The Newsroom [HBO - Spoilers]

God, I love this show.

Have to say the fourth was a fantastic episode, Jeff Daniels is completely at home in the role, I don't think I had ever seen Sam Waterson in anything before this, but he is a class act, to be able to convey everything that needs to be said in just a look shows his incredible ability.

The end marks the first time I have seen anything exciting on TV in a long while, this show is fast becoming a favourite for me.

Only up to episode 3 so far but I too have no interest in Will & McKenzie's dating lives, their past or anything personal to do with them. Yeah, they used to go out, years ago so big deal. The jealousy over Will's dates was childish and detracted from the episode as a whole.

Deleted User wrote: »

I quite enjoyed this episode. The relationship stuff isn't bothering me, but it does seem kind of odd that they've passed 6-9 months in 4 episodes, so we're being dumped at the tail-end of these things. The ending was quite well done, with the stand-off between Will and (I think) the ratings guy, over announcing the senator's death. Shows the unpredictability of the world and the news - will be interesting if they cover her recovery in next week's episode.

I think next weeks episode is about

don ramo wrote: »

but you do know over 9 months have passed since the first episode, all these people know each other extremely well at this stage,

They really aren't getting that across in the show. On one hand we have McKenzie acting like she just discovered that Will is dating some new people and on the other we've got this notional on again, off again cycle with Maggie that has come to a head at this point but with no background whatsoever bar heresay.

At the end of the day, the show is about a newsroom and primarilly about handling news stories in a particular way. Just do that! Just leave the relationship stuff out or wait til next season to address that more fully once viewers have become really attached to the characters, and once it can be done properly. Right now the treatment of relationships on the show is like something you'd get from a five year old. It feels tacked on, badly written and, as I said, a glaring void in the otherwise reasonably high quality of the show as a whole.

Ok! Just finished Episode 4....   Let me just say, what a boring, pointless waste of film. Bigfoot... STFU! If I had a gun I'd have shot that gimp myself. The news stories were just filler. Seriously, serious news people would have picked up those stories anyway, those who didn't wouldn't care. As for Will's dating woes, WHO THE HELL CARES! When the episode started at the NYE party I was wondering for literally minutes what the point was or how it was relevant or even leading anywhere. The last 3 minutes were good but it was just self congratulatory really as the rest of the episode wasn't strong enough to support it so it just highlighted their undirected pissing about up to that point quite starkly.  I want this show to be great but it's starting to bug me. It felt like a 2 hour episode tonight. Thats not good. 

Unless things change dramatically next week, Episode 4 could well be the point at which this show implodes. As some can see, I wasn't exactly taken by the episode after watching it but a night's sleep has made me realise a few other things.

Taking down Will via some bad publicity could have been handled over a series of episodes. What has happened now is that we get one week where they are acting like serious news people on a mission to reform news broadcasting, but the following week we get a show that makes the Press Gang look like an edgy, hard-hitting news outfit. Some news items were thrown in just for show but it was done in a stupid, half-hearted and, frankly, sensless manner. Surely they had 5 minutes to comment on these items over time before closing the show when the issues were fresh. I don't buy that.

Sorkin seems to be making some very fundamental mistakes this time round for a writer who has written a multi-season show already. Over on the Breaking Bad forum we're all commenting on the implosion of Walter White as he starts to buy into his hype and feeds his ego based on the hype. First off, I initially thought the real news stories would be a good thing but I'm not convinced any more. Lining up issues you have a beef about is OK but approaching them in a 'holier than thou' fashion isn't really OK at all. Tagging the Giffords issue onto the end of last night's episode was a jump the shark moment for me. While I am delighted that the lady has made a great recovery, even days afterwards I would not have put money on her survival. Hindsight is 20-20 as they say and it's very easy to come along after the dust has settled and say that you would have done things differently. Amidst the confusion I could well see how stray stories could get out. Even within interpersonal relationships we all have our achilles heel where, no matter how zealous we are about fact checking, something is always going to blind side us. With episode 4, I took the last 3 minutes as a complete show of arrogance. In my opinion, Sorkin had wasted 40 minutes of my time with irrelevant, nonsensical drivel and for that he didn't suddenly get to take the high moral ground over Giffords shooting, coming as he was, from a standpoint where the lady is now back back home and out of danger.

I believe his second mistake is believing that by adding his name to a show, we are instantly going to fall in love with his characters, take them to heart and feel lost if they are not around. Towards the end of last night's show where they pointed out how Fox etc. were getting it wrong, there was an allusion to them being a big family, something like 'This is us...', we're better, we're different, we care. Well, it might be a complete filler show but Hawaii Five-O gets to use lines like that at this point because they've got 2 seasons down already and we've built up a rapport with the characters. The Newsroom is 4 episodes in however and we're still finding our feet with these characters. Worst still, because of the cack handed way the elapsed time has been handled, I'm sure a lot of viewers are still thinking they are in the first month of all being together. Right now I wouldn't care greatly if Will left for several episodes, or McKenzie or any of the rest of them. By comparison, Alex O'Loughlin's stint in rehab left a hole in H5O but it drew out some interesting aspects of characters we already knew well and loved. Again, you need to be particularly arrogant or have bought into your hype to pull a stunt like that on a show that hasn't even 5 episodes under it's belt.

Every show I start out watching gets a lot of leeway. Unless things are spectacularly bad, a show normally gets 7-8 episodes to prove itself. I'm not sure about The Newsroom right now. Episode 4 was beyond what could be called filler. It was pointless and meandering. It took all my goodwill, shoved it down the jacks, took a dump on it and closed the top until I came home later to find the mess. I really can't say if I'll watch next week. I think I could well be done with this show. One thing is for certain, it's dropped well down my watch queue at this point. A second season of this doesn't look like such a great thing anymore.

Otacon wrote: »

I'm not going to respond to your entire post but I just wanted to clear up one point.

Sorkin's message with The Newsroom seems quite clear - the media have dropped the ball recently.

This is perfectly exemplified in what happened during the Gabrielle Giffords incident. At the time, most news outlets actually stated that she had died. They basically reported a completely unfounded rumour, not what you want from your news programs.

I know and I completely get that but he'd have serviced this point better with a once of Made For TV movie rather than an entire show based around the 'how it should have been handled' premise. Now we all know how the events should have been handled because they're old news and we know the details completely. At this point it's becoming repetitive and, dare I say it, boring. What's worse, Will laying into the journalist over the takedown piece was just more of this smug belief that you would do things differently. For a start, what the journalist was doing was part of her stock and trade and it was none of Will's business what she did or how she did it. He doesn't react all that well to being told how to do his own job.

The bottom line is that if Sorkin wants to comment ad nauseum about the quality of broadcast television then perhaps his best bet is to get a job producing a live news show so he can show us all how it's done in real-time. All that's happening right now is that he's coming across as someone who gets off on his own sense of cleverness when, in reality, postulating a correct way to have handled historical events at the time isn't clever, it's just common sense with all the knowledge completely available.

This show needs to focus for now on what it claims to be good at, i.e. correctly reporting the news. Stupid relationship stories and tacked on, hammy storylines are distracting and turn the show into a bit of a dog. It'd also help if the characters got off their high horses every once in a while.

Hippo wrote: »

Squonk - careful with the Breaking Bad references please, I haven't even started series 4 yet

Sure, sorry. I didn't think about that but I wasn't intending on giving away plot points or anything.

Hippo wrote: »

Watching this on Sky Atlantic so only just saw Ep 2. This is a hugely disappointing show, I had really high hopes. There's so much high speed dialogue that Sorkin must be getting paid by the word. The McKenzie character is totally unbelievable, and as Skinfull said the email plot device was laughable. The ep conclusion in the bar was pure Ally McBeal/Gray's Anatomy.

Team all this up with over-acting right across the screen and clunkily-delivered political messages (and I'd be sympathetic to most of those messages) and it's beginning to look like a real turkey, I'm sorry to say.

I'm up to date and I would agree that the show is a massive disappointment. I wanted to like it and even though I wasnt hugely enthused by the first 2 episodes - i stuck with it as new shows can take some time to find their groove. Episode 4 was just so rubbish tho - the worst of the 4. The show just doesnt seem to know what it is. 1/2 soap opera and 1/2 political commentary. It just doesnt work.

Disappointing 5th episode.

Sorkin has fired all but one if the writers, his ex girlfriend :rolleyes:, sounds familiar, hopefully this will make for a more stable second season.

I keep giving this show chances and it keeps coming back to kick me in the nads. I keep giving it chances because I know there's potential there and I keep hoping that somehow, someway they'll put it right and give me a great show that I can tell others about and praise.

Episode 5 was wrong on so many levels. I can take a few episodes of relationship issues. there are strong feelings involved so maybe the writers need to focus on that for a while to give us a feeling for the whole situation. What normal workplace though has a lady arriving in, ranting and raving, screaming at the top of her voice for her other half just because she got stood up. What other place has a running argument right there on the floor amidst the other office workers with some friends weighing in as well? Most nornal people would take things to an anteroom and deal with it there. In any case, for these people, they need to remember that from the time they get into the office to the time they leave, they're at work and need to be at work and it's not a place for airing their private love lives. If Sorkin wants us to take this gang seriously then it's time he started to treat the viewers seriously too. Fine, have your rows outside the office and let us see that but keep it real.

The thing for episode 2 seems to have been the phone & Email. The thing for this episode was bumping into doors. OK, do it once but stop having almost every cast member bump into a door and get a bandage on their head. It's like a child repeating the same joke over and over again. Yeah, they find it funny but everybody else gets well sick of it before long.

The storyline about the on the site reporter was a bit meh as well. That british guy is starting to really irk me now. What happened his obsession with BigFoot from last week? I think we all felt bad that the guy was held hostage but the whole raising money to get him released was a bit OTT. Of course the corporate guys weren't going to pay for a release. The guy was a contractor. Nobody ordered him into the situation he was put in. He had every choice to not do what they asked him and as he was a contractor, there were no real consequences for him. The piece at the end with the two of them smiling at each other in an overly cutesy 'Hi, I love you, I want your babies' kind of way was enough to make me wretch.

It's about time Sorkin realises that if he wants us to take the show seriously then he needs to give us serious characters. Maggie's little episode in the production meeting where she had to go 'Oh, I thought everybody was going to do that' just showed that they more or less get carried away on their relationships and act like a bunch of school kids. I don't know anybody in my particular industry who acts like that in work and if they're acting like that then the message for me is that we're not supposed to take the whole thing seriously. This show is starting to suck more and more.

The drop in quality from episode 1 to 5 is pretty shocking considering the writing talent behind the show imho.

The slapstick in the last episode was totally out of place and the amount of crap that Maggie has put Jim through so far is just retarded. Does the show really need two sets of will they/won't they characters?

HazDanz wrote: »

with the news becoming the filler in episodes and the sexual tension between characters being the centre of attention for the producers.

That's a shame I think and I hope it get's back on track as I do like watching the show, it's entertaining. I just want to love watching it like I know I would if they would just tweak the direction and focus on the news.

well no matter what way you look at it this show is since its inception is a drama, filled with factual information, it only takes 3 maybe 4 episodes to convey how a news story breaks, each episode has a different story one that has been enshrined in our memory due to it mass coverage over the last few years, we know almost all in the ins and out if each story they are informing us of, so seeing as we know 80-90% of the story from the get go, the rest of the episode will be filled with drama,

people need to realize that now, this is the format of the show going forward its not going to change, the direction wont be tweaked, because its a success and has been renewed for a second season,

and des has a point also with the walking dead, i remember the season 1 thread it was just torn to pieces, as was 80% of season 2, people just didnt accept the premise of the show, and if your not gonna accept the premise then your simply wasting your time, im not gonna tell people stop watching, i just think they need to look at the show and feel their being entertained, and not being annoyed,