I Hate The Newsroom

The Show Must Go On

Meanwhile, I imagine the sound of Aaron Sorkin typing Season 2 scripts for THE NEWSROOM that expand on the Koch Brothers' Tea Party/American Taliban/Operation Grand Slam scheme to take over America (punctuated only by the ding of a bell on his manual typewriter).

From Politico:

David Koch breaks from GOP on gay marriage, taxes, defense cuts

Billionaire industrialist David Koch, who is helping steer millions of dollars to elect Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans, on Thursday told POLITICO he disagrees with the GOP’s stance on gay marriage and believes the U.S. needs to consider raising taxes to balance the budget.

...The 1980 vice presidential nominee for the socially liberal – but fiscally conservative – Libertarian Party, Koch told POLITICO “I believe in gay marriage” when asked about the GOP’s stance on gay rights.

...As for whether military spending cuts should be on the table, Koch said, “I think to balance the budget, probably every federal department has to take cuts in my opinion. We have to spread it around.”

Beef Stew Ex Machina

The season finale of The Newsroom, “The Greater Fool,” only confirmed everything I expected from the Aaron Sorkin HBO offering after seeing the first episode. Sorkin's clear mission was to use the setting of a cable news network as the vehicle through which he would take-down people and groups that are an anathema to him (read: Republicans/Conservatives). But based on his impressive track record (The West Wing), I never expected The Newsroom to suck so much.

Sorkin’s straw-man arguments reached their zenith of ridiculousness when his avatar, Will McAvoy, labels the Tea Party the “American Taliban” while showing a dubious laundry list of their vices which do nothing to prove his case.  I’m certain a fascinating series could be produced that effectively explores the Tea Party (and Occupy movements) that isn’t as laughably sad as Sorkin’s self-righteous attempt.

As I gave up bothering to argue the politics of the episode, I was left to judge the storyline and character development.  And, as has been the case all season, both struck me as embarrassingly pathetic.

Of course, no one really expected Will McAvoy's firing by Leona Lansing to stick.  But, the last minute reprieve Charlie devises whereby Leona is forced to confront her son Reese's phone hacking scheme was too convenient.  I half expected Reese to breakdown like Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men and start yelling that he ordered "the Code Red." Charlie breaks Leona and Reese by producing an incriminating envelope which leads to Reese's confession. It turns out that the envelope only contained a recipe for beef stew.  Please. Real ball-busters like Leona and Reese would have at least opened the damn envelope before blathering all the facts onto Charlie’s concealed recording device like a bad Law and Order episode.  Wouldn't they?  

As I said ten weeks ago, I hate The Newsroom.

A Very Mockable Debate

The main problem with Episode 9 of The Newsroom, “Blackout Part 2: Mock Debate,” is that its central storyline, ACN’s (and Aaron Sorkin’s via Will McAvoy) vision of a “better” debate format is based on two flawed assumptions.  First, Sorkin suggests the actual participants in the real GOP primary debates didn’t face tough questioning from moderators. In fact, between May 5, 2011 and March 3 2012, there were 27 such debates. Ask Rick Perry, whose promising candidacy faded as a direct result of the debates, if he felt they  weren’t tough enough. Out of close to 60 hours of debate footage, the episode cherry-picks ONE softball question posed to Michelle Bachmann and implies that it's a representative sample. Sorkin is full of shit. And I mean that in a nice way.

For what it's worth, the entire GOP primary debate schedule and video replays can be seen here.

The second problem with Sorkin’s premise is that low ratings would prevent the GOP from staging a debate on a given network.  In the real world, even lowly CNN was a participating sponsor of six debates.  The idea that ACN could not have gotten at least one of the 27 without covering the Anderson/Anthony stories to raise their ratings is simply preposterous. 

Furthermore, does anyone seriously think the problem with the way current political debates are conducted is that there’s not enough reporter involvement?  I’ll answer that. No.  ACN proposes a format that seems modeled after a Bill O’Reilly interview: fire questions at the candidate, don’t give them time to answer, and then quickly fire off a follow up question.  Does anyone think that representatives of either party organization would agree to such an arrangement?  I’ll answer that. No.

Thus, the whole premise is just a thinly veiled way for Sorkin to spout his own personal political sound-bites.  Of course, the irony is that quick sound-bites are the exact thing Will McAvoy complains about.  Sorkin certainly has the right to express his opinions. But, there’s nothing entertaining about how he does it. 

In fact, “Blackout Part 2: Mock Debate” may be the worst episode of the series.

Lights Out

As I type up this week’s write-up, there’s a Veep marathon running on HBO. Watching it clarifies why I hate The Newsroom.  Both shows feature an ensemble cast of flawed office workers wading their way through a tricky maze of modern politics.  Yet, Veep, a half-hour comedy, features more intelligently written dialog, more subtle and fully defined characters, and situations which provide more insightful commentary on what makes us dysfunctional humans tick than any (I repeat ANY) hour of The Newsroom.  I think the difference is that Veep is clearly written for a 2012 audience while Aaron Sorkin's style seems stuck in the last decade (the salad days of The West Wing).     

Racing toward the finale, “The Blackout Part 1: Tragedy Porn,” ratchets up the tension between Leona Lansing and the “News Night” staff who Lansing wants to put out of business.  Charlie Skinner meets with a former NSA operative ("Late for Dinner") and discovers that Leona, with her son Reese, are  using a post 9/11 high tech government surveillance program called “Global Clarity” to spy on ACN staff. It’s tediously melodramatic stuff and I predict that in Part 2, someone will refer to project Global Clarity and say "follow the money" OR Sloan will ask Neal again if he thinks her ass is too big (or both).

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The Vulture's Josef Adalian and Denise Martin on Aaron Sorkin's spin doctoring after The Newsroom writer firings. 

"About a week ago, Sorkin/McAvoy was urging journalists to not 'be a facilitator for whatever bullshit the guest wants to feed your viewers.' And then, when journalists asked Sorkin to clarify what he meant when he said his staff wasn't 'fired,' Sorkin simply … refused to answer the question. Where does this leave us? If only we could ask Will McAvoy for some advice."

WWWD (What Would Will Do)?

Better Late Than Never

If Aaron Sorkin did a show about NASA in the same style as The Newsroom, it would focus primarily on characters in Mission Control doing a lot of talking and sometimes cutting away to actual astronauts for a few seconds before circling back to a female character whose command console is emitting a shower of sparks because she just clumsily spilled a cup of coffee on it.

I suppose it's unavoidable given the show's format, but watching Episode 7, "5/1," about the night the country found out that Osama Bin Laden was killed by Seal Team Six, didn't really capture any of the drama of the event. The manner in which bits of exposition were related to the audience via Blackberry messages was as unexciting as watching characters stuck on an airport tarmac (oh wait, they did that too).  

Newsroom Bingo

My only complaint is Ryan Bort neglected to include: "Soft piano music plays in background."

From Paste:

"Many have criticized Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO drama, The Newsroom, for its predictability and reliance on clichés, stereotypes and assorted Sorkinisms. Instead of rolling our eyes and complaining, we’ve decided to embrace the reoccurring elements of The Newsroom with Newsroom Bingo."

Sometimes a Banana Peel Is Just a Banana Peel

Aaron Sorkin responds to reports about firing the entire writing staff of The Newsroom as simply "A couple of staffing changes..."  Fair enough.

He then defends his depiction of female characters.

From E!Online:

Banana Peels: One of the consistant criticisms of how the show is how it portrays the female characters as at times bumbling. "I completely respect that opinion, but I 100 percent disagree," Sorkin responds. "I think the female characters on the show are not just talked about being good at their job, they are—you plainly see that they are good at their job." But he does admit to injecting humor into their personalities. "Once you've nailed that down, you can slip on as many banana peels as you want."

Good Will Hunted

I ran out of time (and energy) this week. So, my recap of The Newsroom might seem somewhat eclectic.  But, given how Sorkin handles the subject matter, that's apropos. After Episode 5's pathetic homage to the movie Rudy, I half-expected The Newsroom's 6th episode, "Bullies," to end (like the movie Good will Hunting it references) with Will McAvoy's psychiatrist, Jack Habeeb, saying over and over again to the troubled TV journalist: "It's not your fault. It’s not your fault."

The driving, but ultimately minor, plot element driving "Bullies" is a death threat Will receives via ACN's website.  Will is upset by the low quality of the web comments he has to include on his show.  According to Mackenzie, they have to air such a segment because ACN's "paid website" makes up for their drop in ratings.  The concept of ACN being able to monetize itself on the Internet, given how real news organizations haven’t figured out how to accomplish this feat, seems far-fetched.  But, okay.

Will seems particularly annoyed by "anonymous" comments and asks Neal if anything can be done about it. Neal says that there may be a solution to which Will replies: "Talk to me Tonto." In addition to being racist (Neal is Indian), this also suggests that Will is casting himself as the Lone Ranger – a character who chose to remain anonymous.  If I felt this were deliberate irony (as one person suggested to me), I'd applaud it.  However, in my opinion, the too clever by half Sorkin is so amused by the witty banter firing off his laptop that he doesn’t catch the inconsistency implicit in the dialog.  Like I said, that’s just my opinion.

Print The Legend

 

During a July 17th interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Aaron Sorkin characterized  The Newsroom as aspirational and "meant to be a fantasy set against very real and oftentimes very serious events."  Of course, I had come to that conclusion a while ago.  And its latest installment finally removes all doubt.

Amen, the fifth episode of HBO's The Newsroom covers a lot of ground. So, forgive me if my review seems to jump around (it's not my fault). The center piece of the episode concerns the twin protests in Egypt that mark the start of the so-called “Arab Spring” and protests by union workers against Wisconsin Governor Scott Wilson. It is suggested that the latter of these events is part of a complex conspiracy.  Amen contains scenes with Sorkin's characters use overly confusing and convoluted dialog (even for Sorkin).  But then again, descriptions of most conspiracy theories are generally convoluted and confusing (more on that later). 

In Egypt as events unfold, ACN anchor, Elliot Hirsch, is violently beaten by a crowd of dissidents. Here, Sorkin makes a curious choice as his depiction of the Hirsch incident seems to have been inspired by the real-life ordeal endured by CBS reporter Lara Logan.  Logan was sexually assaulted during the protests in Egypt by an angry mob.  Did Sorkin decide to totally ignore that actual event and, instead, fictionalize it out respect for Logan's privacy?  On the other hand, perhaps Elliot Hirsch stood in for Lara Logan because Sorkin figures the female characters on The Newsroom get abused enough already.

In any event, to me, it seems a glaring omission.  But one I would hardly characterize as "aspirational."