I know I’m late on this, but I watched Episode 5 of The Newsroom a couple days ago. And wow, has that show ever jumped the shark. It’s gotten to the point where, if Sorkin and Co. don’t wake up soon and at least wink half-heartedly at the audience in some way, the show may rapidly devolve into a “hate-watching” fest (thanks to Victoria for that term) for everyone who bothers to tune in.
Also, self-plug: a slightly revised version of this post is now on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion & Ethics site. You can check it out here.
Related articles
- Aaron Sorkin Says ‘The Newsroom’ Is ‘Fantasy’ (huffingtonpost.com)
- Aaron Sorkin Fires Almost All the Writers From ‘The Newsroom’ (theatlanticwire.com)
- King of the rant (theage.com.au)
- ‘The Newsroom’ Drinking Game (huffingtonpost.com)
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I just read your comments on the ABC website regarding The Newsroom. I had really been hoping for another ‘The West Wing’ but, sadly, it was not to be. I thought Sorkin started out quite well at the beginning of the first episode by challenging the delusions of a lot of Americans that theirs is the best country in the world. Of course he had to give them the hope that it still could be the best otherwise the earth may have tilted off its axis.
The show seems to have become full of a lot of cheesy lines and gratuitous bad language.
Very disappointing.
Thanks for your comment. I agree: there are occasional flashes of brilliance, and Sorkin does seem to subscribe to the justified belief that today’s media doesn’t do a very good job of differentiating facts from fiction, or news from entertainment.
But the world, and the characters, he creates in order to express this belief is…disappointing.