We just caught up with last week’s Sunday night HBO lineup: True Blood and The Newsroom. After watching both, I looked at my wife and said that I think I’m done with both shows at this point. I’ll leave the True Blood comments aside as they’re not appropriate to this thread but as for The Newsroom…
Maggie completely ruins this show for me. It is at the point where her mere presence in a scene is such a distraction for all the reasons already mentioned in this thread and in last season’s thread. I just cannot enjoy any scene where she is involved with the one exception from last week where her friend completely destroys her for being the self-obsessed, neurotic, pathetic, trolling little attention whore that she is. That scene made me smile. Not only did my largest problem with this show persist into season two (Maggie wasn’t written out of the show unfortunately) but now it appears there will be an even larger story arc where she goes to Africa and something traumatic happens to her. For me, there is no point in watching anymore. She drags down the other parts of this show and with her apparent story arc, I’m not going to feel any sympathy for her at this point. I just don’t think I care to watch anymore.
Then again… Olivia Munn. I’ll probably tune in next week.
So, Will’s big breakthrough came on 9-11? That little speech he gave about “being here for you in this uncertain and dangerous time, no matter what” (or whatever it was he spewed) would be enough to make never watch him or that network again. And it made him famous? Please.
No. It would be like having a thread about a Wes Anderson movie without mentioning Wes Anderson, or a Frank Zappa album without mentioning Frank Zappa. Sorkin’s voice is that distinctive, and permeates every bit of all of his productions.
I think it’s realistic that a big national event like that might have brought Will McAvoy to prominence. Wolf Blitzer, for example, was a journalist for decades, but the first Gulf War is where he became famous as a television journalist, and Dan Rather’s big break came with his reporting of a hurricane in Texas.
Are you sure? You’ve never seen ‘A Few Good Men’ with that catchphrase, “You can’t handle the truth!” or ‘The American President’ or ‘The Social Network?’ If not, then netflix those suckers ASAP or whatever people do these days.
I first noticed Sorkin when he wrote/produced ‘Sports Night’ on ABC. It was on after something, I forget. It seemed like the normal sitcom stuff but I wasn’t really paying attention. Then Dan had this great speech (as a host of a cable sports show ala Sportscenter). It was then I realized this show had something to say.
Then Sorkin left to go do ‘West Wing.’ I have a love/hate relationship with Sorkin. The love is easy, dialog where the characters actually seem to be listening to each other. The hate is when he reuses jokes, gags, situations from one project to the next. I found this most glaring during the Sports Night to West Wing transition, e.g. Dana’s lost panties on Sports Night became Donna’s lost panties on West Wing. There were so many I started a list and then gave up from exhaustion. I’m sure others have done a better and googling, here’s a hilarious supercut It was as if he thought that no West Wing viewer had ever seen Sports Night. Oh well, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best, i.e. yourself.
I have seen everything Sorkin has done. Mostly, I think he has a great gift for dialouge. But he recycles dialouge. There are many lines and situations that exist in both West Wing and Newsroom, or West Wing and Sports Night, or…
Last episode:
Will:
" X once said " “The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have the protection of it”"
Charlie
"I’m not certain it was X’
Will
“I’m not certain it was either”
The exact same exchange happened between Jed Barlett and Leo McGarry in the West Wing. The only difference is that in Newsroom ‘X’ was John Dillinger, in the West Wing "X’ was Robert Shaw
We could have a whole thread with examples of where Sorkin has repeated himself, almost word for word, in various shows.
Possible spoilers, but I’m assuming no one cares. If you do, don’t read this.
Good thing: not much Maggie in this episode. However, what little there was was 15 times more annoying than usual.
The Romney campaign is really being made to look/revealed as being completely stupid. Which I’m loving.
When Nena Howard was on the phone with Mac and her hair was wet, I knew Will was in the next room. (Inexplicably, she is not listed in the IMDB credits for this episode.) Although Will is such a dour, gloomy person, why would anyone want to date, let alone sleep with him?
When Mac was shutting down the phone callers as the episode was ending, I knew the faxes would finally support what they were looking for. <Yawn> Cliffhanger.
I really enjoyed hearing Sam Waterston say “fuck.” All those years on Law & Order, you know he wanted to say it a million times.
I will keep watching this show and bitching about it. Over and out.
I’m finding the whole Genoa plot pretty interesting, and the part at the Romney campaign is tolerable. Which means this episode was pretty good overall.
Faxes. FAXES. WTF. It’s not like I don’t occasionally fax, didn’t use them occasionally in my last office job, but it really took me out of the episode.
Not that was was super into it anyway.
A broken chair was much funnier when I rewatched The West Wing a couple weeks ago.
The show is really ridiculous. But I’ll keep watching just for the moments when a conversation hits a rapid fire groove. In those moments I feel like I’m watching a 1940s comedy.
Which is basically the MO for the show. Something predictable (is Romeny going to win or lose [bites fingernails, moves towards edge of seat]) and something that we don’t know about [Genoa, which I assume is made up].
I’m not sure about the reason for the faxes. It’s not like they’re can use them as a time stalling technique to drag things out. A fax takes just as long as an email (plus a few seconds). Besides, is there some reason they can’t just use Google Translate or some other internet translator. C&P the tweet and then get a real person to verify the translation if they find anything worth checking out?
Come to think of it, didn’t Neal give them an app to translate? Or was that the fax thing?
I spent last episode doodling around on my tablet and paying just enough attention to know what was going on but not enough to be annoyed by everyone. Much better show that way.
Except the kid on the Romney bus. Even distracted, I wanted to smack him around with a sock full of pennies.
Neal gave them an app to sift through tweets by date and location. The he suggested them getting a translator for whatever language (He said Urdu and some other language). I think Maggie said that the best one they could get could only go via fax.
This. My impression was that the person translating only had access to fax and not to any electronic communication method. And they wanted very accurate translations, better than you could get from an app or translation software. This seemed credible to me. (As credible as anything else.)