These are crazy times and we’ve all taken on a bunch of new projects as we socially isolate in order to help stop the spread of Covid-19. We’re donating where we can, we’re cleaning the pantry, we’re organizing the 2300+ title dvd library. We finished work on the Nominee Interview Series even though the live event for our […]
This was a great year of TV. It was a massively terrible year for network TV with few new hits and tons of stupid cancellations (6 shows on this list have already been cancelled or are in their final season) but it was still a great year of TV because, while the executives were making […]
When an Aaron Sorkin TV show reaches the end of its first season, an episode titled “What Kind of Day Has it Been” signals the end, for now. Shots rang out over the President’s rope line in Rosslyn, Virginia, Isaac Jaffe rejoined his Sports Night team after recovering from a stroke, and whatever happened at […]
I was at a friend’s bachelorette party in New York when the second episode of The Newsroom‘s final season aired and I thus found myself in an unfamiliar situation- hearing the Newsroom reaction before witnessing the thing to which people were reacting. Even more unfamiliar was the tenor of said reaction. People liked it. They […]
Back in April, Entertainment Weekly published a story about the Tribeca Film Festival. Apparently Oscar winner, Emmy winner and inspiration to writers and politicians the world over, Aaron Sorkin, took some time out of a panel he was taking part in to apologize for The Newsroom (and, it seems, for being Aaron Sorkin in general). […]
When we announced that Mark Duplass was our My Cinema Performer of the Year, we acknowledged that it was a close race between him and Chris Messina. Here was a guy winning the My Cinema Award when a solid portion of the work we loved him for happened on the small screen (namely, The Mindy […]
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Very big things happened on Breaking Bad last night. Huge things. Facebook newsfeed-shattering, Twitter-exploding things. And I didn’t give a flying hoot. I watch Breaking Bad; I’ve seen every episode. But ask me to care an inch about any character in its entire universe and I’m afraid I’ll have to laugh in your face (unless […]
“Red Team III” was the first episode of The Newsroom that was truly great. Not just Sorkin-is-a-better-writer-than-most-people good or even wow-that-was-entertaining-and-impressive good like some of the best episodes in this greatly improved second season of the unfairly dismissed HBO drama. It was stop-playing-tetris/put-down-the-diet-coke/slow-clap-at-the-end great. It was great like season two of The West Wing was […]
People really like to call Aaron Sorkin sexist. Now, I’ve shared on many occasions my firm belief that his often weakly drawn female characters have entirely more to do with his inability to understand women than any honest belief that we are inferior (man’s got no game, I feel pretty strongly that his writing shows […]
The third episode of The Newsroom‘s second season mostly moved along developing plots: the Genoa tip is gaining in credibility, Maggie is preparing for her (doomed) trip to Africa, Jim is making waves on the Romney press bus, and Neal is pulling for more Occupy coverage. We also revisited Hope Davis’ gossip columnist from last […]
The second season of HBO’s loved and loathed Aaron Sorkin drama The Newsroom begins with a toned-down, piano-heavy version of last year’s rousing theme song. Instead of the reverent images of broadcast icons that accompanied last year’s intro, this year we have a slightly more abstract portrait of modern life in the trenches of Atlantis […]
I can finally exhale. The Newsroom season finale is everything I wanted it to be. Or at least it’s almost everything I wanted it to be and knowing as I do that Aaron Sorkin is but a human being I will take “almost everything” any day. The episode wraps up stories that needed to be […]
Ah for the sweet relief of the back half of a two-parter *sigh*. For every awkward “Surprise”, there is the legendary greatness of “Innocence” and the same is certainly true (but more stark) with “Tragedy Porn” and “Mock Debate”, the two episodes that make up “The Blackout”, The Newsroom‘s season one penultimate outing.* As much […]
“The Blackout, Part 1: Tragedy Porn” was one of the weakest Newsroom offerings in quite some time. Not because it was lazy (like one infamous subplot from “News Night 2.0“), overly sentimental (like parts of “5/1“), or mildly offensive (like various things, depending on your sensitivities, from Charlie calling Sloan “girl” to Will’s condescension towards […]
I’ve heard this episode maligned a little bit but I really think The Newsroom has very clearly found its footing. After the triumph that was “Bullies” last week, “5/1” found a way to hold on to that honesty while bringing back the funny Sorkin was trying too hard to incorporate early in the series. The […]
“Bullies” was the darkest Newsroom episode yet as Sorkin used an insomnia-prompted therapy session to explore a bit more of the darkness in his principal “hero”. The format is a winner, as we’d already learned from a pretty good Sports Night episode and a spectacular West Wing episode (season two’s “Noel”- one of television’s greatest […]
This week’s installment of The Newsroom was my favourite since the pilot. With a news story big enough to force intensity, Will and Mack set aside their monumental issues at least a little bit. They seem to have reached a point of understanding (punctuated by Mack’s episode-ending gesture and the warm hug Will wrapped her […]
This was a frustrating episode that I was prepared to mostly slam, but it ended with a beautiful sequence set to Coldplay’s ever-emotional “Fix You” that was everything the show is meant to be and I ended the hour bouncing with potential (mostly because of Don, but we’ll get to that). Let’s take this thread […]
The third episode of The Newsroom is essentially a six-month montage detailing how Will, Mackenzie and Co. covered the events leading up to the November 2010 mid-term elections (they downplayed the Times Square bomb, shouted down anti-gay arguments, and went after the Tea Party). That’s all juxtaposed with the introduction of Jane Fonda as the […]
Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom is not exactly popular with people who talk about television- most are bugged by the hyperstylized idealism, the show’s nostalgic insistence, and Sorkin’s own contentious personality. But among the honest-to-god Sorkin fans who populate my life, This was more the feeling after the pilot episode last week (and I quote): “I think […]
My expectations could not have been higher for The Newsroom. From A Few Good Men to Sports Night, The West Wing, The Social Network, all the way to The Farnsworth Invention, Aaron Sorkin has written almost everything I love. There is literally no writer like him in the history of English-language art (I mean it, […]
In the “About You” section of my facebook page, under “Religion” it says “Aaron Sorkin”. See, when I first discovered Sports Night (Sorkin’s first TV series) I found, for the first time in my life, characters who spoke my language. They’re quick, silly, intense and self-awarely cheesy and it was Aaron Sorkin who created them. […]