{"id":337,"date":"2012-06-25T22:05:33","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T22:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=337"},"modified":"2012-06-25T22:12:15","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T22:12:15","slug":"the-newsroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=337","title":{"rendered":"TV Rant: The Newsroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, so Aaron Sorkin has another show about making a TV show.\u00a0 He’s previously put out Sports Night<\/em> (which was critically respected if short lived) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip <\/em>(which was much less critically respected).\u00a0 Never seen either one.\u00a0 I did see his West Wing<\/em> once or twice and I wasn’t really a big fan.\u00a0 I thought its characters were laughably simplistic.\u00a0 Though I give it credit for not being cynical and still being slightly believable.<\/p>\n

I’ve liked his movie writing better.\u00a0 I enjoyed both Moneyball <\/em>and The Social Network<\/em>.\u00a0 He has a gift for dialogue that isn’t necessarily realistic but is often entertaining.<\/p>\n

Which describes most of the dialogue on The Newsroom<\/em>.\u00a0 Seasoned network anchor Jeff Daniels\u00a0has a moment out of\u00a0The Natural <\/em>(being inspired by a female with a halo) and responds to an innocent, if stupid, question by a college student with a rant about the state of America.\u00a0 This inspires\u00a0the head of his network to rework his show.\u00a0 Since\u00a0Daniels is damaged goods (slightly) they’re going to go for broke.\u00a0 They are going to ignore ratings and do the news.\u00a0 I guess that’s supposed to be revolutionary thinking.<\/p>\n

This is kind of where the show loses me.\u00a0 Daniels’s rant was pretty good but the reasoning\u00a0and structure or even point of the retooling of the show is kind of silly (and that’s assuming I even understand it).\u00a0 And taking place on the first day of the BP spill there’s breaking news and the new system is tested on its 1st day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But its really fucking easy to look smart when you already know what happens.\u00a0 So I’m guessing this is Sorkin’s take on the way it should have been reported.\u00a0 Ok…\u00a0 So?<\/p>\n

There’s a bunch of blah blah about trying to make journalism a noble profession again and more boring crap.\u00a0 Some of this show is really really stupid.<\/p>\n

I will, however, tune in next week.<\/p>\n

Why the hell am I doing that?\u00a0 Well\u00a02 reasons.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Much like the only reason to watch\u00a0True Blood<\/em>, I want to see who fucks who.<\/p>\n

and<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Once they\u00a0were actually broadcasting\u00a0their news\u00a0thingy; the show became much better.\u00a0 I was actually entertained by their broadcast.<\/p>\n

I don’t watch the news on TV (what the fuck’s the internet for assholes?) and I sure as hell don’t get misty eyed over the state of journalism.\u00a0 I think its always been shitty and that its always been a shitty profession staffed by people who were mostly shits.<\/p>\n

But, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a show about them.\u00a0 I’m still a little bothered by the retro-active news coverage of real events.\u00a0 I think that’s pretty lazy writing.\u00a0 But, I’m not sure its been done before so I’ll give it a little lattitude before my final ruling.\u00a0 And all the actors are very charming in their roles; very well cast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, all in all, they’ve done enough for me to watch episode 2.\u00a0 But just barely.\u00a0 So we’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, so Aaron Sorkin has another show about making a TV show.\u00a0 He’s previously put out Sports Night (which was critically respected if short lived) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (which was much less critically respected).\u00a0 Never seen … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preview","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}