First 10 minutes were amazing. I'm not usually into political dramas but this show is great. I look forward to it every Sunday. Jeff Daniels is amazingly good at being a news anchor.
Pure, over-the-top fantasy. It's pretty much impossible to take seriously if you've ever worked in a real newsroom. The dialogue is on point, however, and Sorkin's "idealism pr0n" can be fun.
Love the show, I think the idea of setting it a few years back so that the news they are reporting is based on real events was a genius idea.
I think it was an awful self-serving idea. Sorkin is using historical hindsight to make Will McAvoy's team look like geniuses. All that stuff they figured out about the BP oil spill took the New Orleans newspapers a few months of investigative journalism to do... with the new producer's contacts they figure it all out in the first night? and then Olivia Munn asks about the debt ceiling during the night of the 2010 midterms? that didn't come up until much later. its just hokey. I'm a big Sorkin fan, but I haven't been a big fan of this show thus far.
This. Don't get me wrong, everything from a technical stand-point of a great drama is there. Great acting, directing, lead/supporting cast. I'm just curious as to what headlines they'll be "breaking" after the BP arc and how they'll ridiculously tie it in with their news team. I wouldn't pin that being the reason, but I also just haven't been able to sit down and make it past mid-3rd episode and I'm not feeling inclined to further digest any more episodes.. *shrug* Has no reflection on the quality of the show what-so-ever though. Maybe it roots to me never being super into political dramas, but I'd analogy it to listening to an album that upon first listen didn't have any clear flaws other than it just not having any replay value for me. I'll keep an eye out on here and see if/how things pick up.
The whole thing is obviously a mix of fantasy and reality. I don't know anyone who is thinking this is supposed to be an accurate portrayal of an actual newsroom. Of course real news doesn't get reported like that without something going wrong and of course editorializing on the fly is something that is hard to replicate. Plus nobody has talked that fast since the 1920s.
The show needs time to develop the characters... then it has as good a chance as any to be great, given the quality of the writing and acting. Till then, the news stories and drama based on real events needs to carry the show... once the characters carve out a niche, they'll be able to be less "hindsight idealistic". Similiar to what happened with ER (where the events of the emergency room an the cases had to carry the show to get an audience... prior to being able to really delve into the chracters).
I've been watching. It's kind of up and down but I think it'll get better. It has potential to be pretty damn good. It definitely needs to improve a little though, I'll keep watching.
West Wing & Studio 60 on the Sun Set Strip are the exact same shows...& i'm enjoying the Newsroom just as much. I can recognise Sorkin's writing anywhere - the cadence, characters & much more...yet my appreciation is not diminished.
for example (and i've only watched E01 so far), i guarantee a Gilbert & Sullivan reference, probably Pirates of Penzance. still love
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I caught my first episode to watch last night and I want to go back and watch the previous ones now. That one line last night was epic, "doctors declare people dead, not the news."
Agreed... although that's only because Mad Men and GOT are done for the year, and I haven't gotten into Breaking Bad yet.
