Sorry, Charlie. I’m gritting my teeth through these final episodes, knowing that the show won’t be back. Cripes, what a tedious, pedantic exercise in hindsight it has become.
That whole episode was telegraphed. I knew that guy wasn’t real. I knew something was wrong with Charlie. I knew Sloan was going to do what she did. The only surprises for me were how horrible the episode was, how boring and full of previous Sorkinisms it was.
One to go. If it somehow got uncanceled, I wouldn’t watch the new season. I’ll only watch next week to see what new horrors can befall us.
I wasn’t aware of the clause that said Lucas couldn’t fire anyone without Charlie’s blessing, but since he’s gone, unless Leona named someone else, I assume he’s going to clean house. He’ll get rid of everyone that won’t play ball which is probably all or at least most of the main characters and the show will make it’s way back up the charts as a gossipy news show. Integrity is out the window, it’s all about hearsay. Basically, what Bree said on the air.
And with that, Bree isn’t Neal, Bree probably would have been working in another location…hell, the people who make the apps likely would have been another company that ACN contracted to make them. Even if they made them in house, I doubt Bree and Co would have been working in the news room.
My guess is that Will and Mack will walk out before they get fired (for integrity) but encourage) the rest of them to get fired so they get their severance packages.
Only Charlie had the power, but I bet if Will threatened to walk if those other idiots got fired, he might save them all and alleviate what are sure to be his guilty feelings for somehow contributing to Charlie’s death.
Will’s just an old man to Lucas. He might as well be as old as Charlie. Lucas doesn’t share the same values as Will. Will (and Mack) doesn’t want to report on a story until he has to unrelated sources, Lucas wants to play youtube videos and report unvetted twitter feeds. Lucas wants to be the news version of Buzzfeed. Lucas wants clicks.
BTW, doesn’t anyone else see Lucas as Ryan from the Office. I mean, yeah, I know it’s the actor (duh), but the character is still the same. He’s still trying to send out WUPHFs.
It was fun to see Kevin “there’s no replacement for displacement” Rankin again. With that face, I wonder if he ever gets to play the good guy.
What’s really left for the finale? It’s going to be one long exercise in sentimentality. There was a lot not to like about The Newsroom, but I thought the second season was pretty good.
The blue collar ghost dad was the most ridiculous example of Sorkin writing ever. The dead give-away he wasn’t a real person? Because somehow, the blue collar everyman just happens to speak in the exact same voice as every other character on the show. Only that wasn’t a give-away, because that’s the actual problem with Sorkin’s writing: Every single character speaks with the same voice.
Hell, if Will and Mac were quarreling while ordering coffee, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see the barrista jump in seamlessly with quips and relevant musical theater references. (barf)
Will is their marquee name and probably has a very expensive contract. He might want to WUPHF up ACN, but Ryan Howard needs Will badly.
Fuck me. I totally missed that. A lot of things seemed off like how the guy talked and that he wasn’t there when Will left and I was too stupid to put it together.
Thanks.
That was one of the most anticlimatic series endings I’ve ever seen. I think Sorkin managed to end the series with the worst two episodes.
Thank god this thing is done. I realized last night that despite having watched two seasons of this show, I have almost no idea what most of the characters’ names are. How can someone produce/direct a show where absolutely none of the characters have any chemistry whatsoever?
As soon as they went to the first ‘flashback’ of Charlie talking to Mack it was pretty obvious where they were going with it. On top of that, it was kind of annoying since they didn’t have the foresight (or maybe the longevity) to plan it out in advance and use actual flashbacks*, they just went and filmed clips of him giving sage advice many years ago.
I did like Gary talking about teaching a baby totally wrong things like ‘wood comes from birds’. When my kid was little I used to joke that I was going to pick one completely wrong thing and see how long I could make it stick. I had some really odd noise and tried to tell her ‘that’s what a penguin says’ while she was learning animal sounds.
*On the other hand, if they went and showed flashbacks of Charlie doling out sage words of wisdom, they’d probably get accused of planning out his death since E1.
Well, I was not too happy with that ending, but I did enjoy some of the characters. I really liked Don and Sloan and Jim Harper. I liked Charlie too.
I disliked McKenzie and Will though. The conversations between those two were tedious.
It didn’t get cancelled Sorkin decided to end the show. HBO said they would be happy to have more seasons.
Oh, yes you would. You’re one of those pretentious losers that this show attracts.
I kind-of, sort-of liked the show, and kept watching because I wanted to like it more and because I liked a handful of the characters, but damn, this was weak sauce. Just tedious and boring. Maybe Sorkin was tired of it, and that’s why he ended the show.
McKenzie gets manouvered into being offered the job by Leona, grudgingly given it by Pruitt and then announced that she would be taking it by Will, and during the entire process, at no point was she consulted as to what her wishes were. It was just assumed by those around her that her viewpoint was unimportant to the whole process. Glad to see Sorkin remaining Sorkin until the bitter end.
Yeah, that didn’t make sense, not that her input wasn’t important (this is the first Sorkin thing I’ve seen), but that she would want it. Mack is an EP by trade as seen both in the show and the flashback, she produces shows, she wants to make TV (specifically news shows) better, she doesn’t run networks. About the only thing that makes her good at running a network is that she has a lot of fight in her and that’s mostly the writers talking, Leona could talk that talk just as well.
If she’s the president of the network it seems like she’s going to end up micromanaging the shit out of every show on the network. Don, Jim and every other EP are going to hate her in a matter of months and her day to day stuff isn’t going to get done.
Yep. That was yet another ridiculous contrivance in a long list of ridiculous contrivances Sorkin foisted on us in The Newsroom.
It’s such a shame. Actual smart, well-constructed stories about the news business could have been so interesting. Instead we got Sorkin–who has managed to singlehandedly set back the progressive cause (in the arts, at least) to an alarming degree. What a wasted opportunity!
Just to be clear, Neal would have been in the Newsroom, he kept the website up to date with what was going on right now. Bree and Co didn’t do that, they just spewed out social media glurge and could have done it from a lower rent space a few floors down or in one of the other offices they rent where such private information was constantly being yelled across the room.
It sort of reminded me of Scrubs. They ran an ICU/recovery and the chief of medicine for the entire hospital happened to have his office right there (instead of, ya know, in an administrative part of the building). Also, there was a private practice clinic literally in the ICU. I’ve been in a lot of hospitals and not only have I ever seen that setup, the private practice stuff is usually in a separate ‘professional building’. Of course, putting Kelso on another floor and Reed in another building would have meant we would have lost a lot of the crazy hijinks.
Similarly, having Bree elsewhere in the building (or contracted) would have meant Sloan wouldn’t have met him, wouldn’t have confronted him, wouldn’t have interviewed him and wouldn’t have killed Charlie.
But there’s also something to say (in a show like this, not scrubs) for lazy writing.