I doubt it.
On the one hand, I’m enjoying the series, and I thought this week’s was the best of the 3 so far.
On the other, Sorkin is getting dramatic mileage out of the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. In other words, he’s cheating.
It bothers me, but not enough to turn me off completely.
This is pretty much exactly how I feel.
I was really teetering on the brink, after the first two episodes. If the third one had also sucked, I’m not sure I would have continued. But the third episode was actually pretty damn good. Not great, and definitely with its flaws (which Marley pointed out quite nicely), but I’m sold. For now, anyway.
You know, there’s a news analyst who has spoken about the takeover of the Republican Party. Who has looked at Sharron Angles “2nd Amendment remedies” while it was happening, continually and consistently linked the Tea Party movement to Americans for Prosperity to the Koch brothers and downplayed the Times Square incident as security gone right.
Her name’s Rachel Maddow.
As a bonus, she didn’t used to sleep with her producer making for unnecessary drama in the workplace.
Oh and the network owner? I totally thought that was Judith Light from Who’s the Boss.
It’s coming across as liberal porn at the moment. Between the cherry picking of tempestuous events with the benefit of hindsight and the lecturing/crusading for a “middle” of the US political spectrum(which doesn’t really exist) which is indistinguishable from the modern left, meh.
The actual journalist who reviewed it, from NPR, feels pretty much like I do. It’s certainly nice to hear your own biases come out with Aaron Sorkin punchy dialog. But after spending two and a half years working in a broadcast newsroom(multiple Murrow-award winning news radio) I don’t see much resemblance. It’s the Glee of journalism. Beautiful, intelligent, witty, and yet super messed up people, with the best sources on the planet, putting together mega-scoops of exactly the most important news of the year in real-time as the stories break. And it’s all wrapped up in the delusion that they’re Frontline.
I’m picturing a “road to Damascus” moment for the network owner and she’ll back Watterson’s character because the world needs this “honest” journalism. It would be more plausible if she decides this “socially responsible angle might bring in sponsors who want some greenwashing points.” What we’ll see for the rest of the season is DailyKOS’s greatest hits in television form. This might be entertaining, but it’s not Frontline. Frontline is journalism. Nova is science journalism. I’m not sure what we’re seeing the genesis of here is going to be, but it’s certainly leaning towards a ridiculous portrayal of the real news business.
On a personal note, Sorkin, Brigadoon references? Sardi’s after an opening when the Times publishes a review? Jesus, get a consultant to tell you what normal people talk about or something, this just makes you look ridiculously out of touch.
Enjoy,
Steven
Frontline? I thought they were Dateline, tops, and even that’s a stretch. I didn’t see any indication in the fictional News Night that they cut away for multipart mini-documentaries (“Here’s Jimmy, a bright young kid. Here’s Jimmy graduating from high school with honors. Here’s Jimmy’s applying for college. We’ll tell you why Jimmy was set on fire by the Dean of Admissions after the break.”), but rather it’s an hour of Will McAvoy interviewing people and speechifying, with Olivia Munn doing… I dunno, two-minute financial summaries? Her own occasional interviews? Sexier raven-haired form-fitting business-wear speechifying?
Frontline has no studio to speak of, except maybe the sound stage where Will Lyman records his oh-so-smooth narration. Unless I’m wildly mistaken, there isn’t a team of co-producers dragging in numbers and interview questions while the show is actually being broadcasting - the work happens weeks earlier in editing suites where the producers pull together extended interview footage, footage that has no McAvoy equivalent trying to “hard-hit” the subject.
Seriously, I want a Will Lyman ringtone: “…but an urgent message came in from the Pentagon that the attack had begun…”
I’d be alright with it being ridiculous if there wasn’t so much stupidity and smugness.
Yeah. It’s a big honking reminder that Aaron Sorkin is significantly older than these characters and that his background is in musical theater and not journalism. None of it means he can’t write about journalism, but having youngish journalists explain themselves with references to Brigadoon and Gypsy is ridiculous and almost makes it sound like the writer is not that interested in the actual subject matter of journalism. (This is becoming a problem with the show.) Maybe he should’ve just done a show about musical theater- all the characters could be liberal idealists and it wouldn’t sound weird when they explained their feelings with musical theater references.
I wasn’t thinking of them as having the same format as Frontline, but they’re deluding themselves that they have the same gravitas. The explicit goal of News Night 2.0 is to bring scholarly level debate(best form of the argument) on key political issues(what someone will need in a voting booth) to the public. They intend to elevate their audience and have them be smarter, stronger, and sexier by the end of the program each night. There are damn few shows which have anything near that impact on someone who watches them, and Frontline/Nova were the ones which came to mind first. These shows can rightfully claim the high ground when it comes to educating a voting populace and having a track record of getting fairly close to the goal of using the best form of the argument. I forget the third ‘I’ but it all sounded like they’re trying to build a show with the integrity and power of Frontline in a talking-head format.
Unfortunately, they seem to be utterly failing.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’d also nominate Charlie Rose and even The Daily Show to some degree for elevating one-on-one interviews about important issues, and there’s no way the fictional News Night can match these when we’re shown pre-broadcast staff meetings deciding to the second how much time each guest will get. “Oil executive, huh? Put him down for two and a half minutes.” I get that it can be irresistible to build tension by keeping up a breakneck pace with to-the-second timing, but it seems contradictory to the goal of thoughtful discourse. All McAvoy has time for is getting a few soundbites out of his guests or, as I’m guessing will be the case if Sorkin pursues his Tea-Party crashing, enough time for the guest to say something invitingly stupid and McAvoy going all Socrates on him.
I actually enjoyed this episode. I thought that it might be the last one for me but the show has grown on me.
The one thing I can’t stand about threads about this show (or any written by Sorkin) is the constant nitpicking about inconsequential things, but just for tonight I am going to join in.
Hurricanes aren’t caused by high pressure systems, they are caused, or characterized by extremely low pressure systems.
OK, I’m done. I liked this episode a lot, even though this seemed to be the one that ticked off the professional critics the most beforehand. Probably due to the fact that this one bashed the news business almost the whole time.
Boy, Sorkin certainly doesn’t hold women in very high regard, does he? This was the most female-bashing episode yet, and I found it extremely insulting from start to finish. Doesn’t surprise me at all that the critics didn’t like it.
And Bigfoot? Really?
Critics like to bash things themselves, so I don’t think that was the problem. My guess is the reviewers focused on this one because most of the characters acted like 14-year-olds throughout the episode, particularly the women; because during this one Will lectured three different women about the principles he acquired two or three episodes ago but we were evidently supposed to admire his behavior even when he called one of his dates a bitch (he was a pompous boor); and the show ended with a cloying, tug-on-your-heartstrings song *a la * Scrubs (don’t get me wrong; Scrubs could be fun). It was sort of a wonder the characters they managed to get a news show on the air at all when they spent so much of their time arguing with each other about their implausibly complicated dating lives.
I have to admit I was uncomfortable their use of the Giffords shooting. Doing it with BP and elections and other events hasn’t bothered me, so it’s not that they used the shooting- it’s that they used it the way they did, just in the last 10 or 15 minutes as a way to confirm their own awesomeness. We got yet another discussion of show tunes in this one, too. I get the sense Sorkin is just playing to the crowd with this show- he doesn’t care very much about journalism actually happens, but he wants to say he knows what ought to be done.
Wow, I didn’t know that. It certainly explains that scene in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip where they are plotting their splashy comeback number and they decide to go with that song from The Pirates of Penzance. To be fair, that was one of the better bits on a show that didn’t really get the comedy right very often. But I remember how weird the it’s-so-obvious tone in their voices was as they hit upon Gilbert and Sullivan as their big idea. Only obvious to YOU, Sorkin. Only obvious to you.
The bigfoot stuff was really, really stupid.
Yes, it was a bad running gag. So was Will having drinks thrown in his face*. Dev Patel was charming in Slumdog Millionaire and they’re not doing much with him here. I hope he at least gets to smack Will around for calling him Punjab in the first episode.
In the interest of saying something positive: Sam Waterston had a little more to do in the first half of this episode and I felt his character was a bit more grounded, and I appreciated that. And how has Jeff Daniels never played a superhero with that chin?
*As much as he deserved to have something thrown at him. Did someone ask earlier if people really throw drinks in each others’ faces during bad dates? I’ve never seen it - cocktails are really fucking expensive. 
Nothing is accidental with this guy, of course. Showing the Palin clip at the beginning, and ending the episode with the Giffords story was, I’m sure, an intentional tie-in of the two. Not to start a debate, but I hold Palin personally (if partially) responsible for that shooting, and I think Sorkin probably does also. But rather than set off a firestorm of criticism, he plants the seed early and lets your subconscious link the two.
Dan Rather actually did a bit on…dang, Daily Show? CNN?..can’t remember 
Anyway, he roundly applauded The NewsRoom.
I am kind of wondering why. =/
Ok, finally got around to watching the 4th episode. This is officially my ‘guilty pleasure’. Just…wish I didn’t have to couch it in those terms. >.<
But, yeah, the Bigfoot thing was lame as can be. I hope that it won’t be a season-long running joke.
I laughed when the boyfriend called the roommate’s cell phone to prove that the two of them were sleeping together. (No, I don’t know anyone’s names)