Just watched Newsroom, and really enjoyed it. It has the potential to become a really good show on the level of West Wing. I’m not sure what the hell Jake Tapper saw, but there is always the possibility that our delicate flowers in the media are upset by even fictional media criticism.
Based on what I saw tonight, this will have a multi-year run.
boss bitch
This is the first positive review I’ve seen.
ed
Migh be watchable if Aaron Sorkin weren’t involved.
Jeezus, that sanctomonious music is fucking annoying.
Valdivia
If Tapper is upset then it must be a good show. That’s my Constanza rule for the night.
kestral
Guy at the Baltimore Sun said he saw four episodes and he’s in for the long haul.
Just with this pilot? I’m in.
Jean
I like it generally, but did not like the character (what’s her name?) who walked into the newsroom and understood everything bang like that. It was too much Kiss-me-I’m-brilliant.
Ron
I really enjoyed it too. I know it got some bad reviews, but my feeling is the only person’s opinion that matters for me is my own.
Valdivia
I haven’t watched the show but plan to watch it. I like reading the reviews of Alan Sepinwall at HitFix.com. He is my to-go tv critic since I read his reviews of The Wire and Band of Brothers.
Ron
I didn’t read all of Tapper’s review, but after he mocked the idea of the republican who can’t stand his party anymore, I kind of gave up.
Emdee
I’m surprised most of the cool kids waited to see the show before publishing their “I’m too cool for Aaron Sorkin” reviews.
Hill Dweller
I usually don’t read TV reviews beforehand, but stumbled upon Charlie Pierce’s review last week on his blog. After watching the show, I mostly agree with his take. It certainly has potential.
Who the fuck thought Tapper would had any illuminating thoughts on a television show?
ed
Has A-Sork even heard of Democracy Now?
Valdivia
@Hill Dweller:
The Liberal New Republic!
Elizabelle
We don’t got HBO.
Plus I was drinking margaritas with a neighbor.
Joel
Some troll at the Atlantic has been bashing the show for two weeks straight.
I thought the show was okay. A little cheesy. I’ll wait and see on future episodes.
Alyssa Rosenberg got it right for me.
Violet
I’ve got it on DVR and plan to watch it at some point. I’m always so far behind on the DVR.
MaryJane
Can’t read the comments because we have over an hour wait here on the west coast. I learned my lesson about spoilers with the Mad Men threads. Good to hear your positive opinion, John. This is one I’ve been looking forward to.
John Cole
@ed:
Neither has 90% of the country. Not to mention a solid 75% of the issues Democracy Now covers would be mocked by true Democrats here, who, when called out by me, would simply taunt me about voting for Bush.
Redshift
I enjoyed it. I never really got into the West Wing, but I loved Sports Night. If you accept that in Sorkin-World, everyone is way smarter than the equivalent people in the real world, and just go with it, the writing is great. (A friend of mine who works in video tech watched some of Sports Night, and was highly amused that the idea of sportscasters who can be brilliant without a teleprompter. In television, “talent” is an ironic term.)
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Watching the replay now. Pretty good start, and Tapper being pissed is the meringue on my motherfucking Key Lime pie. Hope the show has a long run and gives all the Ferengi bastards acid reflux. Ben Cisco +4
Just Some Fuckhead
I watched it. Can there be a political drama that isn’t corny, overly simplistic and cringe-inducing?
ed
@John Cole:
1. What do you care what those dildoes think?
2. Democracy Now’s been doing what Newsroom says it’s doing without the shitty music or shitty back-patting. Perhaps some attention ought to be paid.
Soonergrunt
Falling Skies is my show. As long as we’re watching fiction on Sunday evening, I might as well watch something at least plausible.
On that note, OMG THEY FUCKING KILLED JIMMY!
BGinCHI
Jake Tapper, in the Renaissance in England, was a trade whose practice involved draining open sewers.
A jakes tapper specialized in piss and shit removal.
Why reinvent the wheel?
Sly
The scene that has been the trailer for the show for months was ruined with some sanctimonious nostalgia for a golden age of American Exceptionalism that never existed, mouthed at a college sophomore who, after being called a member of the “Worst-Period-Generation-Period-Ever-Period” by the leading character will likely spend the next few decades discovering how the leading character’s generation fucked her and her entire age cohort over for nothing.
But, yeah, other than that, the show was OK.
MikeJ
Torrenting now.
TooManyJens
Hey, I’m still bitter that Max Headroom got cancelled after only 14 episodes.
SuzieC
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Agree. I watched some of it, thought it was overly stupid and cringe-inducing, then switched over to Iron Chef America, where they were cooking with Gruyere.
Narcissus
I still wanna know if the kids are getting turned into the Skitters.
dewzke
Scheet, peeps. It is just a good/first show.
kestral
@TooManyJens: Still a total freaking tragedy, too. Edison Carter was my hero.
sfinny
@Soonergrunt: No shit, I can’t believe they killed Jimmy. Looked like he was toast initially, but they did the whole fake out and then killed him in the end. Damn.
Paula68154
I liked it. I plan to watch it again.
BGinCHI
I can’t believe that show “Terriers” only had a one season run.
Goddamn that was a good show.
Soonergrunt
@Narcissus: That’s what I think, but we haven’t seen enough to be certain. It’s possible that the skitters themselves are a conquered/assimilated race.
smintheus
Canadian series “The Newsroom”, now there’s some fine programming.
bend
Next week on Newsroom:
Violet
The guy who worked for Fox News and fed the stuff to Wonkette for about three days before they (Fox) fired him wrote a review of Newsroom. He said real cable news people are way, way, way, WAY more obsessed with ratings than what’s portrayed on this show. Apparently ratings are broken into 15 minute segments and hyper analyzed. He thought it was funny that they treated a discussion about ratings like it was something dirty.
jfxgillis
John:
Agreed on both the show and the likely reason for the tepid reviews.
My favorite line is when when Mackenzie tells Will their job is “Speaking truth to stupid.”
David Koch
The worst part of the show: they didn’t use the Bully Pulpit.
sfinny
@Soonergrunt: So what is the right decision? North to catskills or south to Charleston?
Narcissus
@Soonergrunt: I think I’d like it better if they were another race entirely. That would add another angle to that beat-up skitter following the kid around.
Soonergrunt
@sfinny: Assuming that Charleston is NOT a trap, I say go south. Winter is coming, and the enemy has shown no problem operating in that weather, or in mountainous terrain such as the Catskills (which aren’t the Rockies anyway,) whereas the 2nd Mass is underfed, under-equipped, and loaded down with non-combatant civilians. Go south. Hole up about 100-150 miles outside Charleston and conduct reconnaissance to determine the ground truth there. Foraging should be easier, as well as finding clean water. If Charleston IS a trap, you risk only losing your recon element, and you’ve moved the opposite direction from your last couple of data points which should give you breathing room. The milder weather and dense forests are also more amenable to the guerrilla warfare that 2Mass has to undertake.
amk
The last show I enjoyed about newsies was Mary Tyler Moore. At least, it was funny and she is a cutie.
SP
So, Cole, when they cancel it next week, it will be all your fault?
Soonergrunt
@Narcissus: given the physical appearance of the “master race” for lack of a better term, and the rather obvious differences between them and the skitters, I tend to think that the skitters are, as I supposed earlier, a conquered/assimilated race. There’s no way those two species evolved on the same planet.
Redshift
@Violet: And? Sounds like he thinks he’s imparting some secret wisdom by telling us that real cable news shows aren’t like that.
Gosh, it’s good he’s here to tell me; I never could have figured that out on my own. Imagine wanting to watch a fictional scenario that’s more interesting than a real one.
Eljai
@amk: Agreed. She could take a nothing day and make it all seem worthwhile.
MattR
@Narcissus: @Soonergrunt: I am pretty sure they are a previously conquered race. There are a couple of scenes in the first season where one of the skitters give a motherly look or gesture to one of the harnessed children under its care/control. And there was something about the captured one that made it seem like a reluctant participant, but I can’t remember what specific thing it was that gave me that impression.
I do wish I had watched tonight’s episode before reading this thread.
cay
great pilot. I hope it continues to be good.
Violet
@Redshift: It was just the guy’s opinion. Take it or leave it. Personally, I think showing them obsessed with ratings, which they apparently are, would be very entertaining. It might also help get through the heads of some dimwits that cable “news” isn’t news at all, but instead is ratings-obsessed infotainment. Whatever gets the most eyeballs wins. Not everyone wants to face up to that fact and showing it via an TV show might make it more obvious to some people. Who knows.
kyle
@ed: Sorkin does the music? Thought that was some guy with a synth.
jl
Is this new show set in the past or now? If the setting’s now, maybe the corporate news people are afraid people will watch the show to learn what is going on, like they do with the Daily Show and Colbert Report.
Donald G
@SP:
It won’t be cancelled next week; it’s on HB-fuckin’-O.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I like the “Alan Grayson money bomb” ad I’m getting on this post. They picked a picture of him that I bet his opponent is thrilled they used.
freelancer
I’m 18 minutes in. I want to like it. I SO want to like this show, but I have a feeling it’s going to revert to Sorkinian Mystical 3rd-way-ism.
David Koch
Okay. Just saw the show.
Jeff Daniels’ character is as unlikeable as Olbermann.
Hard to see how it succeeds.
YellowJournalism
My biggest complaint with Studio 60 was that, for the funniest sketch show on TV, the sketches weren’t funny. (Coming from someone who liked Studio 60.) So does this mean the stories theyll cover on Newsroom won’t be actual news?
Although, it’s a cable news network, so that actually would be realistic.
karen marie
@TooManyJens: Why do you have to reopen my old wounds?
@BGinCHI: Sorry I missed it, sounds like it could have been fun.
ADD: Ooh, it’s on Netflix!
freelancer
@YellowJournalism:
They are covering 2010, and the pilot covers the BP oil rig explosion. Funny how the impetus behind the show is to show how media could be, but I remember the media getting a lot of the BP story right as it happened.
David Koch
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I’m glad somebody else said it. he’s been using that photo in his web ads for 3 years. It makes him look demonic.
freelancer
Okay, I did end up kinda liking it. The grasp of politics is kinda there. Will McAvoy is a raging hemmorhoid of a character. The music is saccharine and glaringly manipulative. But all the other characters (even when they are Sorkin archetypes aka Maggie = Natalie = Donna or Sam Waterston = Leo McGarry/Prez Bartlet = Isaac Jaffee) and the pacing make me want to come back next week.
karen marie
@MattR:
But I never heard of it, so how could this possibly be true?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@David Koch: You’re right, it makes him look vaguely evil. I don’t get it.
David Koch
@The prophet Nostradumbass: There’s something off about him. During his short stay in congress he would drive around in a limousine. He was asked why does he drive around in a gas guzzler if he’s against global warming, and he replied, with all seriousness, that he needed a car big enough to change his child’s diapers. Is it any wonder why he lost 63-37.
mai naem
Well, I liked the show. You can see theres a bunch of storylines and Sam Waterston is never in something bad except for that Third Way organization he was pimping a few years ago. I loved I’ll Fly Away and he was good in The Killing Fields.
Kevin
ARe there many black people on this show? It will be interesting if this is held to the same standard as “Girls”, or if it will be allowed to just get normal criticism, you know, since it’s about rich white men.
Wilson Heath
@ed:
L O frickin’ L! That’s my laugh of the morning. Thanks for that. Trotskyite firebaggers, bravely staking out the middle. Indeed.
ed
@Wilson Heath:
Worst.
Music.
Ever.
Omnes Omnibus
@ed: I take it you didn’t like the music.
Wilson Heath
@ed:
Either Newsroom or Trotskyism Now is in the running for that title.
Southern Beale
We watched it, loved it. Amused at the negative reviews from media outlets who apparently don’t like being told they’re doing it wrong by a Hollywood elite.
Suck it.
Rob
Loved it. Emily Mortimer’s character was just awesome.
ed
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not merely the treacly shite music itself, but that when it appears, a treacly shite, vomit-inducing Sorkin speech is underway.
Newsroom plays like a parody of Sorkin.
handsmile
The handsmiles don’t subscribe to HBO (TimeWarner cable rates are prohibitive enough already), so will not be viewing this series until its release on DVD.
However, the near-universal panning of the series by those employed as television reviewers by the American corporate media does remind me of their similar reaction to Stephen Colbert’s address at the 2006 White House Correspondents dinner.
Corporate fee-fees are as nothing when compared to media fee-fees. Champions of the First Amendment, dontchano.
ed
@Wilson Heath:
Um, wut? Trotskyism Now??? Is that you Hannity?
Howlin Wolfe
@Hill Dweller: Who the fuck thought Jake Tapper would have any illuminating thoughts
on a television show.FTFY.
kyle
I think Tapper was right about the show’s pretense of being centrist. West Wing didn’t mind being out liberal and that was on network tv. Newsroom should drop the bullshit about how if people stood up for ordinary common sense we could move past the partisan shouting match. America’s most urgent problem today is partisan in nature, namely the assault by the GOP on democracy’s foundations. More people ought to say so.
Of course Tapper doesn’t share my views about left and right, but he still made an accurate and useful point about the program. I also liked his parody of Sorkin’s dialogue.
Wilson Heath
@ed:
Nah, I just hate the sort of purity trolls who gave Nader enough votes to ruin 2000. There’s being right, which the purity brigades sometimes are, and there’s losing even marginal progress because you’re so goddamned proud of how right you are that you don’t care to put in an acceptable candidate. I don’t care how pure the revolution of a proud loser is if they have no say in what the government does. Purity is fine for Pitchfork, not for politics.
And Amy Goodman’s hippie dreck music made me give up tie dye, chop off my butt-length hair, and go punk. Totally got why the kids did that in the 70s.