The Newsroom: Sorkin's HBO Joint

haters gonna hate and there's a lot of bad but there's some good but what really interests me is that it doesn't feel like it should be on HBO at all.

Some good, yes, but it's mostly like a louder, more unpleasant Sports Night.

i really wanted to like it. i loved west wing as much as anyone, but damn this was bad

inexplicably bad acting from waterston

what really interests me is that it doesn't feel like it should be on HBO at all.

that's because it feels like a worse version of shit he did on network tv

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

should i watch this guys?

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

Waterston was way off, yeah. xposts

Clunky, Sorkinesque stuff with rousing speeches and an utterly lack of cynicism. It's axe-grinding, but not wholly unpleasant as of yet (I expect that will change *very* quickly). I'm interested to see how he's structured the season. I also totally and utterly believe in a lot of the ideas but it's cheap to re-do the BP Oil Spill with 20/20 etc.

we reached for the stars, and we acted like men

That was pretty Sam Seaborn.

felt like a parody to me. that schmaltzy music playing over it didn't help

Yeah but West Wing was never much better. Maybe it's *we* who have changed.... ~~deep~~

I never watched the West Wing when it was on, but after some Studio 60, The Social Network and this, I don't know how I could take it seriously now

I don't know what your problem with The Social Network was, at the very least in regards to the tone/corniness that pervades his other work.

well you've already said "haters gonna hate" in regards to this, so i'm not surprised

well i didn't mean that in regards to my opinion on The Newsroom (it isn't good, fwiw), but TSN is a lot different because of FIncher (this has been discussed i know) so I was just curious.

fincher definitely lit it better but the script was still pretty facts-through-the-sorkintron-3000

ah right, so it's the facts that bother you and not the tone/delivery/preaching/grandstanding?

xp, but it won't matter much

In re: Sorkin. I watched Moneyball in a theater. I watched The Social Network on dvd at home with my wife. Never watched The West Wing. Maybe two episodes of Sports Network or what ever it was called. That's it.

He appears to know how to write a screenplay so it has the requisite number of acts and can write dialogue that has a bit of snap. I was amused. I would watch something else he wrote. Probably.

His Achillean Heel is a simplistic sentimentality in his method of summarizing characters and their inner selves. This shortcoming will not hurt him with the general public. As a rule, sentimetality plays very well with the masses. He's no crappier than, say, Neil Simon in his later years, when the jokes got more formulaic.

"Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail" still a perfect episode of network television imo.

Gukbe otm

the social network was pretty entertaining, but the ways that sorkin changes the facts and the words he puts in their mouths fit pretty comfortably with his whole hackneyed chayefsky aesthetic, so it adds to my point that it'd be hard to watch the west wing already being familiar with his later work, even if fincher and cast sugared the pill.

I think TSN was a lot more ambiguous than that, because of Fincher and the performances, but yeah I wonder if watching The West Wing now for the first time would find it grating.

I mean if this isn't sorkin tone/grandstanding/delivery/preaching...

Erica Albright: It didn't stop you from writing it. As if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared. The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink. And you published that Erica Albright was a bitch, right before you made some ignorant crack about my family's name, my bra size, and then rated women based on their hotness.
Reggie: Erica, is there a problem?
Erica Albright: [Turning to talk to Reggie] No, there's no problem.
Erica Albright: [Turning back to face Mark] You write your snide bullshit from a dark room because that's what the angry do nowadays. I was nice to you, don't torture me for it.

it isn't really

there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie, gukbe. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.

like, a character being upset that the protagonist behaved like a shit and then was very verbose in her rebuke doesn't really fit the bill compared to a Sam Seaborn speech or Bartlett talking to the ghost of Mrs. Landingham or Chandler talking about True Satire or whatever

again, that's just verbose. that's not preaching/grandstanding.

but i see what you mean. like you've heard one Mamet script you've heard them all etc.... I respect that.

i will admit my sense of what his aesthetic amounts to is based on the post-curdle end of his career, that and some of those early '90s "you can't handle the truth"/"i am god" hits

though if you don't think "You write your snide bullshit from a dark room because that's what the angry do nowadays" isn't grandstanding, you may be aaron sorkin.

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

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.

every single character detail/relationship tension/loss of faith/renewal of faith plot point etc etc of this episode was lifted directly from sports night or the west wing.

Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer's bickering is gonna get old real fast.

inexplicably bad acting from waterston

― buh, Sunday, June 24, 2012 11:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah! i think he doesn't have the knack of sorkin dialogue yet. he's no isaac jaffee.

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.