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The Newsroom - Sorkin, Daniels, and Mortimer drama about cable news - Sundays on HBO

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LM4sure said:
Ok, I'm starting to think this show sucks. The dialog is sooooo freaking bad!!!!!!
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Its not that the dialog is bad, its that there is so much of it, and the show does not at all understand the need for subtlety and proper pacing. Getting a constant barrage of this shit is not good, no matter how witty or well written it is.
 
Well, This episode isn't very good.


Sorkin, your writing is amazing, but you wrote a bit too much for this one I think.


However, the Maggie, Jim arguments, I'll admit had me laughing.
 
Yeah, this has been pretty disappointing. The whole romance sub-plots are extremely forced.

What a huge drop from the last episode.
 
Weak first half, as Sorkin let's the dialogue spin out of control, but the second half makes up for it with a classic Sorkin on-air fuckup. I felt like I was watching Sports Night again for a minute, and that's a good thing.

And Munn was better than I'd feared.
 
Jeff Daniels is great, and I think deserves a nomination come awards season.

Sorkin totally reversed most of the character building that happened in the frist one. (I did miss most of the episode because I kept getting fucking interrupted).

I don't know if I like Maggie's character anymore. Oliva munn was decent.

I still love this show, and I know that the west wing had some shit episodes, so I'm gonna stick with it for that one or two amazing Sorkin episodes that happen every season.
 
Well now I understand the mediocre reviews :lol

Quite a drop from the great pilot, such a shame.


(still sticking through until the end of the season at least, I'll give Sorkin the benefit of the doubt that things will get better/back on the pilot's level)
 
I did kind of dig the last few minutes. There are moments where I really like the show, unfortunately those only accounted for like 5% of episode 2 lol. Hopefully that increases a bit.
 
Yeah... A bit rougher than last week. However, as I was telling my roommate, it's still better than anything else I'm watching on Sunday nights, so I'll keep going.
 
Wow, now I can see where the reviews are coming from. The first 30 minutes are a barrage of bullshit dialogue delivered at a speed that a real person would strain to discern such a conversation, much less come up with countless "witty" retorts.

That said, the show really shines when they are actually doing the broadcast. Daniels pretty much carries this entire show. His expressions during the SB1070 interview were hilarious and yet somehow still grounded.
 
Sanjuro Tsubaki said:
Yeah, she was actually pretty good in comparison to everyone else not named Jeff Daniels.
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Pretty much.

I loved the pilot, but now I see why the critics didn't like the show much. Very heavy handed and the dialogue was very forced with most of the character interactions being pretty damn ridiculous. The on-air fuck up was good, but that was about it.
 
megamerican said:
Wow, now I can see where the reviews are coming from. The first 30 minutes are a barrage of bullshit dialogue delivered at a speed that a real person would strain to discern such a conversation, much less come up with countless "witty" retorts.

That said, the show really shines when they are actually doing the broadcast. Daniels pretty much carries this entire show. His expressions during the SB1070 interview were hilarious and yet somehow still grounded.
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Pretty much my thoughts as well. About the first half of this episode had me considering dropping the show, but I did have some laughs here and there. The broadcast in particular was funny... Going into this show, I didn't know it was going to be comedy/drama, which I still don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.

Anyway, none of the main characters are all that likeable or realistic except for Will. Like most have said, they're all ridiculously fast talkers with a love for witty remarks. It gets old quickly, and then they only continue to force it. I can't really feel the cast because this type of dialogue constantly reminds me that they're acting.

I'll take the good with the bad and keep watching.
 
That shit slurry Maggie's character delivered is almost enough to make me stop watching. I'll give it one more chance next week...
 
Fucking hell...god that was terrible. In every way. Moments of Sports Night-style comedy didn't come anywhere close to saving this train wreck.
 
whytemyke said:
Yeah... A bit rougher than last week. However, as I was telling my roommate, it's still better than anything else I'm watching on Sunday nights, so I'll keep going.
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This is where I'm at. It certainly was a drop off but what else do I really have to watch? It's not as bad as some people are making it out, at least not for me.

I also tend to give HBO shows five weeks since most follow a pattern of slow building and long arcs, however this show doesn't seem to be formatted that way and I'm wondering if what I see is what I'll ultimately get. Since this doesn't seem to be like most HBO shows where they are aligning chess pieces for a big payoff but instead is a more traditional tv drama structure.
 
Show needs less comedy, I want decent drama, DAMMI IT! I don't mind comedy every now and then but seems like the show dosen't know if it wants to be drama or comedy show.
 
CiSTM said:
Show needs less comedy, I want decent drama, DAMMI IT! I don't mind comedy every now and then but seems like the show dosen't know if it wants to be drama or comedy show.
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West Wing was a fantastic drama, and was also hilarious. Trying to be funny isn't why this fails so bad.
 
Alright, time to stand alone:

I liked this episode so much more than the pilot.

The pilot felt like so much soapboxing and revisionist nostalgia. There was a good show somewhere under there, and I had hope it could transform into that show over the season. Something that smartly handled past events, didn't indulge Sorkin's sensibilities too much, had good character work.

The second episode didn't do that, but somehow I enjoyed it more for it. It fully dove into fast-talking batshit crazy events and I was entertained every second. It continued to be very odd and awkward and obvious about recent past events, but that didn't matter because of how much I loved the stuff unrelated to Sorkin stating what he thinks about immigration and shit. I guiltily loved the characters. Maggie and Jim trading banter at impossible speeds, Neal looking on, Don randomly dropping, Charlie being a fucking wizard, Mac and Will trading banter even FASTER than Maggie and Jim.

So in the pilot Sorkin was sort of short-sighted and contradictory and unintentionally ironic and ridiculous about his opinions and the way the show was written, where Sorkin was turned up to say 8. And instead of maybe toning that back, going down to a 6 and checking himself, being more rational and less stickily nostalgic and arrogant, thereby turning the show into something that could be taken seriously and be thought about and possibly evolve into a truly fantastic show–he turned himself up to 12/10. Every part of the show is now so unreal. It's a freaking sci-fi fantasy already, two episodes in. It's melodramatic, breakneck paced, has such unfeasibly fast dialogue that I have whiplash, and is so damn sure that it's right about everything. It's so disconnected from reality that...I don't even know. As much as I've overused the word trying to describe the show, it's the only one that 100% accurately applies: THE SHOW IS RIDICULOUS.

It's a TV auteur at an insane level of indulgence. I'm going to enjoy this show the same way most people enjoyed American Horror Story. Just so completely inflated and high-strung that I'm enraptured the entire time.
 
That first half was rough, but everything beginning with after they start scrambling to get replacement guests on the show was much better.

Also, if anyone is a soapbox for Sorkin it's Mackenzie by far. Will McAvoy is much more even keeled than I imagined him to be judging from the early reviews. Sorkin nailed his character very well.
 
A guy named William Shakesman once said: "BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT". Every damn scene in this show just goes on and on with characters talking about shit that I cease to care about halfway through the scene. I powered through the first episode off the awesome opening rant, where the inhuman charisma and dialog delivery worked to the show's advantage, but having characters endlessly debate every single mundane detail of the process of creating a news show just gives me a headache. I was worried about it in the first episode, and it just killed me in this one.
 
Okay.

This whole scene about what Will didn't do is horrible.

We got it the first time you said it in the first scene. There's a secret.

You're not this shit a writer, Sorky.
 
really don't like mackenzie as a character, she's really grating on me.

i do like the maggie and jim thing that's going on though.
 
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