And now The Newsroom....

[Trekker4747]

Decent episode, though it seemed to be the "fast-forward" episode where they skipped over much of the nonsense and fun in primaries and now is into the main part of the 2012 election. (Similar episode was done last season.)

We also see more of the crux of where the wheels started to fall of on the Genoa story with Producer What's His Name doctoring the tape with Stephen Root. More awkwardness in the Jim/Maggie/Whoever love quadrangle this time with a Paul-tard thrown in for good humor. Though I liked the use of the now former Romney campaign gal during the double date.

Olivia Munn continues to impress. But now a love connection between Mac and Don?!

And, again, I say that this season seem to have been seriously lacking in the use of Will. It honestly feels like to me he's been a secondary character this season.

 

[EmoBorg]

I actually watched the first three episodes but i found the show boring. The characters are so bland.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Are you sure Emoborg?

I really saw how Mac and Don could have fallen into a mistake during that conversation because they weren't paying attention to the words they were using, but neither of them actually noticed what almost happened.

There was a TV show or Movie, I for get, but a minor female character says to the hero who is hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with a different woman... "You're not in love with me, and you don't have the balls to tell Karen that you love her, so until that changes, and you and I arn't doing anything better, why don't you just consider me. No strings, no expectations, but just consider me."

(Which was a lie, because minor female character was in love the hero and was pissed off at him ignoring her every time she threw herself at him.)

 

[TheGodBen]

I don't like what they're doing with Jerry Dantana. He seems to exist purely to be the bad journalist that causes the team to report the Genoa story rather than letting the team screw up on their own accord. I guess Maggie might have screwed up a little, maybe, it doesn't totally seem like she has so far.

I didn't like the Will bit on the morning show, it made him seem like an ass who's incapable of having fun.

Mac is now apparently such a klutz that she can't even drive properly. She's lucky that wasn't a kid she hit.

I did chuckle at the reindeer bit.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Ah...I see it now...

A crazed, evil white boy, who has proven that he will do absolutely anything at all costs to bring down the President, based on a "real life" story (Tailwind) going back to Viet Nam in 1970 that "broke" at CNN almost 3 decades later in 1997. Going so far as intentionally cooking all footage, raw and rendered, and losing his shit accusing everyone else in the room of liking the President too much... Oy vey! Talk about over-the-top unbelievable stupidity.

Sloan is still the top character in my book. She seems to be the only one that has survived Sorkin's brand of character deconstruction with poise and dignity (Fukishima accident non-gaffe, dating issues and naughty pix). The rest of the newsroom bunch from Charlie all the way down now appear as a bunch of clueless fuckwits. Sad how it's come to this...

Did Sports Night degenerate into this? I never saw it so I don't know...

 

[bigdaddy]

Sports Night was a comedy, so when the characters did stupid things it somewhat fit in because they had a lot on their mind. Donna was an idiot at times but it made sense and she still did her job really well... most of the time. It worked better, it was only 22 minutes.

However the second season was very very odd, people started fighting just to shake the show up. It wasn't horrible because events happened and everyone was fighting the network for their jobs, but it was handled a lot better than The Newsroom. I suggest watching it. Plus when the characters screwed up they owned to it and were dealt with.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Hmmm...sounds promising. Maybe I'll give it a try soon...

I miss the West Wing so much - I was hoping for something new in its pedigree, but Newsroom to me is really approaching irredeemable disappointment levels. The rampant partisan fatigue is really killing it for me. It's like one big, long moan...

 

[bigdaddy]

Sports Night is political at times too, but the episodes are so short you can get over it.

There is an episode dealing with racism, and another dealign with drug use that come to mind, but the speech is handled well, and is over in a minute and somehow still fits.

There is an episode where a character was screwing up a lot because she was getting death threats for outing a pervert football player. She finally goes "Why aren't you yelling at me!!!!?!?! I'm screwing up! I'm not doing my job well! Don't you care!?!" And unlike The Newsroom they actually do care!

I think it's on Netflix, i suggest watching the first two episodes (I like the second one better than the first), all you would waste is 40 minutes, which is still 10-15 minutes less than the time you waste watching The Newsroom.

I think Aaron Sorkin writes better TV shows stoned, and now that he's cleaned up he should stick to movies only. His movies are still enjoyable.

 

[Trekker4747]

Sports Night was a great show.

 

[Data Holmes]

Loved tonight's episode. Great appearance by Jane Fonda.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Agreed. Not a big Fonda fan myself, but I thought the episode overall was several orders of magnitude better than last week's frenetic attempt. They were firmly focused on Genoa, with a lurking bit about Benghazi - very well done and the dialog was up to par. Still loving Sloan above all others.

And poor Charlie... He's probably the most noble and kind-hearted of all of them and he always seems to take it up the ass for everyone, deserved or not. Reminds me why I'm over 40, still not an executive manager and pretty happy with that.

 

[Australis]

Wow, Charlie's old friend fucked him right over!

Jane Fonda was pretty good (and looked pretty hot too! ). It's good to see a proprietor standing by an employee, especially when they were in the right.

The Washington producer guy is a complete douche, threatening them all with his narcissistic hunger for status and ambition. Fuck that guy.

More later.

 

[Guy Gardener]

He doesn't have a choice.

He can either sue them for enough money to live off for the next thirty years, or find a nice card board box to live in.

But him suing is way more interesting than the Government trying to ream them.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Fantastic episode, from beginning to end. Even though I've found the Genoa story to be somewhat tedious, the execution of how the story crashed and burned was very well done here. Everyone shined in this episode, and yet, Jane Fonda still stole the episode in the final five minutes.

 

[Count Zero]

Awesome episode. It started off in a somewhat disjointed manner but the end more than made up for it. Leona Lansing's rant was fantastic. I loved how the episode ended with her shouting "Then get it back!" I hope they do.

I agree that the way the story fell apart was really well crafted. The meeting between Charlie and that NSA guy was quite chilling. I do have to wonder why no one seems to be worried about that man confessing he originally wanted to murder Charlie. This guy shouldn't probably work in any security position anymore.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Security?

He's a spook.

His job is to kill people and overthrow tin pot little governments.

I think something like this was from a Sorkin show?

(Sports Night?)

"The world isn't kept in line by armies, it's kept in line by spies killing assholes in secret. Nondescript shadows removing bad guys from play in secret keeping the world safe and I get to sleep at night."

 

[Count Zero]

I'm a little sad that the show won't deal with Sandy. We're already the day before election night. I kept imagining an epic development in one of the love storylines, preferably that between Will and Mac with Sandy as a dramatic background. Oh well. But it's really a missed chance.

 

[IndyJones]

I'm a little sad that the show won't deal with Sandy. We're already the day before election night. I kept imagining an epic development in one of the love storylines, preferably that between Will and Mac with Sandy as a dramatic background. Oh well. But it's really a missed chance.

It's hard to believe they won't do anything about it as, presumably, they'd be able the blacked out areas from their office building. It'd be a major oversight to gloss over it.

 

[Shanndee]

Yeah, I feel like they may address it in one of their flashback sequences.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe they could get Chris Christie to shoot some extra footage?

That's foot in the door shit.

So they can get him to shoot additional footage after he's elected president.