New Sorkin Trailer

It's not so much the realism or lack thereof in some aspects that gets me. I'm cool with suspending disbelief for the sake of the show. The plot just hasn't grabbed me at all in the second and third episodes like it did in the first.

 

Got off to a bad start misspelling Richard Clarke's name.

 

I give it mixed reviews. First episode had potential, second episode sucked miserably, and the third rebounded just enough to where the series seems to have an inkling of potential again.

I hate Allison Pill's character. I loathe Emily Mortimer's character. I don't know how or why Will is all of a sudden willing to live and die by her when he went through the trouble of whining about the hire and reworking the arrangement.

I do think Jeff Daniels has done a fine job, as well as Jim - the producer.

So far, I give the series 6.5/10.

 

Read that the second episode e-mail bit, the one that seemed so over the top sitcomy with Mortimer's character sending the e-mail to the wrong people because of the way the system worked, well that's ripped straight from Aaron Sorkin's real life.

A few years back he was dating New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and she was sending him e-mails with post-work plans but they were going to Andrew Ross Sorkin, a business editor at the paper. The other Sorkin described the e-mails as "racy."

 

I always though Dowd was hot, until I just did a google image search.
We must run a VERY old photo of her in our paper when we run her column.
That and I am curious as to why lots of pictures of Catherine Zeta Jones pops up as well.

 

I want to like it, but I can't.
It lacks the grit you want on HBO. This is more like a network show than a cable show.
The Emily Mortimer character is supposed to be this hard-bitten field producer, but she acts like a fucking schoolgirl when Daniels' dates come into the newsroom.
And her Senior producer -- another supposedly hard-bitten newsman -- acts the same with the Allison Pill character.
The romance stuff is so obvious and superficial

Plus, its three episodes in and they've whipped through about 8 months, but the relationships he's setting up have barely advanced. Plus, Sorkin's going to run out of news events before the end of the first season

 

Well said. The romance stuff is ridiculous and Mortimer, while a terrific actress, plays such a detestable character.

 

Both this show and Studio 60 did a lot of telling us how these characters were the best in their business without ever showing us anything to back that up.

 

Very good point.
Overall, it's Sorkin and I'll keep watching it, even after hearing the Emily Mortimer character declare in the opener that she would rather put on a great newscast for a hundred people than a bad one for a million. (Surrrre she would.)
Despite truckloads of silliness, there are things here that ought to give TV news pause. I wish that one of the show's many critics in the media would have the balls to address a central point the show keeps bringing up -- that all arguments don't have two equal sides. Sorkin seems to think the reason TV news pretends even bigots have a point is to keep from pissing off sponsors. I'm not sure that's it, in most cases. I think it's usually a desperate, failing attempt not to be branded "elitist" by the Limbaugh/Fox News crowd that makes its money off people who value the "common sense" of their accumulated prejudices over, say, facts.

One other point: Though Vinnick came to West Wing after Sorkin left, I remember lots of chuckling over the thought that when Hollywood wanted to come up with a conservative Republican presidential candidate, it reached for ... Alan Alda!
So now, on this show, the network chief whose need to do business with the Koch Bros and the Tea Party crowd might torpedo all the truth-telling is ... Jane Fonda!
Pretty funny.

 

Good point, but Alda was great as Vinnick and I thought Fonda did just fine in her new role.

 

I agree with all the points this show is trying to make about the problems with cable news - and why those problems are ultimately bad for our democracy as well as the news shows themselves - but the way they're being made makes me want to punch the characters making them in the face.

 

I agree with almost all the criticisms of this show presented her, but again I raise the point: Why don't similar flaws on cops shows or medical dramas bother us? There is literally nothing on The Newsroom as ridiculous or implausible as stuff on Grey's Anatomy, and at one point, 20 million people were watching Grey's each week.