(no subject)
Aug. 7th, 2012 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe Newsroom... is getting better. I did not like the episode where Will had therapy, but then, I did not like the episode where Dan had therapy in Sports Night or the episode where Jed had therapy in The West Wing. The only good Sorkin therapy episode was "Noel", so it's not surprising I didn't like this one. The problem is that the episodic format expects a therapeutic breakthrough at the end of the episode, and mini-therapeutic breakthroughs at the commercial breaks, and this just doesn't make any emotional sense. It worked in "Noel", I think, partly because Leo and Josh!, but mostly because there was just a single emotional breakthrough and it made sense: Josh, you have PTSD. No daddy issues, no stress and the impossible burdens of job, no relationship stuff, just a physiological/neurological response to a specific event that Josh needed to acknowledge and then accept that he would have to learn how to manage.
Both before and after that episode were really good episodes. The Egypt episode looked at the emotions behind sending reporters into a dangerous situation. I loved Neal struggling with his freelancer gone missing. It was gutwrenching to watch his pride at bringing him in turn to shame and anger and then watch all of that get subsumed by his desperate desire to somehow, anyhow, fix the situation. And Don going off the handle at Elliot and then seeing him get hurt and desperately needed to atone was the first time I felt like Sorkin actually took Don seriously as a character. In a sense, I think this has been Season Zero of the West Wing, the year they didn't show us where drawers were glued shut by the previous administration and CJ didn't know how to manage a crisis for the national media and the whole ensemble hadn't meshed yet as a team. We're watching that process happen, and it's frustrating and not what attracted me to Sports Night and the West Wing, but on the other hand I always wished I had seen that part of the West Wing and I'm growing in pleasure that Sorkin is giving it to us now. They set Don up as the enemy, and then instead of making him like JJ from Sports Night, the 'voice of the network', they let him earn his way into the fold without compromising on his belief that news has to be commercial, also.
And then Will's pot brownie and the Osama Bin Laden killing... An episode about the sheer pleasure of being able to deliver good news. Of earning the right to give good news. The first few episodes were Sorkin as Quixote on a mission to civilize, but recently he's just been telling stories about how hard it is to tell news well, and that's all I ever wanted out of this show.
Both before and after that episode were really good episodes. The Egypt episode looked at the emotions behind sending reporters into a dangerous situation. I loved Neal struggling with his freelancer gone missing. It was gutwrenching to watch his pride at bringing him in turn to shame and anger and then watch all of that get subsumed by his desperate desire to somehow, anyhow, fix the situation. And Don going off the handle at Elliot and then seeing him get hurt and desperately needed to atone was the first time I felt like Sorkin actually took Don seriously as a character. In a sense, I think this has been Season Zero of the West Wing, the year they didn't show us where drawers were glued shut by the previous administration and CJ didn't know how to manage a crisis for the national media and the whole ensemble hadn't meshed yet as a team. We're watching that process happen, and it's frustrating and not what attracted me to Sports Night and the West Wing, but on the other hand I always wished I had seen that part of the West Wing and I'm growing in pleasure that Sorkin is giving it to us now. They set Don up as the enemy, and then instead of making him like JJ from Sports Night, the 'voice of the network', they let him earn his way into the fold without compromising on his belief that news has to be commercial, also.
And then Will's pot brownie and the Osama Bin Laden killing... An episode about the sheer pleasure of being able to deliver good news. Of earning the right to give good news. The first few episodes were Sorkin as Quixote on a mission to civilize, but recently he's just been telling stories about how hard it is to tell news well, and that's all I ever wanted out of this show.