The Newsroom: Sorkin's HBO Joint

btw has anyone actually stopped watching this yet, i wondered if horseshoe was still on board

other stuff of his has been way punchier than this, hasn't seemed as formulaic.

i think i like this about it, maybe, or want to be able to rearrange it as a positive: other stuff hasn't been as thoroughgoing exhibition of sorkin doing what he does well for an hour at a time (well, with ten minutes of failed pathos interrupting)

i mean, probably, because aaron sorkin holds me in some kind of thrall, but omg schlump you know what is starting up again soon? BOSS!

xp

i still really like jeff daniels. every episode i say aloud to my sister, "jeff daniels is just better than this show" and she's very patient with me about it. (she doesn't watch the show)

on my facebook the newsroom enthusiasts, or at least the people who were willing to spare ten seconds to post some link to some review or trailer or something, were very predictably 1) concerned facebook liberals (a distinct crowd from leftist-or-further-left types with countercultural sympathies) and 2) walking-stereotype college-aged intellectual aspirants who are into, like, woody allen and tom waits for the first time in their lives and have yet to learn proper attitudes of shame / disdain about 'being cultured'.

i kind of feel like both those audience demos are likely to rest firm on an attitude like 'at least it's better than everything else', but it must be a pretty specialized demo that could be satisfied with that while at the same time not having any knowledge or interest in the slightly more 'substantive' or 'important' tv that has been getting chinstrokers going post-sopranos, and at the same time not of any of the plenty of good but obviously not super substantive shows that would make them cautious about being so self-congratulatory about being into the newsroom.

have you glanced at the comments in Pareene's article? Most reactions: "But there's so much shit on TV! I'm glad someone's being whiny and didactic for liberal causes! WAH WAH WAH."

on phone, xposts, etc

people seem to remember sorkin as having strengths he never did: like, people remember martin sheen yelling at god as being good drama and not high kitsch. i don't know i might have complained about that upthread

it's maybe worth thinking about how everyone on this thread is people the show defines as not being part of its audience, except when er it does (munn as meta casting)

'telegraphed love triangle' - hm - how many minutes into his girl friday do you go on thinking that rosalind russell is going to move to oklahoma city?

boss is probably better than this, actually. so are the two shows i started watching last night, come to that

tempting to think of those as low-information tv consumers

(probably busy off supporting liberal causes, only so much time to unwind in front of the toob and be edified)

what are the two shows you started watching last night, thomp?

yes! so pysched for boss! i am repressing that the trailer made it looks slightly trashier this season but yeah i keep remembering how good it was. this always seems remarkable because there doesn't seem to be a small-scale well-dressed articulately-blogging cult following around it or anything.

& yeah JD is so good; i even sorta cave to his likeable-asshole thing - not when they end an ep with him secretly writing flamboyantly benevolent cheques, but just to his actions seeming to exist as varied manifestations of his character - that his grudges are a part of his beliefs, his impatience a sign of his concern, &c. the acting is mainly really good in this (i am discounting people like the guy who was shouting at mcavoy to pronounce gabrielle giffords dead, not because he was bad necessarily but because some of the parts are just cartoon villains). olivia munn good so far. emily mortimer still kinda head-tiltingly beseechy, maybe that is not her fault idk.
xxxps &c

ugh the noble rich man secret philanthropy bugs me so much about this show wtf

i am basically my dad watching foxnews watching this show at this point. who knew i had such depths of pointless rage.

i have to admit, olivia munn is my favorite thing about this show. there is a sentence i never thought i'd type.

i laughed when emily mortimer asked her "do you have any...human knowledge?" and she replied, "i've been told i do not."

re: not learning proper attitudes of shame, etc.: it's not that i think this is 'good', whatever that means, but that i feel like so many of the pannings it has received boil down to 'but we have better ways of being elitist now'

horseshoe i watched two episodes of 'enlightened' and ten of 'nurse jackie' and then my laptop stopped working again

'telegraphed love triangle' - hm - how many minutes into his girl friday do you go on thinking that rosalind russell is going to move to oklahoma city?

ha otm but this just feels more cynical or at least less sparkly than that. i am satisfied w/it navigating towards obstacles & all but it's been so clunky with the 1000% assholish boyfriend, the studly war-medic tendencies of our guy, the date with the roomie etc. you're right, though, these are kinda par for the course.

it's maybe worth thinking about how everyone on this thread is people the show defines as not being part of its audience, except when er it does (munn as meta casting)

this is so interesting & hadn't dawned on me, i need some time to chew over what it actually means though & which of my complaints i can continue chewing over & drooling on this thread.

i kind of like that they started with the boyfriend entirely unlikable and jimmy olsen totally golden and then humanised the former and made jimmy olsen slide towards douchy. also he always looks on the verge of coming down with a cold

those guys aren't there to exist in their own right, though, they're to throw what the adults are doing into relief / to reenact, dramatise mortimer and daniels's backstory

like that they did, cmon, it was in the stars / formalism

basically if you treat it as a sketch on the ben stiller show, it's awesome.

loooool yes

i think this is unusual sorkin because almost all scenes are supposed to be ha ha witty funny

i'm not sure why people are singling out Jeff Daniels as good in this show, obviously he's talented and doing his best w/ the material but they've done such a terrible job of making his character sympathetic or charismatic or anything he's supposed to be that i basically prefer anytime he's offscreen to anytime he's onscreen.

while i love a good hate-watch i've avoided this because I love jeff daniels too much

good idea

i think this is unusual sorkin because almost all scenes are supposed to be ha ha witty funny

this is probably the less meta reason why i like it, because sorkin's comic writing has always been better than his big dramatic moments. (and yet, the sketches in studio 60 ...)

The opening thing made me think of Tracy Jordan's "Banter!".

Wish I could find that clip.

Hmm, might be better if Daniels simply played Keith Olbermann.

is it me or is Olivia Munn the best thing about this?

Every week it's just "how will they humiliate the women on this show" all the fuck over again.

is it me or is Olivia Munn the best thing about this?

― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Sunday, July 29, 2012 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

it's possible lately, yeah

sorkin trope watch: shades of sports night in the "do you really want this to be a therapist appointment? i think you do" stuff

Well that whole episode was basically the structure of that West Wing episode where Josh had to see the therapist after the shooting.

riiight that was the other thing it was reminding me of that i couldn't put my finger on

this was pretty good! really. really. like it had really good parts. the only issue with it is that it's far fetched. & actually that first part kinda continued its technophobic stretch, with the BS about ID verification &c&c&c. but it was good. it ended the santorum interview thing w/real drama & grace, & managed to tread the tightrope of Aaron-Sorkin-Battles-Race thing pretty well. also wtg on narratively utilising olivia munn's bilingualism.

it was the best so far by quite some distance. except maybe the pilot, but those were more naive times.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-newsroom-and-the-perils-of-timedelay-drama,83049/

Well that whole episode was basically the structure of that West Wing episode where Josh had to see the therapist after the shooting.

Hawkeye and Sidney, and the chicken. Which I guess is where it originally came from, if it's not older.

there's probably a tvtropes page for it

'hey girl' /:

Even worse than ep4 which I wouldn't have thought possible. The bit with Don and the pilots was awful.

Very gossippy garbage to be sure, but I loved this:

http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/mandy-stadtmiller-aaron-sorkin-newsroom-character

she comes off pretty horrible there but holy shit, what a douchebag this guy is
http://classic.xojane.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_full_width/field_image_attachments/article/STADTMILLER.jpeg

^this strikes me as a really complex dick move to send flowers on someone's birthday with this note

really?

yeah! weirdly snide power trip thing to do.

http://www.xojane.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_full_width/field_image_attachments/article/flowers_0.jpg

Mandy,
From your rotting body, flowers shall grow and you are in them and that is eternity -- Aaron

wow that was the most repulsive hour of tv i've ever seen

aaron sorkin why you not make it easier to mount defense of your show

(i thought this ep was okay)

i haven't seen it yet, i just assume that every week people that coming closer to the claim 'watching this was literally like descending into hell' is a bad sign

i liked the 'fix you' episode and i would agree that this one was kind of hateful

i like this terrible show generally but i felt like i needed a shower after that one

is he just straight-up calling everyone under 30 a Nazi at this point