The Newsroom Is Bad

Ok, to start out with, I know I've been AWOL for a while.  Well, only a couple weeks, but it feels like a long time.  And the truth of the matter is I just haven't been watching TV lately.  *GASP*  Oh, I watched Mad Men, and I caught up on Veep over the weekend, but mostly my pop culture time (which hasn't been much, since I've started a new, full-time job) has been consumed with reading the Game Of Thrones books. They are just SO GOOD!  I could read them forever!  And I pretty much have been, to the exclusion of almost everything else.  I'm gearing up to start doing Dawson's Creek recaps pretty soon, but I've got to finish Storm Of Swords first.  SORRY!  But some things take precedence in life, and amazing books are one of them.

It's no surprise, then, that I slept a little on the premiere of Aaron Sorkin's new drama, The Newsroom.  And  then when I saw pictures of Kristin Davis macking on Sorkin, I remembered OH!  This show!  I am excited about it!  So I took a break from Arya and Jon Snow to check it out.

And....oh.  This face. :/

By now you've probably seen the opening speech that Jeff Daniels makes, where he talks about how America ISN'T the best country in the world:



It's wonderful and honest and informed and really great and exactly what I hoped this show would be.  But then...he says this (italics mine):

"But [America] sure used to be [the best] (ed: REALLY?  IT DID? SINCE WHEN???).  We used to stand up for what's right (again: REALLY? SINCE WHEN???).  We fought for moral reasons (like all those Native Americans we killed for 'moral reasons'?), we passed laws for moral reasons (like all those laws to keep black and white people from getting married?), we waged wars on poverty, not poor people (REALLY? Like all that help we've given poor people during the decades-long War On Drugs?).  We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chests (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA).  We built great big things (Congratulations, America, on building big things.), we made amazing technological advances, explored the universe, cured disease, we cultivated the world's greatest artists (okaaaaay) AND the world's greatest economy (ummmmmm).  We reached for the STARS (vom).  We acted like men (VOM).  We aspired to intelligence, we didn't belittle it, it didn't make us feel inferior (If that is what you'd like to believe, Sorkin).  We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't...we didn't scare so easy.  We were able to do all these things and be all these things because we were informed.  By great men, men who were revered (Yup, W.R. Hearst was super great and kept us EXTRA informed).  First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.  America isn't the greatest country in the world anymore."

So, as you can probably tell, I've got some problems with this speech.  America isn't the greatest country in the world ANYMORE?  So when was it?  When we had slaves?  When we shoved our immigrants into tenements to die of tuberculosis and starvation and factory fires?  Was it during the Trail Of Tears?  When we outlawed alcohol?  When we lynched black people?  When we put Japanese-Americans into internment camps?  Was it when we put "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance or when we continually denied equal rights to women, and gays, and racial and ethnic and religious minorities?  When we entered in to multiple wars and armed confrontations against small countries because we disagreed with their ultimately ineffective and self-defeating ideologies? When we watched our citizens ravaged by AIDS and did so little to help?  When we freely armed horrible, genocidal people around the world?  When we allowed the Supreme Court to elect a president?  When we put our money where our mouth was and never beat our chests on Imaginary Island in Never Never Land?  Tell me, Aaron Sorkin, precisely WHEN America was the greatest country in the world.  Because by my count, that was NEVER.


Maybe I should've started by explaining why I was so excited about this show to begin with, and then I can more adequately address the myriad ways in which it disappointed me.  Well, I am a West Wing acolyte.  I love The West Wing, and Charlie and Josh and Mrs. Landingham and all the rest of them.  I never minded the idealistic, wishful-thinking counterpoint to the horrific Bush Administration.  It was nice to see politicians doing the things I wished politicians would actually do, and, of course the cast was so stellar that it was pretty impossible not to love.  And it also wasn't afraid to take on challenging issues that were interesting to see examined through a political and presidential lens.  I'm also one of the few people who truly enjoyed Studio 60 (while recognizing its shortcomings, which were many), and while Sports Night wasn't altogether my thing, I appreciated it for what it was. I will admit to not liking The Social Network, but Sorkin's cameo on 30 Rock was the best thing about their fifth season.  And when I saw the preview for The Newsroom, I thought, "Man, this is the show for me!  Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Dev Patel, Alison Pill - there, there, I am SO there."  But...then the second part of that speech came and I found myself wanting to throw things at my TV.  Then the INTRO came and OH DEAR GOD KILL ME NOW it is the schlockiest piece of schlock turd to ever be crapped out on television.  



And I didn't even realize that Olivia Munn was on the show, which is like 10 points from Griffindor right away because I can't stand anything about her.  But, guys!  That intro!  Are we supposed to know who those old white men are? More importantly, are we supposed to CARE?  Scratch that question, we're definitely supposed to care.  The swelling music worked for the intro of The West Wing because of the nature of The West Wing, but here it just feels forced and...bad.  Unbearable and bad.

Look, like many ultimately not-good things, it's not that everything about it is bad.  Dev Patel is sorely under-utilized, it's a little obnoxious that there are two almost identical white guys doing the same job (Jim and Don) and wooing the same girl and basically being annoying and white, and Emily Mortimer's unevenly-sized eyes are OUT-OF-CONTROL distracting, but other than that the cast is pretty solid.  I know that while watching it, I had some moments where I thought, "Oh, this is pretty good", but I've been trying to remember what they were for about 15 minutes now, and I just can't.  Something involving Sam Waterston, probably (I'll always have a soft spot for Jack McCoy, although his character here is 100% pure, unadulterated fantasy and maybe the most naive, suspend-your-disbelief aspect of the entire show).  Dev Patel, of course.  That moment where Jim starts chasing the story was pretty fun.  But anything else?  Nope.  Instead, what I'm remembering are the trite, unrealistic moments - Don being a total jack-ass; Maggie's entire character; everything between Mortimer and Daniels in his office.  

When she said "quixotic" I made this face.

I haven't read too many other reviews (I wait until after writing my own so as not to mar my distilled opinion), but people seem to be at a consensus that for all the impassioned speeches and swelling dramatic music (honestly, the use of music is one of the worst parts of the show; it rings false and is the opposite of effortless), the truth is that this newsroom shit doesn't really matter so much anymore and you can talk about being informed all you want but who the fuck watches the nightly news any more?  My grandmother (who died two years ago)?  There IS no anchor like this, there WASN'T an anchor like this (we'll get to the "we're in the past!" issue in a second), and while there ARE good journalists in America, this premise, combined with the so-heavy-handed-it's-drowning-in-its-own-erudition typical Sorkin writing, makes the show so Utopian and starry-eyed it's hard to watch.  It makes me sad.  And not in the wistful, hopeful, "It could be like this someday!" way that The West Wing made me sad.  Because at the end of the goddamn day, the news media JUST AREN'T LIKE THIS AT ALL.  And some bullshit Aaron Sorkin drama isn't going to change anything.

Ok, so, the pilot starts off our timeline in April of 2010, with the gang blowing the top off the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill story.  Now comes the moment that I have to admit that I pretty much stopped reading the news at that point.  Oh, I stay informed of things that are happening in the world - but I do so through Twitter and Facebook and The Daily Show and emails from my dad.  Basic filters that are good at providing me with news I need to hear.  What I decided to abandon were websites and TV channels filled with pictures of dying marine life and not demanding accountability from those accountable; those same websites and channels that nearly drove me into a depressive episode over their truly painful coverage of Obama's health care legislation.  I have generalized anxiety disorder, and if I read or see too much about the horrible things going on in the world, it starts to stress me out pretty seriously and I can't sleep, etc.  So I take bad news in limited doses, and it's not an issue.  But here's the thing:  it's not really the information that's the problem.  It's the media's way of latching on to a story and squeezing every possible minute amount of coverage from it.  Keep me informed, yes.  But do a better, less crazy job of it!

So I assume now that we'll be dragged through the news stories of the past few years (Midterm elections! Scott Walker! Debt ceiling! And so on.), except we'll see them the way Sorkin thinks they should've been covered.  Okay. So I get to relive all of the most terribly infamous and depressing stories that I've mostly avoided for two years, except through this idealistic lens with a completely screwed-up and nostalgic vision of how great America was in the past?  That sounds like torture.  AND it has Olivia Munn?  Lord, I am SO out.

Look, I know that there are plenty of people who enjoyed the pilot, and this is not meant to detract from their enjoyment.  Like the things that you like!  I was just so surprised (and yet not really surprised at all) that this show that seemed so tailor-made for me was, much like Girls, devastatingly disappointing within the first ten minutes.  And I just have to say that (A) under-utilizing Dev Patel is a crime and (B) just because you have people of color on your HBO drama doesn't mean you're off the hook for all your leads (and characters with romantic interest) being white.  Yet another squandered opportunity on that front.  I mean, just imagine if Emily Mortimer were replaced with, say, Viola Davis.  Boom.  Power.  Strength.  Hotness.  Intelligence.  Then have John Gallagher, Jr. and Dev Patel switch roles, and THAT I might actually watch.

So, I guess that's it.  I might watch a few more episodes so I can fully understand the rest of the critical response to the show, but by then I should be well into A Feast For Crows and rewatching The Creek for the umpteenth time.  A rousing disappointment, Sorkin.  Maybe it's time to take a step back and change things up a little.  But more likely enough of HBO's optimistic liberal audience will like The Newsroom and it'll enjoy three to four hearty seasons and some ill-deserved Emmys.  And still nobody will care about the news.  Such is life!


Images via TVRage & tumblr