The Newsroom: Sorkin's HBO Joint

we are coming to be aware that really the lightweight breaking-news dramedy is but an excuse for the sartrean theatre of suffering the protagonists go through, rather than vice versa or the reverse

from everything i have read it seems that 'the west wing' is far superior to 'The Newsroom' and yet i have quite happily watched every episode of this whereas i made it through maybe 3 or 4 episodes of WW.

yeah i think all the criticisms being made of this which are actually accurate apply way more so to the west wing?

i have probably said that already. anyway just, probably because it's easier to maintain standards writing ten hours of television without needing to conform to advert breaks than it is writing twenty-two forty-minute chunks with advert breaks, sorkin's actual strengths ('writing really tight drama' rather than 'being smart' or 'being someone whose politics i agree with 100%') are really well exhibited here (with the exception of, er, the couple of really bad episodes)

i suspect the first season of sports night probably has his best batting average, though, i dunno.

i'm in that zone just beneath "hate-watch" where i love to read frustrated recaps

The whole thing about Jim doing the Sex and the City tour, which was brought up as a good date to impress Lisa, by himself after work, and randomly running into Maggie, was just....ehhhh.....

Olivia should've taken the $4 million job. Also, she's in love with Don? I don't recall this ever being brought up before now.

Jeff Daniels should've quit a job that is literally killing him, where he works every day with his ex screaming at him and gets death threats. The stress of it all pretty clearly responsible for his ending up in the hospital.

Sorority woman should've taken a look at the two lunatics interviewing her and ran away.

But she can handle it because she's why makes America the best country in the world

Ugh, this finale.

I was thinking how much more interesting it would be to have a show about the rise and fall of a Glenn Beck type rather than a Keith Olbermann. He would have frenemies like a Rush Limbaugh type (cameo by Kelsey Grammer), a Karl Rove type (cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

I mean, I would rather be a fly on the wall at Fox News when Shep Smith dares to make a wisecrack than high-fives backstage at The Daily Show.

The whole thing about Jim doing the Sex and the City tour, which was brought up as a good date to impress Lisa, by himself after work, and randomly running into Maggie, was just....ehhhh.....

aaron sorkin has seen the opening credits to sex and the city

It's just really sloppy writing. Once the 3 hour SATC tour is brought up, Jim goes "I don't know if i want to have her like me THAT much". Yet he's going to take time out of his super busy schedule of saving the world through news to go on this tour and not take Lisa? If your gf was into a TV show and there was a tour you heard about that they would enjoy and your sole reason for doing so is for their benefit, wouldn't you want to take them along on the tour too? You know, as a date? To impress someone you are dating?

i agree with you that the setup was sloppily handled but i think what you're missing is that this is a comedy

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9h64qpuY71qb7fyxo1_r8_250.gif
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9h64qpuY71qb7fyxo4_r1_250.gif

the person who made that gif is also missing the fact that this is a comedy, probably

i didn't read that as a comedy moment at all (unless it's of the unintentional kind)

So, if it's a comedy, then it does make more sense. The mock debate and last episodes montage of "Find a clip of a Republican saying something and cut it with them contradicting it" did feel a LOT like maybe a more dramatic and emo look at the making of The Daily Show. And having Olivia Munn kind of helps to make that connection even moreso.

yeah i think all the criticisms being made of this which are actually accurate apply way more so to the west wing?

― thomp, Tuesday, August 28, 2012 10:31 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

i am somewhat aggravated and somewhat relieved that i don't even have the time to strenuously argue with this post

I was thinking how much more interesting it would be to have a show about the rise and fall of a Glenn Beck type rather than a Keith Olbermann. He would have frenemies like a Rush Limbaugh type (cameo by Kelsey Grammer), a Karl Rove type (cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

I mean, I would rather be a fly on the wall at Fox News when Shep Smith dares to make a wisecrack than high-fives backstage at The Daily Show.

― Earth, Wind & Fire & Alabama (Eazy), Tuesday, August 28, 2012 11:55 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

this is otm btw

yeah, that sounds genuinely awesome. in a way this half-awful show i enjoyed a great deal obviously isn't. but i like half-awful shows a whole lot.

i can't really imagine anyone wanting to watch the Will McAvoy show, if he was real he definitely wouldn't be a popular cable host, would he?

they never even really showed us how he was lightweight and pleasant in his Leno period, which feels increasingly difficult to even imagine

lightweight and pleasant does not equal a Leno period surely?

the super dramatic emptying of the trash felt really early/mid '90s. like sandra bullock/the net, or the like.

Would be a fun season finale for them to make the giant mash-up presentation, only to have the Indian kid show them Jon Stewart doing the same thing with similar clips an hour earlier.

aaron sorkin has seen the opening credits to sex and the city

― thomp, Monday, August 27, 2012 11:30 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aaron sorkin has had the recycle bin explained to him

― thomp, Monday, August 27, 2012 11:30 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a+

lightweight and pleasant does not equal a Leno period surely?

― pandemic, Wednesday, August 29, 2012 7:00 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ok, what do you think being called "the Jay Leno of cable news" signifies?

i've just never seen leno described as 'pleasant'

well i meant more 'innocuous' -- the people who watch him consider him pleasant, or appreciate that he's less sarcastic or subversive than Letterman or whoever. point is i kinda wish they had shown McAvoy in his Leno days because i can't picture it.

i can see mcavoy doing 'bland' but not 'avuncular' i see what you mean

right

Come on, Leno is the definition of pleasant.

point is i kinda wish they had shown McAvoy in his Leno days because i can't picture it.

Agreed. They aimed for this in the very first scene, in the first minute or two at Northwestern before his big rant.

true. would've been very different to show him at the desk on the air, though. all the crap about "he doesn't do this for the money, he does it to feel loved by the viewers" just rings really hollow because it doesn't seem like he was ever a man of the people who basked in the attention or even listened to what the audience was saying about him IRL or online or anything.

ok, maybe the cc-to-all plot was not so farfetched

http://gawker.com/5942663/newsroom-star-alison-pill-accidentally-posts-topless-pic-on-twitter-[nsfw]

Whens part 2 of the ending?

Will took not getting those debates real hard. Couldn't bear to watch and instead sung 'God Bless America' at Comerica Park last night.

haha oh god please let this be the beginning of a @MattAlbie60 type running gag

Rosemarie DeWitt and Patton Oswalt joining

because the problem was there weren't enough good actors

Can't wait for Olivia Munn to walk through the studio on air and talk to Dev Patel about Ohio election results/bigfoot.

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+most+honest+three+and+a+half+minutes+ever+televised

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+most+honest+three+and+a+half+minutes+ever+televised

lol barf

(german subtitled)

i was trying to find the version that was forwarded to me (as a 6 Meg .wmv attachment) by my dickhead conservative uncle, who seems unaware that there is an internet outside of his email inbox.

here are screencaps of the last few seconds of the one he sent:

http://i.imgur.com/tXxCL.png
http://i.imgur.com/LxR7C.png
http://i.imgur.com/Bn8pb.png
http://i.imgur.com/LRZma.png
http://i.imgur.com/CPVXk.png
http://i.imgur.com/IX5ZB.png
http://i.imgur.com/VBPcb.png
http://i.imgur.com/T2IjQ.png

i just....

aaron sorkin is like having an older family member who is kind of incorrigible and wrong about a lot of things but still really funny and not really that wrong about a lot of other things

whereas e.g. mad men is like your little brother doing a women's studies degree and telling you how much he gets laid

Never saw this, but I see Sam Waterston wearing a bow tie in a clip up above. Is that basically the gist of it: bow ties = authenticity?

haha thomp otm

bow ties obv. = experience

oh man, the turn to the "oh we used to be the greatest country" with the schmaltzy piano underneath, barf barf barf

this is *horrible*, the idea that these are mind-blowing insights which neither token leftie nor token rightwinger can perceive, it's just cringe inducing