The Newsroom.

Discussion in 'TV & Media' started by Guy Gardener, Jun 25, 2012.

  1. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Newsroom

    Aaron Sorkin splooged.

    The first episode was a perfect storm.
     
  2. Avon

    Avon Commodore Commodore

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    it's tedious and smug.

    it's like being lectured on a subject you don't care about by someone who thinks he's much cleverer than he is.
     
  3. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yes, there's that too.

    But it's hardly a surprise.
     
  4. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    Have to wait until next month before we see it on this side of the pond.
     
  5. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    I enjoyed it, though it never quite lived up to the level of the (great) rant at the beginning.

    Also, it's kind of easy to be critical of the state of the news today (which I and most people are too) while having the benefit of writing about newsmaking incidents with 20/20 hindsight and a helping of extremely convenient characters and events.

    The blogger guy just happens to be some kind of an expert on deep ocean drilling because he built a volcano as a school project when he was a kid. The wunderkind new producer just happens to have a sister and a former roommate intimately involved with the oil spill disaster and willing to possibly jeopardize their careers by whistleblowing mere hours into the course of the disaster (although they remain confidential, it could possibly be tracked back to them). Everyone and their brother seems to be willing to come on the air and comment for the record before the full extent of the disaster is even known. Yeah, it would be great if the news can inform us in such a detailed and amazingly swift manner, but stories don't often fall in their laps the way this one did to the Newsnight staff. They put together a full reporting on the truth of the BP disaster in a manner of about a half-hour before (and during) broadcast and only a couple of hours after the incident itself happened.

    I get that to make things exciting and live up to the fast-paced tempo of a Sorkin show some compromises are going to have to be made, but I hope in the future a slightly more realistic approach to attaining and confirming sources based on days, weeks, and months of rigorous research and back and forth discussions with often uncooperative sources worried about their jobs will be depicted.

    That being said, it had all the biting and witty dialogue I've come to expect from Sorkin, and people getting a workout running around the set like it's a track and field competition. Every first episode has some kinks to work out before they settle into the groove of how the show is going to work, and I look forward to seeing Sorkin's and his fellow writer's commentary on the various newsmaking incidents of the past couple of years. So I'll definitely be sticking with this one and watching it with great interest.
     
  6. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'm a sucker for a Hepburn/Tracy love story, but that Hugh Grant/Meg Ryan thing that they got going on with the kids is special like a three legged dog.
     
  7. Jax

    Jax Admiral Admiral

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    He is probably smarter than the mos of us or we would be making a lot of $$$ from Emmy winning shows. I love Sorkin because I like the feeling that am being challenged + it always help to be Liberal ;)

    I loved the pilot and the speech at the start was superb and gave me real West Wing vibes when he uttered the line "We reached for the stars"
     
  8. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ugh, the Golden Age Fallacy at its very ugliest. And the Constitution, a "masterpiece"? It's had a very impressive history, yes, but it's become a massive national handicap.

    Hope this show crashes and burns ASAP, so Sorkin can go back to doing what he does best - adapting (mostly, at least) non-fiction books to kickass movie screenplays.
     
  9. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    A friend once told me that Popeye is to Spinach like Aaron Sorkin is to Cocaine.

    Although he's probably been clean for years.

    Although, if we believe Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Aaron only does TV when he fails some drug test to pass a physical for the insurance paperwork to work on a movie set... Or are we suppose to believe that that is just a fictional supposition?

    In the Final episode of GCB, Aaron's tiny blond exgirlfriend screamed at the top of her lungs, "Why you're all just a bunch of "Crazy Christians!" which had me wonder, that if the entire run of Enterprise was just a holodeck adventure for Riker, that the entire run of GCB might have been the 7 minute skit called Crazy Christians that got Matt Albie fired years earlier which was finally proformed after the closing credits rolled to the pilot of Studio 60 on he Sunset Strip.

    I can think of three times in my life I have looked up Emily Mortimor on IMDB marvelling "Who is this most beautiful woman in the world I have never seen before?" only to conclude... "OH! it's her again!" It does seem impossible that I can forget that I am desperately in love with people I have never met, but that's just the world.
     
  10. the G-man

    the G-man Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    One critic basically said the problem with this show is there's nothing left for Sorkin to say about television news that he didn't say with "Sports Night."
     
  11. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    True.

    But how are you going to convince the twitter generation to watch a 15 year old rerun so conceited that it still wants to bitchslap the vacant youth for being less than magnificent, as idolatable edutainment?

    A great deal of his new audience, is that 20 year old Jeff Daniels pulverized in the first few minutes of the show because they were busy being born or learning to processing solid food and detritus when Sports Night's ratings were sinking into the toilet.
     
  12. Count Zero

    Count Zero No nation but procrastination Moderator

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    I'm pretty sure it will be. As Jim Parker (is that the character's name?) said it was the first time he got that lucky concerning his sources. I think they just needed something big to start off the show.

    The monologue at the beginning was awesome. I found myself answering the college girl's question about what makes America the greatest nation on earth with "it isn't" and then he said all the right things. He might have a romanticised view of the past, though. ;) But that's par for the course with Sorkin, I guess.
    There is a certain unrealistic element to the show - the totally crazy but brilliant characters, the idealism - but that's true for The West Wing as well. I really liked this one and I'm looking forward to more.
     
  13. the G-man

    the G-man Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I'm a lot closer to 50 than I am to 20 but I don't know any 20 year olds who ask questions like that. That was more like the kind of question of 12 year old might ask and I'm not even sure about that.
     
  14. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    "How to Get Under Aaron Sorkin's Skin:"

    "You Can't Handle the Truth About Aaron Sorkin:"

    And, finally:

    [yt]http://youtu.be/S78RzZr3IwI[/yt]
     
  15. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'm in my mid 30s, but I have a 16 year old child who talks utter bollocks because he thinks that he is immortal, and the first text capable phones came out when I was at university, so I can almost understand a 20something.

    Remember Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting taking that kid down in a bar about how whatever they had just taught him at college was the most real thing in the world because he wasn't as aware of his future curriculum like he a janitor was? ...And that the next books he would be told to read would change his word view in a completely anticipated fashion and then the next books and so on, and so on?

    The College experience is safe bubble where they build you up in before the real world starts knocking you down.

    If I may be crass.

    Only tired old limp men entirely beyond sex tell gorgeous skinny 20 year old girls that they are wrong and possibly retarded, even though they almost all usually are since sensible intelligent women usually never put themselves in such situations where they can be judged and attacked by idiots.

    They Shoot Horse Don't They?

    Future episodes will include Jane Fonda as the Boss of Bosses.

    Purely scientifically speaking, it would be interesting to compare a nude scene now to her epic moments in Barbarella just to prove that women are real people who are important no matter their exterior issues.

    It's HBO.

    I don't need tits, but I did wonder if there was going to be any?
     
  16. Data Holmes

    Data Holmes Admiral Admiral

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    Watched it. Loved it. Watched it a second time, loved it even more. I love Sorkin, I love how he refuses to dumb down entertainment. Oh, was the MMS inspector played/voiced by Jesse Eisenberg?
     
  17. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Wikipedia agree with you. :)

    Have you ever noticed that Sorkin is an anagram of "I Snork" which if you put a comma in there, sounds to me like how one would write a historical tretis on the rise and fall of Snork Empire.

    Serious.

    God created them with a built in cokestraw.

    Evolution is telling them that it's okay.

    How couldn't that be a fascinating 12 part Adult Swim mIniseries?
     
  18. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    Started off uneven, but the pilot really gets into gear once the broadcast begins. I don't have HBO, so who knows when I'll see the rest, but I will.
     
  19. marksound

    marksound Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I watched half the pilot last night. The Jeff Daniels character reminds me of Matt Albie from Studio 60, but more of a bastard. That may change when they get further into the show, but who knows. I saw several other parallels/similarities to Studio 60 too. Is Sorkin stuck in his 'failure'?
     
  20. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It's obvious that he's been pitching the newsroom for the last twenty years but the souless suit bastards kept raping his concept until it became Sports nIght because "real people like football not the news" or "real people like a good laugh, not the news."

    He's just damn lucky no frakk said, "And what if Jeff Daniels best friend was a talking dog?"

    House never got nice, so maybe Will McAvoy will maintain a consistency over the years too?