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Jul. 30th, 2013 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI'm up to date on season 2 of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, which I think I'm going to keep calling Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom because it'll let me distinguish from Ken Finkleman's far superior The Newsroom.
I have a lot of things I am not happy with, and the list starts with pretty much everything in the Maggie-Don-Lisa-Jim-Sloane love pentangle, but the less said about that the better. I have mostly really enjoyed all of their professional stories, though except for Jim's. And even Jim's... there were moments in episode three where I thought Sorkin might save that. The cliffhanger ending to the episode still gives me futile hope.
I like the idea of Maggie earning her professional stripes by selling Mackenzie on the opportunity to fashion herself into a subject expert on Africa. It's actually one of the more believable and interesting quirks of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, this idea that the various newsroom staffers partially intentionally and partially by accident of their assignments become unnecessarily knowledgeable about unpredictable news topics. Episode 3 played a lot with Mackenzie's deep knowledge of military helicopter repair, while Episode 2 remixes "Take This Sabbath Day" through the lens of Don's obsession with the legal nuances of a particular Georgia murder trial. I like this idea that expertise is not universal, that there isn't 'the smart one' but that at any given moment someone on the team may be the local expert on the thing that needs to be given news context.
At the same time, I'm not that big a fan of the way Sorkin has used this device with Neal and his Occupy Wall Street obsession. I'm not really sure why... it makes sense that Neal would feel this way about OWS- I know plenty of people my age who felt that way as OWS stories circulated among everyone on facebook and got ignored in the media- but I think it's the way the story is being told about his obsession that's frustrating. They argue as if the only angle that matters is this debate about leadership and organization, the mechanics of the protest rather than its substance. Both Mackenzie and Neal take it for granted that there's something worth protesting over, yet they never quite get to arguing about what it is that's worth protesting.
And the thing about OWS is that the pepper spray and the traffic jams wasn't the fucking story. The story was that there was this massive protest across the country, and then even the people who weren't at the protest were talking about the protest, because we hit this moment where everyone understood that protest was appropriate. They didn't always agree with the protest, they didn't always understand what the protest was about, but America understood that there were conversations about Wall Street and the finance system that we needed to have. The conversations I had with family, with friends, with random strangers at parties, about OWS were a political dialogue unlike any I can remember. The 99% meme crept into all the summer blockbusters the next summer, and a half dozen TV shows. OWS wasn't about the physical protest, it wasn't about changing Washington, it was about changing the way we talk about Wall Street.
Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom ought to be all about this. It's exactly the way the West Wing thought about political process. President Bartlet envisioned a Great Conversation where issues were spoken of by high minds and where we slowly moved both forward and backward, together, as a nation. That's what Occupy Wall Street was! And yet the Newsroom's attempt to tell the story presents it as if it's just an argument about how to cover a protest. As if the people out on the street constitute(d) the OWS movement, as if OWS was defined by its human microphone and its marches.
/end rant
Jim's sad protest against Romney's press team runs similarly. In his speech he recognizes that there is some power in collective action by the reporters against the Romney spin machine, and yet instead of canvassing, instead of having the great conversation, instead of working with the reporters to prove to them that it is in all of their interests to challenge the machine and create a more interesting and dynamic news environment, he tries to win with a big swing, a brash Sorkinian speech in the mold of Will's stupid speech from the pilot. I like that Sorkin at least had the self-awareness to know that it wouldn't work, except that I'm not quite sure it's self-awareness. I think there's a part of the presentation of that moment that suggests that Sorkin thinks it should have worked, that somehow oratory should have won over the day. "It was stupid, but I was right," is Josh's great line from the West Wing pilot, and again and again Sorkin struggles with his conviction that being right ought to be enough. Despite the fact that 'being right' isn't actually an objective and inarguable fact.
Will failing to actually record his blackmail made me laugh. There's a part of me that wants to read that as a retcon rather than as a twist in the storyline, a realization on Sorkin's part that it's a really problematic storyline and if he keeps pushing it he's going to end up in a terrible place. But mostly I love it as a character moment: Will has gone soft in his arrogance. He's a former prosecutor, but he keeps letting the pitch fly past him, keeps making emotional choices instead of rational ones. The 9/11 flu story was a sideline given all the other storylines Sorkin is managing to keep moving in this show right now (I do like how densely plotted this show is), but it also told this story: Will is crippled by his anxieties and his tenuous relationship with the network. The badass take no prisoners Mission to Civilize Will from season 1, the Will that I hated, is gone. In his place is another Will that I don't really like so much, but at least he's doing comic relief instead of making my blood boil. If Jeff Daniels just becomes a sideshow while Sorkin uses the rest of the characters to tell the interesting stories about how the news is made, I would like that a lot.
So, yeah... There are a lot of interesting things going on in Aaron Sorkin's the Newsroom. I feel strongly that I want a show like Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom to exist. And I'm going to keep watching it, and I'm going to keep having many opinions about it, and I wouldn't mind some company, but I want you to also be aware that there is a lot that is broken about the show.
I have a lot of things I am not happy with, and the list starts with pretty much everything in the Maggie-Don-Lisa-Jim-Sloane love pentangle, but the less said about that the better. I have mostly really enjoyed all of their professional stories, though except for Jim's. And even Jim's... there were moments in episode three where I thought Sorkin might save that. The cliffhanger ending to the episode still gives me futile hope.
I like the idea of Maggie earning her professional stripes by selling Mackenzie on the opportunity to fashion herself into a subject expert on Africa. It's actually one of the more believable and interesting quirks of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, this idea that the various newsroom staffers partially intentionally and partially by accident of their assignments become unnecessarily knowledgeable about unpredictable news topics. Episode 3 played a lot with Mackenzie's deep knowledge of military helicopter repair, while Episode 2 remixes "Take This Sabbath Day" through the lens of Don's obsession with the legal nuances of a particular Georgia murder trial. I like this idea that expertise is not universal, that there isn't 'the smart one' but that at any given moment someone on the team may be the local expert on the thing that needs to be given news context.
At the same time, I'm not that big a fan of the way Sorkin has used this device with Neal and his Occupy Wall Street obsession. I'm not really sure why... it makes sense that Neal would feel this way about OWS- I know plenty of people my age who felt that way as OWS stories circulated among everyone on facebook and got ignored in the media- but I think it's the way the story is being told about his obsession that's frustrating. They argue as if the only angle that matters is this debate about leadership and organization, the mechanics of the protest rather than its substance. Both Mackenzie and Neal take it for granted that there's something worth protesting over, yet they never quite get to arguing about what it is that's worth protesting.
And the thing about OWS is that the pepper spray and the traffic jams wasn't the fucking story. The story was that there was this massive protest across the country, and then even the people who weren't at the protest were talking about the protest, because we hit this moment where everyone understood that protest was appropriate. They didn't always agree with the protest, they didn't always understand what the protest was about, but America understood that there were conversations about Wall Street and the finance system that we needed to have. The conversations I had with family, with friends, with random strangers at parties, about OWS were a political dialogue unlike any I can remember. The 99% meme crept into all the summer blockbusters the next summer, and a half dozen TV shows. OWS wasn't about the physical protest, it wasn't about changing Washington, it was about changing the way we talk about Wall Street.
Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom ought to be all about this. It's exactly the way the West Wing thought about political process. President Bartlet envisioned a Great Conversation where issues were spoken of by high minds and where we slowly moved both forward and backward, together, as a nation. That's what Occupy Wall Street was! And yet the Newsroom's attempt to tell the story presents it as if it's just an argument about how to cover a protest. As if the people out on the street constitute(d) the OWS movement, as if OWS was defined by its human microphone and its marches.
/end rant
Jim's sad protest against Romney's press team runs similarly. In his speech he recognizes that there is some power in collective action by the reporters against the Romney spin machine, and yet instead of canvassing, instead of having the great conversation, instead of working with the reporters to prove to them that it is in all of their interests to challenge the machine and create a more interesting and dynamic news environment, he tries to win with a big swing, a brash Sorkinian speech in the mold of Will's stupid speech from the pilot. I like that Sorkin at least had the self-awareness to know that it wouldn't work, except that I'm not quite sure it's self-awareness. I think there's a part of the presentation of that moment that suggests that Sorkin thinks it should have worked, that somehow oratory should have won over the day. "It was stupid, but I was right," is Josh's great line from the West Wing pilot, and again and again Sorkin struggles with his conviction that being right ought to be enough. Despite the fact that 'being right' isn't actually an objective and inarguable fact.
Will failing to actually record his blackmail made me laugh. There's a part of me that wants to read that as a retcon rather than as a twist in the storyline, a realization on Sorkin's part that it's a really problematic storyline and if he keeps pushing it he's going to end up in a terrible place. But mostly I love it as a character moment: Will has gone soft in his arrogance. He's a former prosecutor, but he keeps letting the pitch fly past him, keeps making emotional choices instead of rational ones. The 9/11 flu story was a sideline given all the other storylines Sorkin is managing to keep moving in this show right now (I do like how densely plotted this show is), but it also told this story: Will is crippled by his anxieties and his tenuous relationship with the network. The badass take no prisoners Mission to Civilize Will from season 1, the Will that I hated, is gone. In his place is another Will that I don't really like so much, but at least he's doing comic relief instead of making my blood boil. If Jeff Daniels just becomes a sideshow while Sorkin uses the rest of the characters to tell the interesting stories about how the news is made, I would like that a lot.
So, yeah... There are a lot of interesting things going on in Aaron Sorkin's the Newsroom. I feel strongly that I want a show like Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom to exist. And I'm going to keep watching it, and I'm going to keep having many opinions about it, and I wouldn't mind some company, but I want you to also be aware that there is a lot that is broken about the show.