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The Newsroom - new HBO series from Aaron Sorkin (1 Viewer)

I feel like I should know who Aaron Sorkin is, but I got nothing. He has an important sounding name, I'll give him that.

 
The Ref said:
This guy really doesn't want any republican viewers....

Hey - lets #### on Ron Paul and get a bimbo drunk as a strawman.
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Sorkin's perspective is of a republican that thinks his party is being run pretty shoddy - and he uses this vehicle to point out all the ridiculousness of the republican party

 
The Dude said:
The Ref said:
This guy really doesn't want any republican viewers....

Hey - lets #### on Ron Paul and get a bimbo drunk as a strawman.
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Sorkin's perspective is of a republican that thinks his party is being run pretty shoddy - and he uses this vehicle to point out all the ridiculousness of the republican party
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That's Will McAvoy's perspective. I think it's pretty clear from the writing that Sorkin himself is a liberal Democrat.

 
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Tried watching this again, and could not take the fusillade of Sorkin shtick fired from almost the entire cast, most of which looked like they were picked out of a casting from Glee.

 
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Those young kids with their Broadway show name dropping and their complete mystification over the internet!

I can think of a lot of defenses of the Newsroom (OK, maybe only a few defenses), but "you're not young and hip enough to get it" certainly isn't one of them. It's one of the most deliberately unhip shows I can think of.

 
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
Those young kids with their Broadway show name dropping and their complete mystification over the internet!

I can think of a lot of defenses of the Newsroom (OK, maybe only a few defenses), but "you're not young and hip enough to get it" certainly isn't one of them. It's one of the most deliberately unhip shows I can think of.
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It doesn't get hipper than Marcia Gay Harden and Stephen Root.

 
Gr00vus said:
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
Those young kids with their Broadway show name dropping and their complete mystification over the internet!

I can think of a lot of defenses of the Newsroom (OK, maybe only a few defenses), but "you're not young and hip enough to get it" certainly isn't one of them. It's one of the most deliberately unhip shows I can think of.
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It doesn't get hipper than Marcia Gay Harden and Stephen Root.
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And god dammit, it doesn't get any hipper than Maggie!

I haven't watched this dreck since the 1st episode of season 2 and I still giggle at the thought of her getting hit by a bus.

 
Brady Marino said:
Gr00vus said:
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
Those young kids with their Broadway show name dropping and their complete mystification over the internet!

I can think of a lot of defenses of the Newsroom (OK, maybe only a few defenses), but "you're not young and hip enough to get it" certainly isn't one of them. It's one of the most deliberately unhip shows I can think of.
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It doesn't get hipper than Marcia Gay Harden and Stephen Root.
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And god dammit, it doesn't get any hipper than Maggie!

I haven't watched this dreck since the 1st episode of season 2 and I still giggle at the thought of her getting hit by a bus.
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Well, in this last episode she did go home with a rather stout bar tender - it almost happened.

 
Show has been going downhill ever since this season began. These characters are extremely gullable or just really dumb on multiple accounts. Sorkins whining on political issues is getting old. Dana Gordon and Olivia Munn need to meet and have a hot sex scene before this show gets canned.

 
dschuler said:
Show has been going downhill ever since this season began. These characters are extremely gullable or just really dumb on multiple accounts. Sorkins whining on political issues is getting old. Dana Gordon and Olivia Munn need to meet and have a hot sex scene before this show gets canned.
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This season is significantly better than last. Regarding the gullible character thing, he has always been big on savants who are brilliant on one or just a few fronts but have gaping blind spots, the biggest of being socially. That actually is not that far-fetched. And anybody who thinks any of his serial shows will ever be anything other than a fantasy world made up entirely in his imagination is barking up the wrong tree.

 
In the first couple of episodes of this series, I briefly thought to myself... "Hmmm, Maggie is kinda cute."

I intend to punch myself in the face for this transgression.

 
Does anyone know yet if it has been greenlit for a third season? The ratings have consistently been between .7-.9 since the opener. I have read a couple places that it was likely to have a third season, but nothing confirmed yet.

 
I had no idea why they were ranting about the concept of a shot clock and how football is better than soccer but that was a great follow up to prove the video was tampered.

 
hammerva said:
I had no idea why they were ranting about the concept of a shot clock and how football is better than soccer but that was a great follow up to prove the video was tampered.
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I thought it was kind of hacky, to be honest.

Imagine the LUCK of Will happening to be watching a college football game -and- explaining to Mac how shot clocks work!

 
Last week, I wrote that Sorkin was letting the rest of his characters off the hook by pinning the blame for Genoa on a new character we had no investment in. Much of "Red Team III" seemed to be designed to counter that complaint, by having Rebecca, Mac and others point out the ways in which our "News Night" staff also screwed up. In some cases, this worked — Mac leading the witness in the pre-interview felt like a mistake that could actually happen — while in others the mistakes were again written off as the fault of others. Reporters definitely get screwed over by sources who lie to them, but the specific circumstances of this lie — Shep seeking vengeance after his son fatally overdosed upon being fired by Neal — feel so big, and specific, that you can't really blame Charlie for any of it.

As many of you predicted last week, the shot clock was Jerry's undoing, but it doesn't seem the least bit plausible that no one at any point in the production of the story would have noticed that. Will's not the only sports fan who works for the show. You're telling me that Sloan, Charlie, the studio technicians — even someone with no interest in sports but a functioning pair of eyeballs — noticed those numbers jumping back and forth during the damning sound byte? That's something that makes everybody look bad — and was foreshadowed, sledgehammer-style, throughout the episode — and yet somehow not one of the things Rebecca or anyone else brought up as a massive institutional failure for this story.

And as much as I love hearing Jane Fonda recite Sorkin dialogue, and play stoned, and as Sorkin-channeling-Capra-esque as her refusal to accept the resignations was, it feels like Sorkin looking for an escape hatch on the consequences of this story. It's possible that Will, Charlie and Mac will do something extraordinary in the season-ending two-parter that would justify their continuing viability as newspersons, but I'm not sure what the ultimate point of the Genoa arc was, then. Our heroes don't make any damning mistakes, and don't even suffer the consequences of their actions or anyone else's. That's just conflict for conflict's sake, rather than revealing insight into either our characters (Will has, by design, been kept on the Genoa sidelines until this episode) or about the problems of TV news in the 21st century.
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I'm enjoying this season the more it rolls along. But I'm not sure I understand the Charlie/Informant relationship. Charlie pretended like he had no idea the guy's son worked for him or was fired from his job but then told the guy why he was fired? Did he not know he died until they met? Seems weird.

 
Yeah, that was a huge mess.

The Leona monologue, the plot contrivance that "institutional failures" that caused mistakes to be made would allow a producer who fabricated video with some type of leverage in a wrongful discharge lawsuit (indeed, every depiction of lawyers on this show has been a disaster), the incredibly lame justification for Charlie's source burning him (sprung out of nowhere). The whole thing was pretty awful.

 
After being so badly disappointed by this show in the first season after having looked forward to it so much, I just have not been able to drum up enough motivation to give the second season a try.

I really wish I could as West Wing is one of my all time favorite shows and I have generally enjoyed most anything Sorkin. However, this show has been a disaster despite some great individual efforts. I think any shot that I could have given the show was killed once reading a review that pretty much destroyed the first episode as being the same ole' same ole' from season 1 while trying not to (paraphrasing here of course).

 
You guys are whacked (not just you Ramsey which is why I removed the quote). Fonda's scene stole the show. I thought it was a great ep.

So take your complaining elsewhere, you Daniel Craig wannabees....

 
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Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
Yeah, that was a huge mess.

The Leona monologue, the plot contrivance that "institutional failures" that caused mistakes to be made would allow a producer who fabricated video with some type of leverage in a wrongful discharge lawsuit (indeed, every depiction of lawyers on this show has been a disaster), the incredibly lame justification for Charlie's source burning him (sprung out of nowhere). The whole thing was pretty awful.
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Presumably, Dantana is an at will employee. Now I've very little experience in employment law, but I've never heard of someone being legally protected from being a scapegoat. It's not like he's being fired for being a white male, or in retaliation for a sexual harassment complaint.

 
The Dude said:
You guys are whacked (not just you Ramsey which is why I removed the quote). Fonda's scene stole the show. I thought it was a great ep.

So take your complaining elsewhere, you Daniel Craig wannabees....
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She's still got the acting chops, but the material they handed her for that episode was dog food. Half the lines made me cringe they were so bad. Mac mac? Are you ####### kidding me? How did that make it past the 1st edit, let alone into the finished product. Not only that, it was completely inconsistent with the way they'd written that character and her motivation up to that point. And that scene probably wasn't even the worst of the episode.

 
Really not sure why its so hard to believe that it occurred to her to look at the shot clock while she was reviewing the interview footage after having a conversation about shot clocks

 
Gr00vus said:
The Dude said:
You guys are whacked (not just you Ramsey which is why I removed the quote). Fonda's scene stole the show. I thought it was a great ep.

So take your complaining elsewhere, you Daniel Craig wannabees....
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She's still got the acting chops, but the material they handed her for that episode was dog food. Half the lines made me cringe they were so bad. Mac mac? Are you ####### kidding me? How did that make it past the 1st edit, let alone into the finished product. Not only that, it was completely inconsistent with the way they'd written that character and her motivation up to that point. And that scene probably wasn't even the worst of the episode.
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She was intoxicated - so there's some leeway

 
joffer said:
Really not sure why its so hard to believe that it occurred to her to look at the shot clock while she was reviewing the interview footage after having a conversation about shot clocks
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Plus she was looking at the huge clock the guy left on the table

 
joffer said:
Really not sure why its so hard to believe that it occurred to her to look at the shot clock while she was reviewing the interview footage after having a conversation about shot clocks
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It's not. It was the lengthy shot clock conversation with Will, which would never happen in a BILLION years which has me :rolleyes:

 
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