Jim and Mac on The Newsroom
A few quick thoughts on the season premiere of The Newsroom
before I kill myself for the rest of my life….
“Chips are falling.”
-Leona
I’ve got limited time and a bit of a lack of patience for
the Newsroom this week so we’ll go straight to the bullets for this review. I
plan on keep covering the show week to week but so far it seems, to avoid
repetition about the problems I have with the show, I will stick to these
shorter reviews. I don’t know yet we’ll see. Anyway here are some thoughts on
the premiere along with a few other musings:
- Before we get to my continued nagging problems with the show I have to commend it for a few things. First and foremost being Aaron Sorkin’s continued use of fantastic dialogue. The Newsroom is still show that is a blast to listen to and despite its many problems the dialogue still pops unlike anything else on television. There were many fantastic conversations that took place in this episode including many of the Sloan Sabbith business conversations. Wonderful use of dialogue overall!
- Secondly I found that there were a few things that Aaron Sorkin has tried to improve on and actually succeeds upon. The first is the framing device which actually works well here. The device used revolves around Will and the News Night team being held accountable for a big screw up and us flashing back to the events leading up to it. It keeps the ball rolling well for the most part and allows the season to have some intriguing mystery to it. The other thing that works is despite the show having its annoying 20/20 hindsight it treats it a little better. While someone always seems to be there to say the right thing sometimes the news team gets the story wrong. For example in the premiere Neil has a scoop on Occupy Wall Street that Mac won’t air because it’s “not big enough.” Neil is still there to say the right thing but overall it seems that not every character is there to be right 100% of the time.
- On to the problems we go now. The romantic comedy here is absolutely brutal. While for the most part the Mac and Will stuff works because it isn’t romantic at the moment the Maggie, Don, Jim, and now all of a sudden Sloan stuff (with maybe Maggie’s cousin in the future, probably not) is again absolutely brutal. It’s like a black hole of anti entertainment. It just sucks and continues to be probably the worst element of the show (that’s saying a bit). The thing I hate the most about it is that they are bringing Olivia Munn’s usually brilliant Sloan into it. The scene she shares with Don is aggravatingly brutal (there is that word again) and it makes me sad as when she’s dealing with the news or other people Munn is probably the best person on the show. When dealing with Don though she falls into that brutal romatic comedy trap. (Oh PS Alison Pill still infuriating)
- The other main problem with the show is still how Sorkin portrays certain things. He still has a problem with portraying women and technology in general (cue poor Alison Pill on the woman front and poor Emily Mortimer on the tech front). Maggie is still as strange and utterly incompetent as ever and while she isn’t here much she’s annoying in practically every frame. Jane Fonda’s Leona gets a great line that sums up Sorkin’s tech incompetence where she calls internet people “the f***ing pajama people”
- On the good side of tech Will singing Rebecca Black’s Friday during show breaks!
- Why is Don the good guy all of a sudden? Why? Why? Why?
Again I am going to continue to cover the Newsroom in some
form this summer, whether in short form like this or not. With not having screeners
I’m going to try my best to get these up on Sundays (something that probably
won’t happen after Breaking Bad comes back in a few weeks) but it will be hard.
So look out for Newsroom rants in some form.
That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?
No comments:
Post a Comment