My feelings for this show have evolved from being really excited about it and counting the days until it premiered, to being entertained by it but mildly annoyed by its faults, to being mostly irritated by it but willing to give it one more viewing in the hopes that it would redeem itself, to hating every single person involved in it.

Hey, didn't Matt Albie on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip also fire a bunch of the writing staff when he took over as head writer?

There were other writing staff? I figured Sorkin was doing a JMS and writing them all himself.

On the other hand, I've got a number of non-American friends who really like Newsroom. So, eh.

Wait, if that's true that Sorkin's ex is the only one he didn't fire, does that mean just like the whole Matt Albie/Harriet Hays relationship on Studio 60 was a rehashing of Sorkin's relationship with Kristin Chenoweth, the Will McAvoy/Mackenzie Machale relationship is him rehashing his relationship with another that ex?

Also, despite being one of the few people who actually like Studio 60, I'm giving this one more episode and I'm out.

Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

I'm a pretty Lefty McLefterson but I really don't like the show. You know how Twilight is basically Stephenie Meyer writing fanfiction for her sad daydreams? The Newsroom is liberal Twilight.

TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

That's true.

So far myself and three other friends of mine have loved every episode, with all of us agreeing that "Bullies" was the best of the season so far. But I have loved West Wing, SportsNight and Studio 60 so I guess it follows.

I like it. It's no West Wing, but I watch it for free, so I'm not going to biatch about it.

I pay for Showtime, but not HBO.

And then he was caught jackin' it San Diego.

Sorkin: Walk with me.
Staff: Aaron, why did you bring us here?
Sorkin: Because there's the exit, employment's over.

Feels his pain.

cameroncrazy1984: TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

That's true.

So far myself and three other friends of mine have loved every episode, with all of us agreeing that "Bullies" was the best of the season so far. But I have loved West Wing, SportsNight and Studio 60 so I guess it follows.

Well yeah, but that was a pretty easy call. I'm a little annoyed that he's clearly stealing wholesale storylines from West Wing though.

TheNyquilKid: Sorkin: Walk with me.
Staff: Aaron, why did you bring us here?
Sorkin: Because there's the exit, employment's over.

Right, like Sorkin can be that brief and to-the-point. I'd understand if it were a 9 minute walk that begins with a long-winded joke or anecdote that is called back at the end of said walk, which is coincidentally near the exit.

GAT_00: cameroncrazy1984: TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

That's true.

So far myself and three other friends of mine have loved every episode, with all of us agreeing that "Bullies" was the best of the season so far. But I have loved West Wing, SportsNight and Studio 60 so I guess it follows.

Well yeah, but that was a pretty easy call. I'm a little annoyed that he's clearly stealing wholesale storylines from West Wing though.

That's my biggest problem getting into it. Every episode feels like you've seen it already.

rynthetyn: Wait, if that's true that Sorkin's ex is the only one he didn't fire, does that mean just like the whole Matt Albie/Harriet Hays relationship on Studio 60 was a rehashing of Sorkin's relationship with Kristin Chenoweth, the Will McAvoy/Mackenzie Machale relationship is him rehashing his relationship with another that ex?

Or, he's just re-hashing the Dana Whitaker/Casey McCall relationship.

I've really enjoyed the last two episodes, but yeah those before that were rough. "Bullies" was really excellent. I'm keeping my HBO sub until this season ends, then I'll re-evaluate its worth.

They all quit to join Taliban

People are going t tell me to go back to my Two and a Half Men DVDs for saying this but it has to be said. Sorkin is a preachy, insufferable douchebag and his shows are full of preachy, insufferable douchebag characters. I don't see how entertainment can be derived from his crap.

...although I liked Sports Night.

stoli n coke: GAT_00: cameroncrazy1984: TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

That's true.

So far myself and three other friends of mine have loved every episode, with all of us agreeing that "Bullies" was the best of the season so far. But I have loved West Wing, SportsNight and Studio 60 so I guess it follows.

Well yeah, but that was a pretty easy call. I'm a little annoyed that he's clearly stealing wholesale storylines from West Wing though.

That's my biggest problem getting into it. Every episode feels like you've seen it already.

Learning about a character's father that used to hit him during a vaguely hostile therapy session? Now why is this familiar...

I'm so torn. I really want to like this show. I really don't want to admit that Sorkin is a one-trick-pony. I have enjoyed every episode thus far, and "Amen" got a little dusty in the end, but while "Bullies" made me love the casting of Olivia Munn and Sam Waterston, I am very, very disappointed that the storyline was lifted nearly wholesale from Season Three of the West Wing. I'm keeping the faith for a little while.

I mean, jeez...even the opening music and montage could be overlaid with the West Wing's and harmonize.

the last episode was finally decent. but mostly they've been a combination of liberal ranting and awkward screwball comedy.

don't get me wrong - the political points he makes on the show are valid and important. it's just that it seems to come in rapid-fire bursts of sorkinesque logorrhea.

and the romantic comedy? aaron sorkin is to romantic comedy what aaron nevile is to romantic comedy. ugh.

EyeballKid: TheNyquilKid: Sorkin: Walk with me.
Staff: Aaron, why did you bring us here?
Sorkin: Because there's the exit, employment's over.

Right, like Sorkin can be that brief and to-the-point. I'd understand if it were a 9 minute walk that begins with a long-winded joke or anecdote that is called back at the end of said walk, which is coincidentally near the exit.

It is, Youtube "Sports Night Philo Farnsworth". I cut out about 4 minutes of awesome dialouge.

TheNyquilKid: EyeballKid: TheNyquilKid: Sorkin: Walk with me.
Staff: Aaron, why did you bring us here?
Sorkin: Because there's the exit, employment's over.

Right, like Sorkin can be that brief and to-the-point. I'd understand if it were a 9 minute walk that begins with a long-winded joke or anecdote that is called back at the end of said walk, which is coincidentally near the exit.

It is, Youtube "Sports Night Philo Farnsworth". I cut out about 4 minutes of awesome dialouge.

I remember that bit. Muhfarkin' Bill Macy FTW!!!

Said it before: Sorkin's big weakness is he doesn't write characters, he writes mouthpieces.

Bored, cynical mouthpieces, to boot. Every character has the same inflection, cadence, vocabulary as every other character.

towatchoverme: Every character has the same inflection, cadence, vocabulary as every other character.

Like Kevin Smith. But at least his earlier stuff was entertaining.

On the 'Bullies' episode, Will was giving advice to Sloane and she was concerned that she was being chosen for something she wasn't capable of doing.

It was very much a Josh Lyman and Donna Whatever sort of moment.

Mugato: towatchoverme: Every character has the same inflection, cadence, vocabulary as every other character.

Like Kevin Smith. But at least his earlier stuff was entertaining.

Hey, Red State is a great film. Not what I expected at all.

towatchoverme: Said it before: Sorkin's big weakness is he doesn't write characters, he writes mouthpieces.

Bored, cynical mouthpieces, to boot. Every character has the same inflection, cadence, vocabulary as every other character.

Sorkin writes like Ayn Rand: every farking line is a diatribe that goes on for much, much longer than it should and in no way reflects reality as most people see it. They both write in a bubble where they're the sole voice of reason and the other characters just provide the illusion of argument. Granted, Ayn's viewpoints are ultimately more destructive and have no logic to them, but they come from the roughly the same place: where Ayn was biatching about being cheated out of a wealthy lifestyle in Russia, Sorkin is whining about his own shiatty life.

towatchoverme: Said it before: Sorkin's big weakness is he doesn't write characters, he writes mouthpieces.

Bored, cynical mouthpieces, to boot. Every character has the same inflection, cadence, vocabulary as every other character.

I think that's my problem with the show: The actors seem interchangeable with anyone else to say the parts. I enjoy some of the actors on the show, but the words they say seem awkward, even with the professional delivery.

And, unrealistically, everyone is allowed to go off on rants while everyone just sits around and waits for the dramatic pause and quiet, but forceful, end statement. At least they got the gay, black dude mostly right on that last episode, except, again, it was ham-handed and forced.

From what I've seen on the Politics Tab, Daniels would get half a sentence out before some irate person of an opposing mindset would yell he wrong and throw straw-man arguments at him till the stupdio looked like a Kansas wheat field. Unrealistic at best, but I still find it oddly entertaining at times.

/the only reason I started watching it was because it was on HBO on Demand and it was something I hadn't seen yet.

beta_plus: Mugato: towatchoverme: Every character has the same inflection, cadence, vocabulary as every other character.

Like Kevin Smith. But at least his earlier stuff was entertaining.

Hey, Red State is a great film. Not what I expected at all.

Red State was playing at the theater next to our hotel in Pamplona a couple of weeks back.

GAT_00: stoli n coke: GAT_00: cameroncrazy1984: TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

That's true.

So far myself and three other friends of mine have loved every episode, with all of us agreeing that "Bullies" was the best of the season so far. But I have loved West Wing, SportsNight and Studio 60 so I guess it follows.

Well yeah, but that was a pretty easy call. I'm a little annoyed that he's clearly stealing wholesale storylines from West Wing though.

That's my biggest problem getting into it. Every episode feels like you've seen it already.

Learning about a character's father that used to hit him during a vaguely hostile therapy session? Now why is this familiar...

This... I've enjoyed the show and thought the last one was very good BUT... I kept saying to myself that all the Daniels needed was not a run-of-the-mill shrink but Adam Arkin, trauma specialist.

I watched 2 episodes and called it quits. For me it was the use of pretty unrealistic coincidences to further the plot ie

*spoilerish*

BP oil spil: "Oh snap, my big sister is an engineer at BP and my brah from college is totally like an exective VP at Halliburton, lemme just text em and I'll totes get all the juicy info"

some shiat with AZ governor: "I forgot to tell you the governor's PR person was a guy who I was hooking up with in college and then he farked his ex girlfriend while I hid under the bed, oops, I blew it, now you have to interview some tea bag shiatheads"

How small is the newsroom world, its like everyone has a personal history with everyone

When's the next NPR Fresh Air interview where they talk about how wonderful and amazing this show is and how everyone should be watching it? It's been too long.

The more I think about it... The reason I want to like this show is that Daniels isn't modeled after a particular newscaster but Bartlett. Flawed. Powerful. Father figure. His interaction with Munn sealed it for me. I thought she was great and I do like the show... But it's really just a stand in for my west wing fix when my wife is sick of me playing the DVDs over and over. I'm ok with this? I guess. Also F Bravo for not running te West Wing any more in favor of the crap they have now.

chocolate covered poop: I watched 2 episodes and called it quits. For me it was the use of pretty unrealistic coincidences to further the plot ie

*spoilerish*

BP oil spil: "Oh snap, my big sister is an engineer at BP and my brah from college is totally like an exective VP at Halliburton, lemme just text em and I'll totes get all the juicy info"

some shiat with AZ governor: "I forgot to tell you the governor's PR person was a guy who I was hooking up with in college and then he farked his ex girlfriend while I hid under the bed, oops, I blew it, now you have to interview some tea bag shiatheads"

How small is the newsroom world, its like everyone has a personal history with everyone

Episode two was far and away the worst. Watch the third episode before you judge.

I just assumed that you could see the soapbox in every frame

chocolate covered poop: I watched 2 episodes and called it quits. For me it was the use of pretty unrealistic coincidences to further the plot ie

*spoilerish*

BP oil spil: "Oh snap, my big sister is an engineer at BP and my brah from college is totally like an exective VP at Halliburton, lemme just text em and I'll totes get all the juicy info"

some shiat with AZ governor: "I forgot to tell you the governor's PR person was a guy who I was hooking up with in college and then he farked his ex girlfriend while I hid under the bed, oops, I blew it, now you have to interview some tea bag shiatheads"

How small is the newsroom world, its like everyone has a personal history with everyone

That has been a bit of a Deux Ex Machina. While newspeople do have contacts, they don't just immediately have someone on every major story that will blab the whole thing to them.

rynthetyn: Wait, if that's true that Sorkin's ex is the only one he didn't fire, does that mean just like the whole Matt Albie/Harriet Hays relationship on Studio 60 was a rehashing of Sorkin's relationship with Kristin Chenoweth, the Will McAvoy/Mackenzie Machale relationship is him rehashing his relationship with another that ex?

Maybe what we're seeing here is Sorkin meta-writing his next show, and using The Newsroom as a sacrificial lamb to generate drama/storylines?

RexTalionis: Hey, didn't Matt Albie on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip also fire a bunch of the writing staff when he took over as head writer?

My first thought as well.

TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Honestly it doesn't even matter to me. Nothing he can do will be better than The West Wing, so...

And I think he knows this because he keeps trying to turn everything into The West Wing. Take Studio 60, that was pretty much West Wing - SNL edition. It was a West Wing style drama about a comedy show, complete with authority figures who would launch into pontificating speeches about history and how it relates to current reality. It was a serious political drama about the inner workings of SNL. That's why it didn't last more than a season because 30 Rock showed them that if your setting is a comedy show, it needs to be a comedy.

No one is looking at the elephant if the room. If he's trying to write a show again practically by himself, that could mean he's smoking crack again.

In retrospect, that totally explained how he was able to write 88 episodes of West Wing on his own.

soporific: It was a serious political drama about the inner workings of SNL. That's why it didn't last more than a season because 30 Rock showed them that if your setting is a comedy show, it needs to be a comedy

Then when they did show some of the sketches, they weren't funny at all. And Matthew Perry's character was supposed to be this genius writer that they pulled out of retirement like Batman.

The fundamental problem with the show is that the overarching story line is just Sorkin's commentary on recent news events, which is neither original nor insightful (he gives us the same commentary Jon Stewart and others gave us over a year ago, but without any of the wit). When you take that away, all that remains is a perfunctory TV workplace drama with stock characters and plots.

My biggest beef is the "THE INTERNATS SUXORRS LUL YOU SILLY INTERNATS"

thornhill: The fundamental problem with the show is that the overarching story line is just Sorkin's commentary on recent news events, which is neither original nor insightful (he gives us the same commentary Jon Stewart and others gave us over a year ago, but without any of the wit). When you take that away, all that remains is a perfunctory TV workplace drama with stock characters and plots.

Add to that the fact that he's doing stories that are one or two years old and it feels like an Old News Is SO Exciting! rehashing. It seems like he's writing the history of the last few years as he would have liked it to happen, or at least how he'd have liked the media to report on that history.

stoli n coke: In retrospect, that totally explained how he was able to write 88 episodes of West Wing on his own.


"88 episodes? Pussy."

rynthetyn: thornhill: The fundamental problem with the show is that the overarching story line is just Sorkin's commentary on recent news events, which is neither original nor insightful (he gives us the same commentary Jon Stewart and others gave us over a year ago, but without any of the wit). When you take that away, all that remains is a perfunctory TV workplace drama with stock characters and plots.

Add to that the fact that he's doing stories that are one or two years old and it feels like an Old News Is SO Exciting! rehashing. It seems like he's writing the history of the last few years as he would have liked it to happen, or at least how he'd have liked the media to report on that history.

Very much agree. i can ignore most of the liberal fapping, but the thing that annoys me is the fact that the news team gets the story "right" imediately, even though it took weeks in reality for the details to come out. I made a joke earlier that Sorkin could write an episode about the Aurora shooting, but he needs to wait few months to see how it plays out, so he can then have his fictional news team come up with that angle in the first 15 minutes after hearing about it.

Pocket Ninja: My feelings for this show have evolved from being really excited about it and counting the days until it premiered, to being entertained by it but mildly annoyed by its faults, to being mostly irritated by it but willing to give it one more viewing in the hopes that it would redeem itself, to hating every single person involved in it.

I feel the same way about Animal Practice.

If you like your female characters half thought out and stereotyped, this is the show for you!

RexTalionis: Hey, didn't Matt Albie on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip also fire a bunch of the writing staff when he took over as head writer?

No, Rick and Ronnie took the other writers with them when they got their sitcom picked up. It didn't matter, though, because Matt had been rejecting everything written by anyone but himself and was writing the show on his own. Then he hired a blonde chick from Europe and an Oreo (Matt's counterparts to Liz's Sue and Toofer), but didn't use anything they wrote either, and then brought in Mark McKinney as the world's most dour, painfully depressed bugger to supervise them. There was also Alex, that writer/performer played stereotypically Jewish by Simon Helberg (a direct counterpart to Liz's Josh); again, though, Matt wouldn't use anything Alex or anyone but Matt wrote.