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The Newsroom

6K views 106 replies 22 participants last post by  phrelin 
#1 ·
I don't see a thread here on this show, so I have no idea if anyone here is watching it. It is one of 2 or 3 shows that are "appointment television" for me.

Writer/creator Aaron Sorkin gets a lot of flack in the reviews,and is rightfully accused of using a lot of tropes. The show is also interpreted by those leaning right as leaning left, maybe not as rightfully. And I can't disagree that yes, no one talks like this in real life, and yes, the love triangles are pretty ridiculous and boring.

But if you get past all of that, most of which is still pretty clever and entertaining, to the meat of the story, I honestly can't find anything better than this show. Last night's "Red Team III" episode completely knocked it out of the park. I don't want to sound too hyperbolic, but honestly I have not experienced television written this well since, well since Aaron Sorking stopped writing scripts for The West Wing a decade ago. And that includes every single episode of five seasons of The Good Wife, which I still say is the best-written series we have ever been blessed with.

If you have seen The Social Network, or Sports Night (reruns of which are about to begin), or even the ill-fated Studio 60, you probably have an idea how good this guy is. He may have some idiosyncracies that disturb others (and most who complain about him are writers that are jealous that they don't have anywhere near that amount of talent), but this guy can write circles around anybody. the guy is a national treasure.
 
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#28 ·
armophob said:
Newsroom is a must watch here. Never saw the sports night show. Not a sports fan, so it never interested me.
You don't have to be a "newsie" to enjoy "The Newsroom" - I'm sure you see that. It's just like that for "Sports Night". It *happens* to be set in a cable sports channel like The Newsroom is set at ACN. In Sports Night's first episode, they hooked me with a scene between the two anchors (one of them being Peter Krause who I couldn't get enough of in "Six Feet Under" and Josh Charles is the other) where Charles makes an impassioned speech to newly-divorce Krause about how bad his now-ex-wife treated him (Krause) with him never realizing it. I thought it was really well done when I fist saw it in 1998. When I re-watched that episode in 2006 right after my now-ex-wife moved out, it hit me like a ton of bricks as my best friend had made almost the exact same speech to me.

It's *that* personal drama that made the show That Damn Good.
 
#31 ·
Maruuk said:
Amazing how certain current events are paralleling this Newsroom plot.

I probably should have given Sports Night more of a chance. How many seasons did that run?
45 eps or so, over two and a half seasons, more or less, mas o menos, practically speaking.

What annoys me is that Netflix has just a DVD of it, while it'd be perfect for streaming. Guess I should check out Amazon VOD....
 
#35 ·
Laxguy said:
45 eps or so, over two and a half seasons, more or less, mas o menos, practically speaking.

What annoys me is that Netflix has just a DVD of it, while it'd be perfect for streaming. Guess I should check out Amazon VOD....
If you have Amazon Prime (and everybody should) you may be able to stream it free. Amazon streaming has a pretty good selection of TV shows.
 
#37 ·
Maruuk said:
I don't think HBO is as ratings-driven as a broadcast net since they don't have to please advertisers. I mean, they ran two seasons of "John from Cincinnati" didn't they??
I think ratings play a part of it. While they don't get ad $'s they need to have programming that will cause people to subscribe, or keep subscribing, to HBO so they make the $'s.
 
#38 ·
Maruuk said:
If you have Amazon Prime (and everybody should) you may be able to stream it free. Amazon streaming has a pretty good selection of TV shows.
Yes, I do, and I did. PQ was absolute crap, but I am on a 2.8 Megs download. This was on a Sammy smart TV. Dunno if there's an automatic down-rezzing based on internet connection for TVs, but I didn't see a way to try to bump it up.
 
#40 ·
armophob said:
So to boil it down. The reason the CIA informant wanted the basketball game in the shot, was to be proof his testimony was not edited by the interviewer. Very smart.
I do not recall him requiring the TV to be in the shot, just for the TV to be on so that he would not miss his beloved playoff game. Of course that ended up making no sense because it was behind him with the sound turned off and he could not see it.

Jerry engineered the shot with the TV in the background, supposedly because he wanted the medals as a backdrop. He did not want the TV but agreed to it to get the shot, knowing he could blur it out in post. Otherwise I would agree with your premise because Stomtonavitch was very smart, and very cagey. And played by the perfect smart, cagey actor. Great casting job. In fact, your very premise went through my mind during the setup for the interview; its just that the reality of what happened does not support that Stomtonavitch engineered that.

But of course it was Aaron Sorkin who engineered and manipulated the entire plot to give them a way to discover the edit. It's just sad that they did not figure out how to tell that story much more convincingly to a lay audience, because there was a large opportunity right there to get that right, yet they (writers/producers) did not.

It's ironic that possibly the best-written scripts of any show in any season also have so many plot holes in them. This is not Under the Dome and that is not expected, nor is it very easily tolerated.
 
#41 ·
djlong said:
You don't have to be a "newsie" to enjoy "The Newsroom" - I'm sure you see that. It's just like that for "Sports Night". It *happens* to be set in a cable sports channel like The Newsroom is set at ACN. In Sports Night's first episode, they hooked me with a scene between the two anchors (one of them being Peter Krause who I couldn't get enough of in "Six Feet Under" and Josh Charles is the other) where Charles makes an impassioned speech to newly-divorce Krause about how bad his now-ex-wife treated him (Krause) with him never realizing it. I thought it was really well done when I fist saw it in 1998. When I re-watched that episode in 2006 right after my now-ex-wife moved out, it hit me like a ton of bricks as my best friend had made almost the exact same speech to me.

It's *that* personal drama that made the show That Damn Good.
Agreed. The newsroom in The Newsroom is just the McGuffin, the thing that doesn't mean anything but is there just to make the plot move and work. Same for Sports Night. It serves the same purpose as the statuette in The Maltese Falcon, which had no real purpose except to motivate the characters. "Workplace" drama or comedy needs what first? A workplace.

And I don't want to sound like a broken record but yeah, this is what Sorkin can do, hit you with a dramatic issue that can knock you completely over with just a few well-crafted lines. It's like being hit by Mike Tyson. He can expand your mind, and give you a whole new way of thinking. It's magic. He's the best thing to ever happen to TV.

My favorite Sports Night is the one where the character played by the always wonderful Joshua Malina (currently still knocking it out of the park in Scandal) goes deer hunting. Folks complain about the "speechifying" in Sorkin dramas, but Oh my living God was that a good one that Malina made reporting on his trip. Worth the price of admission for the entire series. SN also gave us Felicity Huffman; nothing wrong there.

If there were two series that were SD that I would still like to go back and watch again (not counting BuffyTVS and X-FIles which I have seen on a loop) they would be Sports Night and The West Wing (just the Sorkin years).
 
#42 ·
Laxguy said:
Yes, I do, and I did. PQ was absolute crap, but I am on a 2.8 Megs download. This was on a Sammy smart TV. Dunno if there's an automatic down-rezzing based on internet connection for TVs, but I didn't see a way to try to bump it up.
Downloads typically down-rez to fit how large the pipe is at the moment. Roku, for instance, has 4 levels. You need $60-80 per month internet service to get decent download quality, and even if you do prime time is going to be bit-starved. And if the connection were perfect it would still be 1080p24 or 720p30, both inferior to broadcast and DBS in many ways.

Apparently "I want it right now" trumps "I want it with good quality". I disagree. I would prefer a service that will download overnight for 8 hours if it has to and still maintain original quality. Good luck finding one. I didn't buy a top-shelf HDTV to watch artifacts all day and night.

I can't imagine 2.8, even if it was reliably continuously that high, could be tolerable, which is why downloading is not for me, not yet. Broadcast is at 12-15 mbps, typically, and folks would be surprised at how visually dumbed-down even that is compared to HDTV as delivered to most stations. DTV is at 7-8 mbps, typically (live video delivery). At 2.8, something's got to give.
 
#43 ·
I WISH it was just a question of money. You spoiled city boys don't realize out here in the sticks 2.4 is all I can get. No cable whatsoever, and 17,000' from the nearest RT. Lucky to get 2.4. ATT of course refuses to upgrade their service because it's not worth it.
 
#44 ·
Maruuk said:
I WISH it was just a question of money. You spoiled city boys don't realize out here in the sticks 2.4 is all I can get. No cable whatsoever, and 17,000' from the nearest RT. Lucky to get 2.4. ATT of course refuses to upgrade their service because it's not worth it.
Have you looked at the Internet offering from DISH? I don't know if it is better than you have now, but it might be worth looking into.

We are out in the boonies and had to deal with dial-up until they finally ran the cable line out to our area a couple years ago. I have a cable modem now, but it costs $55 a month for it....
 
#45 ·
Maruuk said:
I WISH it was just a question of money. You spoiled city boys don't realize out here in the sticks 2.4 is all I can get.
Well, didn't mean to hit a sore spot, but I also feel your pain. And we city boys realize it just fine, and never even implied that it was JUST a question of money. Once that is cleared up it appears you are helping to make my argument for me against streaming as a viable delivery method. Streaming in its current form has but one advantage, and that is convenience, and its only convenient if you can get it. Your iPad does not need to be hooked to a coaxial cable or a DBS dish or an antenna or a Blu-Ray player, but let's face facts; that is where acceptable quality lives. There, and countries like South Korea that are not as backward as the USA. Internet speeds are an order of magnitude faster there.
 
#46 ·
EdJ said:
Have you looked at the Internet offering from DISH? I don't know if it is better than you have now, but it might be worth looking into.

We are out in the boonies and had to deal with dial-up until they finally ran the cable line out to our area a couple years ago. I have a cable modem now, but it costs $55 a month for it....
I looked, and all packages on the first page note it's bundled with Dish TV service....
We country boys don't get no respect! </Dangerfield.>
 
#47 ·
I really loved the first season of this show. This season while not awful by any means, still better than most shows, isn't living up to the standard Sorkin set in season one. Granted the bar was set pretty high, but I'm still a little disappointed when last season would just blow me away on a regular basis and this year, well it's still good just not as many "wow" moments for me I guess.
 
#48 ·
tsmacro said:
I really loved the first season of this show. This season while not awful by any means, still better than most shows, isn't living up to the standard Sorkin set in season one. Granted the bar was set pretty high, but I'm still a little disappointed when last season would just blow me away on a regular basis and this year, well it's still good just not as many "wow" moments for me I guess.
It's odd. I agree that as a season I liked season 1 better. And yet there was one episode this season that I think was the best one of the series and last week was probably the funniest the show has ever been - some really great one-liners.
 
#49 ·
Season 1 was told chronologically. We followed the action along with the characters with little hint of what was coming next (other than knowing the show would last so many episodes and seeing next week's show description in the guide).

Season 2 was mostly flashback. We were greeted with changes at the beginning of the first show that were explained over the length of the season. Only when we got caught up did we get to go chronologically again.

I prefer the chronological story telling. The ratings are down (slightly) this year so perhaps others do not like this year's arc.
 
#50 ·
EdJ said:
Have you looked at the Internet offering from DISH? I don't know if it is better than you have now, but it might be worth looking into.

We are out in the boonies and had to deal with dial-up until they finally ran the cable line out to our area a couple years ago. I have a cable modem now, but it costs $55 a month for it....
Heck, I'd go SAT but for the brutal gating levels. I need to stream stuff and once you go down that road with the restrictive SAT data limits you're sunk quick.

Also I don't know how it is now, but back when I had Wild Blue (or whatever it was called) back in the day (the original SAT broadband) there was really nasty latency and super slow page loads. You had to wait 3-5 seconds for anything to happen. And then it happened gradually. Ridiculous. I was shocked when I went to DSL how things happened...NOW, not later! They just don't happen enough at 2.4.
 
#51 ·
James Long said:
Season 1 was told chronologically. We followed the action along with the characters with little hint of what was coming next (other than knowing the show would last so many episodes and seeing next week's show description in the guide).Season 2 was mostly flashback. We were greeted with changes at the beginning of the first show that were explained over the length of the season. Only when we got caught up did we get to go chronologically again.I prefer the chronological story telling. The ratings are down (slightly) this year so perhaps others do not like this year's arc.
That's the explanation that makes sense - I could not figure out why this season didn't feel as smooth. My wife hates the flashback flashforward story-telling style I think because sometimes she dozes off and there is no continuity to allow you to figure out what's going on.
 
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