The Newsroom: Sorkin's HBO Joint

also i'm not really sure how they're going to be able to pull off this alternate history where a nightly news broadcast breaks news... the entire thing just seems so fossilized. but i guess that shouldn't really be a surprise.

― J0rdan S., Monday, June 25, 2012 12:32 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, so much detail about a real, old news story...i mean, both sports night and the west wing flirted with ripped from the headlines type stuff but never so directly, and on the west wing eventually sorkin developed an alternate, parallel reality to accommodate this kind of thing, replete with fictional middle eastern countries.

that schmaltzy music playing over it didn't help

― buh, Sunday, June 24, 2012 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes this was terrible

i must admit i'm intrigued by emily nussbaum saying each of the first four episodes is worse than the one before it

― da croupier, Sunday, June 24, 2012 11:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i need to read this review, but i think this is going to keep me watching, perversely

i didn't find it wholly unpleasant tbh, but it is sort of embarrassing how derivative of his own work it is. seems like a waste of a good director and a great actor in jeff daniels. jeff daniels was really good, i thought.

i don't know exactly how to put this, but you'd think sorkin's m.o./perspective on what's wrong with the world would have developed somewhat beyond what's essentially the plot of the american president.

Yeah, Daniels is the main reason I wanted this to like this. He needs a great series.

yeah, i agree that daniels was great

Too bad Daniels didn't have a single line that wasn't screamed.

yeah, so much detail about a real, old news story...i mean, both sports night and the west wing flirted with ripped from the headlines type stuff but never so directly, and on the west wing eventually sorkin developed an alternate, parallel reality to accommodate this kind of thing, replete with fictional middle eastern countries.

― horseshoe, Monday, June 25, 2012 12:39 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i was sorta feeling them going with "ripped from the headlines" until it turned out to be "literally the headlines + the granular facts of the story" because the way they went about that just seemed really out of touch to me

like, what exactly is the audience for a show that pretends that the nightly news is still the most important entity in journalism? i know the answer to that question, but i found a lot of that show to be really embarrassing. it's weird to see someone of sorkn''s stature really advertising his own ignorance, like with that dumb twitter crack. i guess it's surprising to me that someone like sorkin would so willingly and proudly display his "old man yells at cloud" mode

the opening scene was really terrible, too

and yet. he managed to wring some subtle moments out of that. i'm kind of okay with big sorkin speeches as long as they're undercut a little and not treated with the kind of rapt worship indicated by schmaltzy music and that moment when daniels was ranting at northwestern and they cut to a college student looking awed--that moment is straight out of the american president! which is a movie i am fond of but come on.

i don't know, sometimes i don't even understand why i like sorkin.

xxp

i do think sorkin scripts make a lot more sense with cursing

there was a heated exchange on sports night once where jeremy was like, "you think i'm SCARED?" and natalie was like, "i think you're SCARED CHICKEN!" and it was like ...

Yeah, there's a lot about this that feels about 15-20 years old, at least.

in the scene where daniels yells at his ex-exec-producer for bailing on the show, and then ex-exec-producer yells at him for being mean, and then sam waterston starts yelling at the ex-exec-producer for reasons that weren't clear to me, all i could think of was steve carrell's character in anchorman. "LOUD NOISES!!!"

i'm kind of okay with big sorkin speeches as long as they're undercut a little

― horseshoe, Monday, June 25, 2012 12:52 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also when they're not total bullshit, like daniels's whole "we used to be good" speech at the beginning

not that american exceptionalism, this american exceptionalism. my old man version!

Note how the trailer only showed the first half of the speech. Whole other story once you hear the whole thing.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/600887_464639143564325_373923033_n.jpg

o plz plz plz internet don't let me down again

Aaron Connects

if he had any kind of sense of humor he'd start every response w/ 'listen internet girl/boy'. but as anyone who saw studio 60 can confirm he does not have any kind of sense of humor.

never forget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoJQhkQedU
never fucking forget

Like I just muttered over on balls' FB page, Aaron Eckhart really is going to play him in his self-penned biopic about his own life story one day. And he will capture his utter dickishness to a T.

this kinda gave me a rush during the broadcast part of the episode but it was largely really annoying

― J0rdan S., Monday, June 25, 2012 12:31 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

i felt the opposite -- was fairly engaged with it through the first hour, then started to check out during the whole THE ELECTRICITY OF LIVE TELEVISION bit.

Mortimer deserves equal credit w/ Daniels for making this easier to watch than it ought to be imo

i have to make myself forget that her character's name is 'Mackenzie MacHale'

i feel like every detail of this will be forgotten in a couple months

i'm going to write a compelling dramatization of how we should've made fun of it 2 years from now, though

Sorkin is literally the worst writer in the world. It's incredible how terrible he is at understanding how human beings and the spoken word work both independently and in interrelated ways.

Also the casting for this was terrible.

I really enjoy just watching daniels just do his thing though. didn't know that about myself!

is this programme basically just meant to make journalists feel great?

I actually really enjoyed the live production of the news show part very similarly to how I enjoyed the west wing. every other aspect of this endeavor was absolutely unbearable.

not the journalists who broke the stories that newsroom takes credit for xp

i checked out the newsroom hashtag last night and there were a lot of people saying variations "of course journalists don't like this show, it reveals how bad they are at their jobs!"

i thought this was pretty okay? i enjoyed it? or i'm trying not to reflexively hate on it just because some of it was obviously pretty standard in pretty standard ways. it would be nice if he could do something to transcend the network cliches but i don't know that they're awful for their inclusion, more just disappointing. like the working with an ex relationship in which each side conceals an enigmatic history & still smoulders thing - it is such a pre-fab timebomb, & it was in studio 60, but it's lazy writing more than it is bad tv, i think. i wish alison pill wasn't such a klutz, because she's great, also her dress was v nice, but i can get with the peter parker whippy new newsroom guy. it would be nice if her bf became slightly more complex rather than just spitting out fodder to justify our affection for his rival. i think this is gonna be particularly problematic if the audience is already privileged with the gift of hindsight & knowledge of historical irony, so we always know who we're rooting for, who'll be vindicated & who'll be a stupid hubristic asshole. & the waterson guy seems like a missed opportunity. there should be some awesome intriguing back room network man. a david carr man. instead it is a guy in a bow tie. do you remember this guy from studio 60? i hated him. like a budget kevin bacon.

http://www.seriesadictos.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/studio-60-weber-300a121206.jpg

Is that Steven Weber?

it's ricky sargulesh

i thought Weber was one of the more redeemable parts of Studio 60, actually

o easily

this thread and emily nussbaum's (otm, at least based on the pilot) review of the newsroom are making me kind of want to watch studio 60, which i couldn't stomach at all when it was airing.

in a perverse way, just to help me catalogue all the ways in which sorkin shows are embarrassing

really?
i'm trying to find a picture of one of the simpsons characters who wears a suit and works for a network and represents corporate interests to include, whom he seemed to be the live action version of. iirc he was just a kinda james murdoch guy with occasional displays of pre-programmed emotion.
xxp

to be clear, "better than Sarah Paulson in Studio 60" was not meant as high praise

omg that actor is so annoying. sarah paulson, i mean.

if i were kristen chenoweth, i'd be like, her? really? thanks, dude.

really nobody could've played the Kristen Chenoweth cipher besides Chenoweth herself, but Paulson was pretty amazingly ill-fitted for it (xpost)

i wonder if i have a lower standard for judging this - like if its flaws are all the things we can file under _ways in which sorkin shows are embarrassing_ i think i'll be okay with it; it won't be the sopranos that manages to be generally complex, but its lazy failures are the kinds of lazy failures that we're super used to - un-fleshed-out female characters, predilection towards syrup & happy endings & rootsy belief, &c&c&c. it was when those things sorta overtook the interplay of characters or blunted the occasional exchanges of people having well-rendered arguments in the west wing or studio 60 that i tuned out slightly.

can i just say the murky moody Greg Mottola direction is a terrible look for this show? it could've at least been a better, more Sorkin-y Sorkin show if it was a little more crisp and clear.

this has been mentioned but i think the problem is that tv has gotten a lot better and there's enough good tv to watch that i don't feel especially compelled to watch the aaron sorkin hour esp if it's kinda lousy?

can i just say the murky moody Greg Mottola direction is a terrible look for this show? it could've at least been a better, more Sorkin-y Sorkin show if it was a little more crisp and clear.

― some dude, Monday, June 25, 2012 9:24 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe you're right but i experienced mottola's direction as the one refreshing change because everything else about the show down to phrases of dialogue was such a retread.

if it had that thomas schlamme sports night look (which i love) i would just have popped in a sports night dvd because at least robert guillaume can deliver sorkin dialogue.