Editor’s Note: Script reviews of upcoming projects have been around for as long as there’s been an Internet. Therefore it’s no secret that a film can evolve into something quite different from its screenplay. Please keep in mind that this article represents a look at a particular script and not the final product.
The pilot script for NBC’s The Event (premieres next Monday, Sept. 20th) is nothing more than leftist wish fulfillment, a smarmy progressive wet dream that somehow was approved by teams of executives, marketing research firms, focus groups, and Fortune 500 companies looking to advertise their services. It’s a Big Dumb Action Movie wannabe (no doubt they’re gonna make it “hip” and “edgy” with shaky-cam non-cinematography) propelled by a hyper-partisan political premise so preposterous, paranoid, and childish, it will make your head explode. Who, besides surgeons who fix botched lobotomies, would advertise for that?
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The Event‘s story follows Attractive, Youthful White Male and Attractive, Youthful White Female (the script says she’s “model hot. And an MIT graduate”– a daring choice given all the inarticulate Joy Behar lookalikes all over primetime TV), who just dither around doing generic young person activities until the writer reveals how they’re inter-connected with serious political intrigue involving Elias Martinez, a newly-elected, charismatic Latino (er, as Latino as “Benjamin Bratt meets JFK” might be) President. Sound like anybody you know?
At this point, the script turns into a facepalm fest of political Mad Libs*. Obama = “Martinez,” Michelle Obama = “Christina,” his tender, maternal wife, Sasha & Malia = “Sandra & David,” their 8 year-old twins (you know that’s gonna factor in to the sci-fi elements of the show– but more on that later). President Obamartinez is “smart, confident, accessible, a family man and loving father,” the same sympathy-begging dirty trick as the manipulative Rendition. In addition, President Obamartinez has just passed a hostile takeover of insurance companies “free clinic expansion bill” (PC doubletalk like that would be great satire if it weren’t already aped by real life like N.I.C.E. in the UK, which exists solely to restrict people from buying new medications). This is a good thing for the fictional America at play here, because there’s an evil pharmaceutical company that’s got “the only drug effective against the new H1N1 strain,” and an MSNBC report lets us know that only the government-run clinics are distributing it. He’s also about to totally RIP THE LID OFF Guantanamo Bay Mount Inostranka Facility, a secret detention & TORTURE prison that has a menacing Russian-sounding name because it’s located in…
ALASKA!!! Dun dun duuuunnnn!!! (That’s insidious because Sarah Palin lives there.)
The script reaches its third worst point when President Obamartinez demands to go to Guantanastranko to meet the people he’ll be freeing once he has a press conference telling the American people how we’ve betrayed America by TORTURing them. The script has to let us know that the only thing noticeable about the prisoners is that they look “like regular people.” When Obamartinez asks the show’s evil CIA characters why they’ve kept them here all these years, there’s just “guilty silence” instead of tossing in another real-world reference, that Guantanamo detainees have almost exclusively been picked up from the battlefield where they were blatantly attempting to kill American soldiers and innocent civilians– that their “torture” has been turning up air the AC and playing Miley Cyrus on repeat. It’s 2010; you’d figure that the Left would get some fig leaf of self-awareness, drop the crocodile tears, and see moral issues in more than one dimension.
Anyways, President Obamartinez befriends Neil McMann, one of the TORTURed detainees at Guantanastranko, and brings him to his personal vacation retreat, because… … … Suddenly, some Secret Service agents tell the President he’s in danger, and suddenly, a commercial airliner is barreling down on Obamartinez and Neil!! That’s because the pilot of the plane is the father of Attractive, Youthful White Female, and she’s been kidnapped so that he can be forced into killing the President!!! They don’t specifically spell out whodunit, but it’s pretty clear that somebody out there really doesn’t want to give up their TORTURE!
The screenwriting on display here is absolutely awful, trying to compensate for its vapid characters’ insipid dialogue with cheap gimmicks that scream, “This is very contemporary!” Every single scene ends with a pointless match cut. For example, at the end of one scene a character turns off a faucet and we cut directly to another character turning off a different faucet at a different time and place! Normally in the screenwriting process, you would ask yourself, “How does what I’m putting on screen add to the story? What does it say about these characters?” But not author Nick Waters! He’s so talented he just can’t be bothered with these pesky concerns. Also note all the product placement/pop culture references that’ll leave this thing dated in a few years: iPhones (that somehow display the subjects of missed phone calls), Newsweek magazine (ha!), Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” and a fictional MSNBC reporter poised to be a future main character.
Anyways, the big plot twist for the show’s pilot has brought a new level of stupid to primetime television. Seconds before Attractive, Youthful Female’s Father is forced to crash into President Obamartinez,
A VORTEX IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM OPENS UP AND SWALLOWS UP THE PLANE.
I am not kidding.
You know what this means, right? Whatever supernatural force is at work here also believes in single-payer healthcare and closing Guantanastranko. Obamartinez is the Chosen One!
Forcing myself to read this more than half of once, as well as taking the time to think through and write down the political point of view for this script, has been emotionally and physically draining. NBC expects us to watch this. And like it. Parent company Comcast expects to make money off this. If that doesn’t make your brain churn, I commend you for being such a good patient to those botched lobotomy surgeons.
*Credit must be given to my buddy Isaac, who will forever out-nerd me, for suggesting the concept.
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