The Newsroom: Sorkin's HBO Joint

that surprises me! have the ratings been good? because this is fucking terrible in a terribly good way!

Not that great. If Sorkin had killed some horses this show would have been pulled by now.

Ratings are decent. Not as low as Luck. Room to grow.

A lot of people really like this show. Remember that True Blood is still the channel's biggest hit, and that show's been terrible for a while.

Add some tits and they'll be fine.

i've never been able to watch true blood
i really appreciate the lack of sexposition and am wondering if there's anyway newsroom will maintain that pace through the season

If not, it'll be some awkward ripping-off-the-blouse-on-TV moment like Julie Andrews in S.O.B..

the stuff about Daniels' character being some super-hot tabloid lothario was really weird.

you don't really have to do anything to get renewed on HBO -- i mean the Luck cancellation happened AFTER they had greenlit and begun making a second season. in the last 5 years since John From Cicinnati afaict pretty much the only scripted series that HBO has actively decided to cancel after one season is The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

renewed for a 2nd season seems easy, sure, but lots of shows have gotten axed from hbo after a few weak seasons in a row.

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was pretty good compared to some of the junk that stuck around too...

lol @ "lots of shows have gotten axed from hbo after a few weak seasons in a row" like that means anything. once a show is on for a few seasons period it probably means it's popular enough that it's pretty much got its ticket punched for as long as it wants to stick around. Entourage got to wear out its welcome just as much as any show on ABC or CBS.

three seasons seems to be HBO's minimum for anything with a pulse -- Hung and Bored To Death just finally got canceled after s3 finales. even Treme is looking to get a 4th season now, though.

If Sorkin had killed some horses this show would have been pulled by now.

ahem you, like everyone else, must have missed this delightful sorkinesque crack last week

getting out of this show graciously may be hard for hbo, as the horses being beaten are already dead.

― da croupier, Monday, June 25, 2012 3:45 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not shocked if this does well in a "preaching to the choir" way

not shocked now that i've seen what the positive tweets are like, i mean. show's perfect for people who wish tv news was better, horrible for people who know better than to watch tv news.

if anything HBO's probably smart to give Bill Maher fans more content

yeah it seems like there are enough haughty olds and late adopters to The West Wing to make this a middlebrow fave. there are still people that unironically rep for Studio 60 like it's some kind of 'brilliant but canceled' gem.

xposts.

eh. luck was on the bubble even before the horse deaths. how to make it only got two seasons. carnivale got two seasons. extras got two seasons (but maybe because the producers only wanted to do two?) lucky louie got one season. the comeback was one season. conchords was two seasons (but again because of the creators?). rome was cancelled after two seasons. in treatment was three seasons.

i'm just listing facts from wikipedia now, so i might as well stop... but yeah, i think you're right that almost anything will get picked up for a second season, but they're less forgiving with the third. also i think they have different criteria for big-budget shows with expensive actors than for the more quirky half-hour episodics which i'm sure have much cheaper budgets.

well i was talking about just the last 5 years, Rome and John From Cincinnati were the last major cancellations that seemed to be the network just cutting the show loose and not trying to let fans down easy -- they obviously TRIED to make things work with Luck, doesn't matter if it was 'on the bubble' if they actually did give a full season 2 order before other factors came into consideration. Conchords and Eastbound & Down set their own end dates. it's amazing that How To Make It In America got even ONE renewal.

HBO show creators always point out that ratings don't matter so much as subscribers to the network, but I wonder how much HBO has to go with as far as who joins up for what show, what metrics they do use to measure the value of keeping a show. or maybe they still focus at ratings, but more in an accumulative, long-game sense than regular networks do. it's not how you do the first season, but how you grow on the 2nd, etc.

i think maybe HBO realizes that 'smart TV' nerds and critics tend to hold grudges about shows they like getting yanked way more than they praise networks for putting on those shows to begin with -- it's like they're doing everything they can to cultivate goodwill with every auteurs' fanbase they can after burning the Milch stans a couple times.

They wanted Luck to work because they want to be in the Milch/Mann/Hoffman/Nolte business. Cancelling it cost like 35 million or something like that. The oddest one was always Tell Me You Love Me, which was renewed and then cancelled before the second season started shooting. Rome was a cost issue because it was a co-production with the BBC and various other international companies that decided they didn't want to put the money up for anything after the original two season contract or whatever they had.

not just to pacify you croup, but i appreciated the original horse gag

the luck horse shd start watching newsroom imo

LUCKHorseOnGirls
@LuckHorseOnGirl
I died on the set of HBO's Luck. Now I hate-watch Girls.
Santa Anita track

glad to meet an ilxor who can high five, forks

(insert snappy sorkalogue here)

i think maybe HBO realizes that 'smart TV' nerds and critics tend to hold grudges about shows they like getting yanked way more than they praise networks for putting on those shows to begin with -- it's like they're doing everything they can to cultivate goodwill with every auteurs' fanbase they can after burning the Milch stans a couple times.

― abandon al ships (some dude), Monday, July 2, 2012 6:13 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah

At some point, therw's also the issue of whether it will have enough episodes to syndicate (Sopranos, Entourage, etc.), so if even a middling West Wing will do that, it's worth e investment,

i think that's way more true w/ tv sci-fi ppl who continue to hold grudges against fox for firefly, dollhouse, whatever else 'fox didn't give a chance/scheduled poorly' while not really noticing the other networks don't touch sci-fi at all really. the only hbo decision that seems to really haunt them in terms of cancellation is deadwood and that came about due to high costs (same thing that shortened rome's lifespan) and hubris (the same thing that led to what is probably the only fuckup hbo has had bigger than cancelling deadwood - passing on mad men). i do wonder how ppl would view hbo if they hadn't brought the wire back after season 3.

man i read somewhere that entourage and weeds are the longest running (in terms of number of episodes) cable comedies ever and i'm pretty sure it's actually curb yr enthusiasm (or maybe sunny? though i think they meant premium cable) but that entourage and weeds are the other strong contenders is a pretty strong indictment of 'cable is better'.

seems like we're kinda in a dry spell for tv sci-fi atm

post-lost burnout, plus there's a network for that now

network for that decided to not be network for that a few years ago iirc. post-lost burnout is right though, i'm guessing after the event and v flamed out the networks finally decided 'fuck it' and the idea of creating a sci-fi show that didn't try to recapture lost's 'magic' was unfathomable.

yeah, heroes, the event, flash forward, there's a new SOMETHING CRAZY JUST HAPPENED SPEND A COUPLE YEARS FIGURING IT OUT WITH US show coming but it doesn't seem worth the investment imo

i mean when have they not fucked that up

i think there were at least 1.5 attempts at another lost a year from lost's second season until the year after lost ended, many of them scheduled after lost which was the worst spot to put a lost clone. iirc the best of these was maybe the alien invasion via hurricane one that was the first 'next lost', had william fichtner in it maybe?

is falling skies worth a damned?

based on the ~3 hour preview of it i got waiting for prometheus to start i'd wager 'no'. wary of tnt drama in general though (slightly curious about dallas, you're gonna need a hotter babe than jordana brewster to rope me though). i am vaguely curious about some canadian show called continuum though. i'm not sure why.

based on the ~3 hour preview of it i got waiting for prometheus to start

lol, otm

heh,not only have i already forgotten promqueentheus i also forgot about the
YOU'VE BEEN WATCHING "THE ROUNDUP" WITH PREVIEWS OF THE HOT NEW TNT SCIFI DRAMA FALLING SKIES THE NEW 2013 INFINITI AND THE US ARMY BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE

haven't had cable for nearly five years now so these things happen but have rarely felt more like i was living in a foreign country than watching some dudes who bid on the contents of abandoned storage units treated like icons.

lol

i don't want to think of someone not being weirded out by the "behind the scenes on the new storage wars ad" clip i saw before previews at the avengers.

i try REALLY hard to turn and talk to the person i'm with through the entirety of those godforsaken things

...lest ye be confronted with the terrifying visage of Larry Hagman during the promo for the 'Dallas' reboot O_o

heh,not only have i already forgotten promqueentheus i also forgot about the
YOU'VE BEEN WATCHING "THE ROUNDUP" WITH PREVIEWS OF THE HOT NEW TNT SCIFI DRAMA FALLING SKIES THE NEW 2013 INFINITI AND THE US ARMY BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE

― Authorities don't know who shot the 50 Cent the goose. (forksclovetofu), Monday, July 2, 2012 8:09 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha are they really pushing hard to pretend Falling Skies is a new show to try to pull in people who missed how boring it was last year?

ya know, if there was one person i'd think to ask if i wanted to know whether a new TNT drama was all that or not, it would be sd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ETr1i_YNo

Mortimer seems like she's overacting every scene.

More Munn please.

Great dialogue

oh yeah olivia munn was good.
i feel like he hasn't earned 'great dialogue' because the rendering of people's speech can be fine but what they're talking about is such bullshit. it - already! - felt like such a weird retread of episode one - are you in or are you out, let's start this thing over. emily mortimer's speeches make me want to do some hysterical freudian reading about the gender dynamics of the woman needing to be saved by the heroic guy. & the dialogue just rotates around vague allegiance to a noble cause. it isn't a show about what people believe but that they (intensely, admirably) believe. nothing's getting unpacked or explored.

2nd episodes tend to get made so long after pilots that i think sometimes there's a tendency to reiterate and overstate the premise and keep 'beginning' the story, even though the audience usually just saw the first episode a week earlier and doesn't need reminding. 2nd ep of Newsroom had much bigger problems than just that, though, obv.

How is my buddy Kumail in that Franklin & Bash thing?

emily mortimer's speeches make me want to do some hysterical freudian reading about the gender dynamics of the woman needing to be saved by the heroic guy.

this is so otm. i was like, what is up with her ridiculous over-the-top praise of this surly dude at every turn. i mean, i know, she has a guilty conscience and is maybe still in love with him, but honestly it was absurd. the dialogue is not great!