be viewed as an indictment of its superior level of intelligence.  Arrogant as that may sound, it was my primary thought as I went through its season a couple weeks ago.

Now, you might say, WW was smart…and it was.  But S60 possessed neither as many recognizable actors (Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe) nor a subject matter as inherently compelling.  (No one even watches SNL anymore, so why would people want to watch a show about making it?)  And WW never really cleaned up in the ratings category anyway.  Based on a ranking of all shows during a week, the episodes of the first 4 WW seasons averaged weekly ranks of 27^th, 13^th, 7^th, and 26^th.  Higher numbers than S60 drew, but it was really the critics who ate it up.

In S60, Sorkin drags on the Matt-Harriet roller coaster too long without sufficient momentum, and the storyline and resolution of the captured POW brother at the end are unconvincing.  The personal subplots (such as Danny and Jordan’s relationship) are less developed and give the actors less to do than those in WW.

Yet S60 has some great episodes in its own right, especially the fourth one, “West Coast Delay,” and others that focus more on the professional, rather than personal, aspects.  Sorkin still created a cast of characters who had room to grow, if NBC had given them more time.  Especially in the early episodes (and in a couple exchanges between Matt/Danny and studio exec Jack Rudolph that come late in the season), the back-and-forth dialogue still sparkles, and one can sense that the writing is simply on a higher plane than one typically sees in television—free of clichés and easy answers, lines challenging what comes before and after them.  It’s the kind of dialogue that you watch, smiling at every turn, refreshed that the conversation never veers towards simplicity or overwroughtness.

Many commented that S60 was a metashow reflecting the way Sorkin worked himself, and there seem to be indications that this is true.  Matt’s relationship with Harriet was supposedly based upon Sorkin’s relationship with the actress Kristen Chenoweth, with whom he had arguments similar to the ones his characters have.  And there’s more than a hint of pride (and irony) in the line, “Nobody can write 90 minutes of television every week by themselves; he’d be dead by the sixth show.”  Sorkin is known to write his show’s episodes single-handedly, and at the beginning of West Wing’s run, he was writing two shows at once (“Sports Night” being the other).

Sorkin never submits to laziness, but he’s coyly enjoyed reusing certain plot points and lines of dialogue throughout his works.  (For example, it’s hard to see a mere coincidence between him assigning drug problems to Leo in WW and Matt and Danny in S60, given that he’s faced similar problems in his life; and in American President, for example, Michael Douglas makes numerous comments that Martin Sheen paraphrased later on WW).  But I’ll be interested to see if anything seeps into The Social Network, which seems to exist in a category all to its own.  Either way, thanks to that and an adaptation of Michael Lewis’s iconic baseball book Moneyball on the horizon, I’m feverish with anticipation of where he’ll turn next.

Given that Network has opened to a ridiculous 98 score on Metacritic—with no recognizable actors carrying it—I’d say the rest of the world is with me on that.