There is no denying that Sorkin is a talented screenwriter. I am a big fan of The West Wing and there are moments in that show that is pure genius. So, obviously the expectations are high from 'The Newsroom'. And man! does it fail.
For starters, the newsroom in this show is anything but cutting edge; they have not even dipped their toe outside the mainstream. This is not the Jed Bartlet administration. They have not questioned authority except pile up on Tea Partiers. Don't get me wrong- the Tea Party and Koch brothers and Rick Santorum are all deserving of skewering but my point is that Will McAvoy is doing nothing different from the real news programs of Rachel Maddow or Olbermann. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea of a great news network going where no one dares go. If Sorkin had shown one character, just one character, question if the Obama administration was right in invading the airspace of a sovereign nation (and an ally) or to ask why an unarmed terrorist was shot and not captured alive, I'd have had more respect for the show. The show waves the flag as hard as the ones it mocks. At least the chest-thumping sycophants at Fox are honest.
And the personal dramas happening in the show are distracting at best and pathetic at worst. But I'll let that one slide.
And I have another bone to pick with Sorkin; his consistent and continued scorn for bloggers. Be it Josh Lyman in The West Wing complaining about "Nurse Ratched" of the internet or Danny Tripp complaining about the pajama people in Studio60. And now Will. I don't know how much of his characters are stand-ins for his own views but one would presume that they are. Sure, there are terrible comments on the net and there are trolls and people who can't spell, but to bundle all the internet people as basement dwellers who eat cheetos and type ill-informed opinions is a true failure of the imagination. Are there no staff writers under 30? Is there no one capable of convincing Sorkin that the internet is not a big bad thing out to get him? Granted that nobody likes criticism but did the internet hurt poor Sorkin's booboo? Why this kolaveri?
For starters, the newsroom in this show is anything but cutting edge; they have not even dipped their toe outside the mainstream. This is not the Jed Bartlet administration. They have not questioned authority except pile up on Tea Partiers. Don't get me wrong- the Tea Party and Koch brothers and Rick Santorum are all deserving of skewering but my point is that Will McAvoy is doing nothing different from the real news programs of Rachel Maddow or Olbermann. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea of a great news network going where no one dares go. If Sorkin had shown one character, just one character, question if the Obama administration was right in invading the airspace of a sovereign nation (and an ally) or to ask why an unarmed terrorist was shot and not captured alive, I'd have had more respect for the show. The show waves the flag as hard as the ones it mocks. At least the chest-thumping sycophants at Fox are honest.
And the personal dramas happening in the show are distracting at best and pathetic at worst. But I'll let that one slide.
And I have another bone to pick with Sorkin; his consistent and continued scorn for bloggers. Be it Josh Lyman in The West Wing complaining about "Nurse Ratched" of the internet or Danny Tripp complaining about the pajama people in Studio60. And now Will. I don't know how much of his characters are stand-ins for his own views but one would presume that they are. Sure, there are terrible comments on the net and there are trolls and people who can't spell, but to bundle all the internet people as basement dwellers who eat cheetos and type ill-informed opinions is a true failure of the imagination. Are there no staff writers under 30? Is there no one capable of convincing Sorkin that the internet is not a big bad thing out to get him? Granted that nobody likes criticism but did the internet hurt poor Sorkin's booboo? Why this kolaveri?
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