Monday, July 23, 2012
MATH CLASS IS HARD: I've been trying to give The Newsroom plenty of time to work the kinks out, but I think that after last night I may be done. That dynamic between McHale and McAvoy, where McAvoy and Sorkin can't stop themselves from belittling her (she's a cheater; she's jealous; she can't do math, he announces to the newsroom; she doesn't understand economics at even a high-school level; she's ethical but too stupid to recognize ethical problems), even when McAvoy is busy saving her from the mean people -- is just disturbing.
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I applaud your choice to stop watching a show you don't like. For those not on my Twitter feed, let me say less sarcastically what I've been saying there: If you don't like a show, stop watching it. Especially if that show happens to air opposite the most brilliant show currently airing new episodes. Life's too short to hate-watch.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. I'm still rather enthusiastically hate-watching Bunheads.
ReplyDeleteThings I hated most:
ReplyDelete1. That McAvoy got the applause scene about how awesome he was.
2. That Sorkin (via McAvoy) completely mistated the holding of Citizens United.
I'd rather be disgusted by fictional characters than by real-life people. In other words, I'll cackle and point and tut-tut over Newsroom every week long before I indulge in the likes of Hoarders, My Secret Addiction, Celebrity Rehab, etc. Not to say that such a binary choice is the only one presented, but just that if there is a pleasure center activated in my brain by "HOW BAD CAN IT GET" I'd prefer to light it up this way.
ReplyDeleteI was glad that they didn't show Maggie's race to the control room - I think Joan Cusack in Broadcast News always and forever owns that sort of scene.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Tara Ariano's tweets, I delayed my Newsroom viewing last night because TLC was featuring a dude with a 160 pound scrotum. I'm not a proud man.
ReplyDelete(72" circumference!)
I still can't believe no one here and at Jezebel has mentioned Breakfast Club in connection with that TLC show yet.
ReplyDeleteAs for Newsroom, I was out after the first episode. Sorry, I just can't get on board with that level of bad combined with patting itself on the back.
Bunheads, on the other hand, knows exactly what it is (light summer entertainment) and fullfills it just fine, even if half the main kids still feel like sketches rather than characters,
@Watts - this is an ongoing debate between Mrs Earthling and I. She likes the Hoarder shows and the Extreme ER stuff and wonders why I watch Battlestar Galactica or Game of Thrones. But I have to get up and leave the room when she watches that stuff.
ReplyDeleteI gave Newsroom three episodes. The fourth is sitting on my DVR and I can't bring myself to watch it. The show's treatment of women (which I never minded on SportsNight or West Wing and was not looking to make a case out of here) just bothered me too much. I'm done.
ReplyDeleteI guess I just don't share the "HOW BAD CAN IT GET?" gene. I can't see watching something I hate rather than something that's really good. This is not to say everyone should sit around and read Shakespeare. Shakespeare is HARD (well, for me, anyway). But there's so much on television now that GOOD and EASY!
ReplyDeleteLife's too short for a lot of things, but go ahead and try to pare your life down to sex and chocolate and tell me how it works out.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about opportunity costs.
ReplyDeleteAren't you like one of only six people in the country who know what CU really says?
ReplyDeleteSo, I love this show and I'm going to keep watching it with my wife who loves it too. This is the Sorkin we have. As to the characters treating women badly, in real life, there are people who treat women badly. Of course, I've never worked in a television newsroom so I don't know if that is "realistic", but my experience as an employment lawyer tells me it sure could be. I don't agree with Darth Vader's politics for most of 4 movies, but I do love to watch him. You are in command now Admiral Piett.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing, for me, is the slapstick. Christ do I hate slapstick. Fine, MAKE fun of a woman for having to count on her fingers (I have to count on my fingers, it doesn't make me stupid, just math-challenged), but the clumsiness, the head-bonking ... WHY GOD WHY
ReplyDeleteI hate this show. I watch it because I watch everything, because web development can get tedious and something in the background helps greatly, but man do I hate it. And I love me some good Sorkin. This is not the Sorkin we have, this is the shit Sorkin is sticking us with, and one can only hope that come S2, this new writing staff that he's hiring will find themselves with some responsibility delegated to them.
ReplyDeleteWhen a show-writer refuses to let his staff break sripts, they take an unnecessary burden on themselves, and their formulaic voice (which every writer has) begs further focus. Why writers like Sorkin, Sherman-Palladino, and David Kelley take this kind of burden on themselves I will never understand. Are they really so sure that if they don't pen the whole script the quality will suffer? Dan Harmon had a distinctive voice on Community, but he let his staff take stories out for a spin, and his voice rang out in every episode. <span> </span>
Uch. I finally watched Sunday's episode last night. I might be done. I'm finding the characterizations to be SO inconsistent, and that's inexcusable. And the applause scene almost made me lose my dinner. I know even smart people do stupid things SOMETIMES, but the whole thing with Maggie buying Jim Valentine's Day presents, and all the head-bonking (especially when contrasted with a journalist getting assaulted) was just stupid. I can't even think about the dynamic between Mack and Will without getting angry. Gah.
ReplyDeleteAnd apparently, next week, president Bartlett....I mean, Will, is going to see a psychiatrist because he can't sleep. At this point, I honestly think I'm still watching because I get to play Spot the Reused Plot. It's like a Frankenshow stitched together from the parts of shows I loved.
ReplyDelete