megamerican
Member
Yeah he bothered me as well. I think he's meant to be sloshed all the time but his performance is really over-the-top cartoonishly drunk.
The Newsroom - Sorkin, Daniels, and Mortimer drama about cable news - Sundays on HBO
- Thread starter Cornballer
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Yeah he bothered me as well. I think he's meant to be sloshed all the time but his performance is really over-the-top cartoonishly drunk.
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
Whoa. I disagree explicitly with everything you have said here. I hope that none of your implied advice winds up being reflected in the show.
"Bowtie dude," Sam Waterston's character, is the president of ACN (the fictional network); he outranks everyone in the building except the channel's corporate owners.
Exactly. He's the President. That is not how a President of a network company acts. The way he hobbles around Will is fucking terrible. How he has to muster up courage to shut down Will's ex producer makes no sense. His presence is too meek. To me, he's just an unrealistic character and thatdraws me away from the show everytime he pops up with his bobbing head.
It did take away from that scene as you mentioned, but I disagree with the motives behind it. I think they were trying to establish some themes for the character and the show as a whole, not just being clever for the sake of it. Let's see if this sort of thing happens often enough to become a nuisance in the future.
Discotheque
Banned
How the fuck did Luck premiere to less people than this? Dustin Hoffman? Dennis Farina? Michael Mann? advertising focusing prominently on the more seedier side of things? wtf.
BertramCooper
Banned
Okay, I'm finally watching it.
And I could not get through that fucking ridiculous monologue without rolling my eyes a few dozen times.
Jesus Christ.
And I could not get through that fucking ridiculous monologue without rolling my eyes a few dozen times.
Jesus Christ.
Man that's impressive even if it was only two dozen.
BertramCooper
Banned
I love how he rattled off like twenty completely different world rankings of the United States in a two-minute span.
Because people can totally do that on a whim.
UltimaPooh
Member
Or he's thought about it.
I guess it's unheard of for educated people to remember things.
There's plenty of other things to criticize besides his ability to remember things.
Milch is probably my favorite writer working today and I was barely excited about Luck.
The advertising push was pretty weak as far as HBO shows go. It's about horse racing, something that saw its peak in cinema over a decade ago and has been a black hole since.
Throw in all the events happening during its airing: it's preview airing splitting viewer totals, it's second week going against the superbowl, The next week the Grammys, a couple weeks later the Oscars. Not to mention its probably one of the more difficult to penetrate shows if you know nothing of the sport.
It's combined total numbers were actually not horrible. Not great, but not horrible.
Don't get me wrong everyone should watch that show, it was phenomenal, but I can completely see why it struggled with viewership.
President Josiah Bartlet and each member of his staff could totally do that as well.
The pilot was a LOT of fun. After the reviews I was prepared for a disappointment, since Studio 60 wasn't all that great and when critcal darlings get panned that way it's not a good sign. But if this show keeps the quality of the pilot I'm totally in.
Cornballer
Member
It's an issue of trajectory for The Newsroom, which is why they might wait another week to see if they remain stable or decline. I'd guess they'll just renew it this week anyway. Here's a look at some recent premiere/S1 numbers from over on the Game of Thrones thread:
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
The show may struggle to differentiate the characters; most felt like they were singing from the same hymn sheet (which they were). Not a problem initially, but it could become one.
Some characters were better able to pull off the verbosity than others, that's for sure. My first thought was that Patel and Mortimer were just doing a worse job at acting. Emily Mortimer seemed particularly poor at her monologues. But I wonder, and this is just a weird theory that I'm not even sure if I believe, if Sorkin's writing does not mesh well with British accents (specifically, the eloquent accents on display here) - they offer an added level of pomposity rather than earthing it, as Jeff Daniels does so well. Just a thought, though.
Some characters were better able to pull off the verbosity than others, that's for sure. My first thought was that Patel and Mortimer were just doing a worse job at acting. Emily Mortimer seemed particularly poor at her monologues. But I wonder, and this is just a weird theory that I'm not even sure if I believe, if Sorkin's writing does not mesh well with British accents (specifically, the eloquent accents on display here) - they offer an added level of pomposity rather than earthing it, as Jeff Daniels does so well. Just a thought, though.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
If they renewed Luck, they're going to renew this show. Unless PETA finds out that Sorkin kills a horse every time he finishes a script.
I'm assuming Girls and Veep got renewals as well?
Cornballer
Member
Depends on a few additional factors (what they have in the pipe, how much they're paying for the show, etc...), but yes, I'd be shocked if this didn't get renewed.
Yes.
Ninja Scooter
Member
Waterson was the one weak point for me. He didn't seem like he could pull off the crazy, eccentric lines he was trying to pull off. Came off too over the top. He reminded me of a bad version of Bertram Cooper. Maybe it was the bow tie.
For HBO, cost of production matters factors into their ratings quite bit. Rome was even more popular than GoT (7mil viewers per week during season 1) and that only lasted two seasons and was ultimately cancelled because it was too expensive to produce.
BertramCooper
Banned
Yeah, no.
That was one of the most artificial television monologues I've ever heard. Unless Will actually rehearsed that diatribe (and clearly that wasn't Sorkin's intention), that monologue was dripping with bullshit.
People in his line of work can. It's not that hard.
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
So that new Jim guy looks a lot like Jim from The Office.
Bah. Having those stats offhand was not that unbelievable. There's so much more hateable than that to be found... but whatever, carry on.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
- "more as this story develops" was a snappier title, and it would have lead to a great payoff at the end of the pilot.
- dramatically overscored during emotional moments
- definitely more cocksure than even the rest of sorkin's work, which is saying something.
- i did like the claustrophobic, jerky camerawork
- everyone on the cast have appropriate gravitas. allison pill's character felt the weakest of the episode--i'd have saved her relationship until the next few episodes
- i actually do feel like a good wonky discussion on deepwater horizon was a good topic for the episode. i think that bodes well.
- i also feel that the dialogue was better at assuming the viewer's intelligence than the west wing. in the west wing many times there was an issue and in a room full of 150 iq ivy league quadruple-graduate jeopardy nerds, someone needed to explain an 8th grade civic thing to someone else as a poor "my father the king" way of explaining it to the audience. even worse when donna was used for it, as though she were a rube.
- pretty much everything after emily mortimer's character and will had their great men pissing match worked very well for me.
- will's ad lib was wonderful, and indicative of an incredible sharp mind and excellent practice at extemporaneous public speech.
- sam waterson's cracky timbre is wonderful, but i don't quite have a bead on his character yet.
now
at the risk of derailing, i don't subscribe to a "great man" theory of history; there are of course great and terrible men, but by and large much of history and policy and society unfolds not because of individual actors, but also structures and processes. i think it's incredibly egotistical to focus so uniformly on great leaders, i think it's intellectually flimsy, the stuff of made-for-tv documentaries.
the primary purpose of leaders is not to reinvent the system, it's to mediate policy inputs. what the public wants. what it feels like to live in the country. academics. private researchers. corporate interests. social groups. social cleavages. leaders are on the cutting edge, yes, but they are also bound to the system that they live in. down to the fact that they are reared and socialized in a particular context; biographers spin this into a yarn about the psyche of the individual man, hardened by battle, real leaders, yadda yadda, but it's also an indictment about the limitations of the individual man.
the globe and mail review seems to problematize that by identifying that great men have historically been men only, but i don't feel that newsroom lionizes the pre-feminist pre-civil rights era of white men, i feel like it lionizes a non-existent era where force of conviction and great people alone were enough to change the world. that's not how things work. that's why it's important to look at structural factors.
it's a pity sorkin's considerable intelligence is focused on such a shallow worldview.
- dramatically overscored during emotional moments
- definitely more cocksure than even the rest of sorkin's work, which is saying something.
- i did like the claustrophobic, jerky camerawork
- everyone on the cast have appropriate gravitas. allison pill's character felt the weakest of the episode--i'd have saved her relationship until the next few episodes
- i actually do feel like a good wonky discussion on deepwater horizon was a good topic for the episode. i think that bodes well.
- i also feel that the dialogue was better at assuming the viewer's intelligence than the west wing. in the west wing many times there was an issue and in a room full of 150 iq ivy league quadruple-graduate jeopardy nerds, someone needed to explain an 8th grade civic thing to someone else as a poor "my father the king" way of explaining it to the audience. even worse when donna was used for it, as though she were a rube.
- pretty much everything after emily mortimer's character and will had their great men pissing match worked very well for me.
- will's ad lib was wonderful, and indicative of an incredible sharp mind and excellent practice at extemporaneous public speech.
- sam waterson's cracky timbre is wonderful, but i don't quite have a bead on his character yet.
now
at the risk of derailing, i don't subscribe to a "great man" theory of history; there are of course great and terrible men, but by and large much of history and policy and society unfolds not because of individual actors, but also structures and processes. i think it's incredibly egotistical to focus so uniformly on great leaders, i think it's intellectually flimsy, the stuff of made-for-tv documentaries.
the primary purpose of leaders is not to reinvent the system, it's to mediate policy inputs. what the public wants. what it feels like to live in the country. academics. private researchers. corporate interests. social groups. social cleavages. leaders are on the cutting edge, yes, but they are also bound to the system that they live in. down to the fact that they are reared and socialized in a particular context; biographers spin this into a yarn about the psyche of the individual man, hardened by battle, real leaders, yadda yadda, but it's also an indictment about the limitations of the individual man.
the globe and mail review seems to problematize that by identifying that great men have historically been men only, but i don't feel that newsroom lionizes the pre-feminist pre-civil rights era of white men, i feel like it lionizes a non-existent era where force of conviction and great people alone were enough to change the world. that's not how things work. that's why it's important to look at structural factors.
it's a pity sorkin's considerable intelligence is focused on such a shallow worldview.
I can't imagine you'd get anything out of this then- it's the most focused on the 4th estate conceptually of any show ever
What did you enjoy about it, if anything?Not quite. 7 million per week, with multiple airing. IIRC, GOT is at around 8.
Edit: Actually 10 million.
It's been stated a lot but the only reason Rome was cancelled was because they didn't take into account DVD sales and only focused on first run ratings. Not to mention it was an old regime that judged their shows by more narrow metrics.
HBO has gone on record stating as such and even mentioned GoT is their makeup attempt at that error and is aimed at filling that void lost by Rome.
In more recent times they have switched their metrics on judging the success of their programming by looking at things in broader terms and judging based on things like overall ratings, subscriptions, DVD sales, overseas revenue, critical acclaim and acquiring and retaining top level talent.
Under this new model I don't think shows like Deadwood or Rome would have been cancelled. And why shows like Luck, despite poor ratings, was given a second season(until all the controversy) and Treme has been given three seasons so far.
BertramCooper
Banned
So is every episode going to have the same song-and-dance, where we get a past news story and we witness how it should have been reported?
UltimaPooh
Member
He only listed like 7 things. It's entirely in the realm of believability.
I echo the thread though the boss dude is just weird.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I think you'd be hard pressed to drum up more than 20 compelling, substantial, interesting, episode-worthy news stories from Summer 2010 to present day. Just in my humble opinion.
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
I imagine it's going to be structured a bit like The West Wing. Each episode will deal with a particular topic that gets explored through a trending news item, which doesn't necessarily have to be as huge as an oil spill, but has enough meat on it for the characters to bicker and rant with each other while they grow closer as a team.
I don't see Sorkin breaking out of his topical writing style with this show.
BertramCooper
Banned
That particular element won't completely kill it for me, provided they fuck up occasionally. But if they become nothing more than some divine, infallible force for good in American broadcast news, that will get very old very fast.
Tim the Wiz
Banned
Watched the pilot. After The Social Network and Moneyball, I was sure a Sorkin HBO show would just kill. That maybe Studio 60 could be an aberration. But it was not to be. Sorkin needs constraints, because this show over-indulges his foibles, and turns them into glaring faults.
Probably the most accurate description. It's ridiculous, perhaps even more than Studio 60. But it's addictive screed, stylistic fun at times, even if the unrealistic bombast of an unconvincingly-labelled heroic lead almost enters Shonda Rhimes territory. Yeah. I'll probably keep watching.
Otherwise, the Punjab line was more embarrasing than I expected. What a waste of Dev Patel. Nice to see minorities on screen, of course, but substantive de-tokenized ones would be great. (They're just too smart and well-spoken to be involved in office rom-com shenanigans and idle banter, you see! - But that makes them feel less human than the other characters. - Well, what do you care? You only saw them - ah, him - on screen for a minute, tops.) Hilarious that a network show like The Good Wife is leagues ahead of HBO's own new shiny workplace drama, when it comes to linking meaningful characterization and diversity.
Probably the most accurate description. It's ridiculous, perhaps even more than Studio 60. But it's addictive screed, stylistic fun at times, even if the unrealistic bombast of an unconvincingly-labelled heroic lead almost enters Shonda Rhimes territory. Yeah. I'll probably keep watching.
Otherwise, the Punjab line was more embarrasing than I expected. What a waste of Dev Patel. Nice to see minorities on screen, of course, but substantive de-tokenized ones would be great. (They're just too smart and well-spoken to be involved in office rom-com shenanigans and idle banter, you see! - But that makes them feel less human than the other characters. - Well, what do you care? You only saw them - ah, him - on screen for a minute, tops.) Hilarious that a network show like The Good Wife is leagues ahead of HBO's own new shiny workplace drama, when it comes to linking meaningful characterization and diversity.
THE-Pink-Dagger
Member
Loved it, I thought the monologue was brilliant and immediately award worthy for Jeff Daniels, so good.
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
Bolded part is how I feel about it. The show's main crutch is that it takes cable television and accelerates the process of news coverage to the point where it's hilariously unrealistic. Everyone watches the news. And to an extent, everyone knows how breaking news breaks. So when a show tries to explore the background workings of an industry, it shouldn't ride roughshod over aspects of cable television that the general public knows all too well. It was easy to accelerate the process in The West Wing because the general public doesn't know what the fuck the White House does. Media is a bit different. And if the writers of this show can't provide a more insightful look into the going ons of news-making than a group of researchers in a news tank, then I don't think this show has much of a future.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I hope that it catches up to present day sooner rather than later, so that this isn't even a possibility
BertramCooper
Banned
It's the context that bothers me.
He's participating in some dull university panel discussion, completely bored and disengaged. No doubt he did absolutely no preparation and simply planned to coast through it. And then some slight nagging from the moderator whips him into a frenzy where he starts listing off several very specific world rankings, followed by a transition into a super cloying, super rehearsed remembrance of America when it was great. All with zero hesitation, zero stuttering, zero flinching.
Again, there was nothing remotely realistic about that speech. He's either the most unfathomably gifted extemporaneous speaker that has ever walked the planet (which given Sorkin's writing, is entirely possible) or he's totally full of shit and rehearsed it beforehand.
SpeedingUptoStop
will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
The show was just very concerned up with getting out what it wanted to say and doing it as fast as possible, without paying respect to real journalism or reality in general at times. I hoped for something more honest about how things can work for the better in news and the only answer I found was "get a writer to speed up the whole process so much that the perfect opinion is spat out in less than 10 minutes." Which I thought was crazy, given how the show's intro seemed to display how terrible talking heads rapid fire reacting to things was instead of calmly thinking about it for a minute. And then we're immediately thrust into ARE YOU ABOUT TO GO ON AIR AND DERIDE THIS OIL COMPANY after, again, maybe 10 real time minutes after the story broke. Sorkin's dramatic momentum can't seem to catch up with his words.
heliosRAzi
Banned
I hate it when old white men like to glorify the "old days" as if they were the greatest America has ever been. They remember all of the good stuff, but not the bad stuff like Jim Crow.
Tim the Wiz
Banned
The worst part is that they might have squeaked by with a second season, if they'd stopped using real horses. At the same time, those racing scenes were absolutely majestic. Best thing on HBO since The Wire and Deadwood. (Note: I've yet to watch Treme.)
This got on my nerves a lot more than some of the faults people are bringing up in this thread. It's funny, I almost never notice BAD music in shows, I can't name another one that stands out.
BertramCooper
Banned
Furthermore, if this "Worst. Generation. Ever" bullshit becomes a recurring theme, that will piss me off more than anything.
Few things are more hypocritical and insulting than being lectured to by a baby boomer about how awful our generation is.
SpeedingUptoStop
will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
UltimaPooh
Member
This will probably be a theme through out the series.
Especially when his staff is a bunch of generation Yers and they are the ones that broke the BP oil spill.
To the people wondering if indeed one could or could not rattle off a bunch of statistics spontaneously as Will Mcavoy(was that the name?) did: didn't you think the way they broke down the size of the oil spill and why they wouldn't be able to cap it was a bit too quick to be true? They got some notes from the phone calls with the sources, fine. It still seemed a little too convenient, especially Patel's knowledge on the subject.
Not that any of that annoys me, it doesn't. I just figured if you were going to pick something to complain about...
Not that any of that annoys me, it doesn't. I just figured if you were going to pick something to complain about...
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
Yep. Patel is obviously going to be this show's convenient data and fact source. Kind of like TWW's Josh Lyman, except that in Josh's case, it made sense in the context of his role, whereas Patel is a news scanner and writers Will's blog. But he's Indian, so let's make him super smart and great with technical facts.
UltimaPooh
Member
Is that what he said though? What about Mackenzie? Was she describing the good old days for as it was for old white men?
You know what, it was the 'good ol' days'** for black people too. Hold up. I don't mean Jim Crow was good for black people. I mean that black people had leaders like MLK and Rosa Parks instead of the Al Sharptons of today. I mean that political rock n' roll songs could reach the top of the charts instead of the clear channel tripe of today. One explicit example mentioned in the show is how USA went from a war on poverty to a war on 'drugs' (or the underclass as David Simon would say). There are some good things to miss about the old days, even for the discriminated of that time.
** EXAGGERATION
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