Paddy Chayefsky's script isn't a bad one, but he finally loses control of it. We are asked to laugh at, be moved by, or get angry about such a long list of subjects: Sexism and ageism and revolutionary ripoffs and upper-middle-class anomie and capitalist exploitation and Neilsen ratings and psychics and that perennial standby, the failure to communicate. As it is, we have a supremely well-acted, intelligent film that tries for too much, that attacks not only television but also most of the other ills of the 1970s. If the whole movie had stayed with this theme, we might have had a very bitter little classic here.
And what "Network" seems to be telling us is that television itself is like that: An economic process in the blind pursuit of ratings and technical precision, in which excellence is as accidental as banality. It wasn't their job to listen to Howard, just as it wasn't his job to run the control board. What was happening - that a man has lost his career and was losing his mind - passed right by. They were all consumed with form, with being sure the commercials were played in the right order and that the segment was the correct length.
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