The Newsroom -- Season 3

At the end of Season 2 I didn't care much whether it came back or not. Now, with one episode left, I wish it had a lot more time.

 

Amazed at the way Sorkin _ maybe for the first time ever in his writing career _ slowly morphed a character from the worst to the best thing on his show the way he's done it with Don. For me, it feels like the show would be better served on commercial television b/c it can break things up. So go from screwball comedy to workplace drama to romcom to hot button topic of the week from one one scene to the next can be off putting. This isn't SportsNight or the first couple seasons of the West Wing (not even close) but it's still more engaging than 95 percent of the crap that's on. My wife hate watches it with me b/c she's well aware the real media landscape doesn't reflect what's on the screen. That being said, I don't watch Sorkin because I want a docudrama. I watch Sorkin so I can listen to it. Yeah, it has no basis in reality, but it's not supposed to. It's entertainment.

 

That's a damn good take on it.

 

You guys really think this episode was good Don? I like Don's character, but this episode's rape subplot was a train wreck of bad ideas.

 

The rape subplot was an uncomfortable disaster but when you look at what Don did through the lens of a line in the sand about bad journalism/TV and basically siding with Sloan then it's a cool character moment. It's too bad it had to be mucked up with all that rape stuff that makes a lot of viewers disagree with/hate him.

Reminded me too much of Isaac's stroke though. Very different but between this and the last episode titles being the same.....

 

I didn't put 2 and 2 together until I read a recap.

It's just crazy timing that this subplot comes right amidst all of this Rolling Stone/Virginia stuff.

I feel like this season should really have been 10 episodes. 6 is not enough for everything trying to happen here.

 

I was fine with the rape storyline. It showed him at a weaker moment, making some missteps, adding up the numbers and getting it wrong. It had some reality to it.

 

I was more offended by the fact that Sorkin can't tell the difference between federal and state courts.

 

Having watched the episode, I though that it was pretty interesting and I think that Sorkin has been pretty decent on setting forth the "old journalism vs new media" debate. I don't really get the uproar.

While he sometimes stacks the deck in favor of the Charlie/Will side of the issue (like Hallie's blog post about her and Jim or the Gawker Stalker app), I thought that this was a pretty reasonable debate and certainly did not portray Don as absolutely correct.

 

I think it was written well enough to show that Don himself was struggling with it as he was telling her to turn down the opportunity.

 

"What Kind of Day Has It Been?" was a season-ending episode title for both Sports Night and The West Wing. It will also be the title of the Newsroom series finale.

I am a big Sorkin fan, almost an apologist, but holy hell does he recycle himself too much.

The Newsroom's entire run isn't even 30 episodes but you can probably find 10 times that number of things he pulled straight from West Wing scripts. (I was already thinking this when "Ave Maria" was a big part of the wedding episode, for those who remember the story about Josh's sister from TWW, before I saw the series finale title.)

Is he that big of a fan of himself, or is he just lazy?

 

I think he really is that much of a fan of his own work, though to be fair, some of it is simply an acknowledgement of the fans of his work.