The Newsroom | "We Just Decided To" | S01E01

This is what Aaron Sorkin's wet dream looks like. He goes to bed at night and in his head he pictures this news station. A station that isn't Republican or Democratic but is in the middle of the political spectrum and instead of giving news that favors a certain political agenda, it just gives the plain old news the way it "should" be told. Of course, someone would have to give this news and the anchor who does this is always a representation of this news station despite not knowing it or feeling it. And when that camera rolls, magic happens and the news is delivered but it never goes according to plan. That's because there is no plan and at the end of the day, everyone is happy and smiling and the citizens of this country can go to sleep knowing that they were delivered honest news. What kind of wet dream is that?

I must admit that before I sat down to watch this show, I am biased against it and did not go into it with as much of an open mind as I had originally planned on. Luckily for Aaron Sorkin, it was only 90% of what I expected it to be like. The rest of the 10% was well, no comment on that for now. I was unfamiliar with his work personally before The Social Network and when that film came out, I jumped over it like it was one for the record books. Of course, I had to pick something to go against The King's Speech and David Fincher is an amazing director and it had the best chance to win at the Oscar's. Other than that aside, I never knew anything about this guy. I looked him up, saw he had written a bunch of other scripts, including Charlie Wilson's War, a film I had enjoyed when I saw it with my Dad as a child. There's two things I remember about this Google and Wikipedia search of Sorkin. One, he had signed a deal with HBO to develop an untitled television show at the time and two, this wasn't his first foray into television, he had created The West Wing and a bunch of other shows which centered on broadcasting. Big surprise when his untitled HBO show turned out to be another quest into the world of broadcasting. 

Once again, Sorkin wrote another script which makes me feel sorry for the people who turned closed captioning on, The Newsroom is a show in which a news anchor, Will McAvoy, just had an "outburst" on television where he "spoke his mind" and "told the truth" when asked the question "Why is America the greatest country in the world?" by a 20 year old college student at a Q&A panel at a University. The liberal to the left of him, what a genius visual (sarcasm), said because of "Diversity and Opportunity" and the conservative to the right of him said because of "Freedom and Freedom", as if once wasn't enough. What bothered me most about this part was that Sorkin wrote these characters to be so stereotypical. While most people who align themselves with those parties either believe Diversity and Opportunity are important characteristics in making this country great or Freedom is an essential part of this nation, it's not what all of them think. However, our guy in the middle, Will McAvoy answered this question about his admiration for the Jets. Introduced as a character similar to Jay Leno, in which he gives no support to either the right or the left, he was forced to answer the question. At a loss for words, he finds an audience member who holds up a sign "it's not", he takes the cue, then proceeded to list a myriad of reasons to support his claim of why America is not the greatest country in the world, such as the nation's ranking in things like education and life expectancy, none of those of which the United States was #1 in. Then there was three things that he could list that we were #1 in, number of prisoners incarcerated, number of people who believe Angels exist (religion) and the highest defense spending (higher than the next 26 countries after us combined, 25 of which happen to be our allies). He then also, in total Aaron Sorkin fashion, insults the college girl who asked him the question just to make it a little worst for himself. Then the intro plays, one of which I will skip in the future, and the show starts. 

That was just the first five minutes, and the dialogue doesn't stop. Will McAvoy is an anchor for a fictional ACN News Network. We then see that after a two week holiday, in which he totally hooked up with Erin Andrews (Yeah right Harry), his whole production team is leaving. His old executive producer, Don, who was there for a whopping 13 weeks, pretty much fills Will on his true feelings towards him in which Will says "I didn't know people didn't like working for me", because having a new executive producer every two or three months just didn't give him the hint. However, the new executive producer hired for Will without his consultation turns out to be the lady in the beginning who held up the sign saying "it's not". Mackenzie the new executive producer, I believe her name is, is a character Sorkin has probably written a thousand times. A savvy producer who knows everything about everyone and figures this out just by meeting them and talking to them for a second, always knows what to say, when to say it, and as she says so herself, "it's a story about how things fall in your lap". More characters are introduced, all of whom are fast-talking geniuses it seems like who know what to do when they are put to the test. The catch is that of course, Mackenzie was not only Will's old executive producer (for a lot longer than 13 weeks) but also Will's girlfriend and that Will's boss Charlie, a Roger Sterling wannabe, hired her without informing him. Upset at the situation, Will goes over to William Morris Endeavor Agency across the street, gives back three million dollars off his contract to be given the clause in his contract to fire her (this was supposed to be comic relief). During Will's endeavor at William Morris Endeavor, Mackenzie takes the opportunity to meet the ones who will be sticking around including Will's assistant Maggie, who could be named Ellen or Karen, and also happens to be dating Don, and Neal, who at first seems like a loyal genius who decides not to follow Don to the more lucrative 10 o'clock but turns out to write Will's blog, to which he "comically" proclaims several times throughout the episode "I have a blog?!". When Will gets back he wastes no time in informing Mackenzie that he will fire her in one week, it was worth the three million dollars and there's nothing she can do about it. Mackenzie pleas and gives an awe-inspiring exchange on how there's no real news out there anymore and Will can't be 'Jay Leno' anymore and has to get off the fence. Despite her message, it's very clear that Mackenzie is over it and Will is still bitter about their relationship, must be hard dating your executive producer. Outside Will's office, the new team and the old team see that a news alert has popped up. It's in the yellow so Don has no need to bother Will and inform him while other employees such as Jim, the producer who came in with Mackenzie and is only supposed to be 'observing' at this point, keeps bothering Don about it's significance. Others also chime in about how potentially big this story can be but Don still hesitates to act upon it. Then we find out that they are talking about the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and across the screen comes the words April 20, 2010 like it's September 11, 2001. 

The rest of the episode pans out like an actual Newsroom would. Private sources and privileged information, Will McAvoy goes on air that night being the only news program to talk about the spill part of the disaster and not just the search and rescue. Because they do this on the fly, there is no script, only the executive producer knows where the show is going, as Charlie says after polishing off another drink. Despite the success, however, Will is still hellbent on firing Mackenzie after a week and shows her that he still remembers the first time he met her parents (Playing off another subplot where Don does not want to meet Maggie's parents because they've only been dating for four months) and hints that he may still have feelings for her. At the end, he admits that the reason he had the "outburst" at the university was because he thought he saw her put up a sign that said "it's not". Before Mackenzie has a chance to say anything, Will shuts the elevator and heads down. Mackenzie pulls out her notebook revealing that she was there in fact and not a hallucination but the sign didn't just say "it's not", it was followed by "but it can be". The Newsroom is not the greatest show right now, but it can be. Very subtle Sorkin, very subtle indeed. 

Because this is a pilot, it has to be graded differently. Pilot's have two main objectives, to hook the viewers and make them continue to tune in (one your reviewer has decided to do out of sheer boredom) and the other is to introduce a world in which you can see yourself getting accustomed to. This show did neither for me but at the same time I feel it works on a completely different level. HBO did a smart thing in picking up this show because they finally gave the Bill Maher audience a show that they could watch. In other words, this is a show that will likely bring a different set of viewers, ones who don't normally watch HBO other than maybe Bill Maher and various one off programs and hook them into their original programming lineup. This is paired up with True Blood, I doubt fans of one watch the other. Again though, Sorkin has played every cliche in the deck with these characters. Slumdog Millionaire somehow knows everything there is to know about oil wells but has the redundant task of writing Will's blog (which Will does in typical Harry fashion "I have a blog?!" as in that's such a bad thing), Jim saves the day because his old roommate works for BP and his sister works for Halliburton (like seriously, the only reason anyone in the Newsroom talked to you today was because of this reason exactly), and Mackenzie has the uncanny ability of being able to tell everything about a character within moments of meeting them (she was able to tell about Maggie's frustration with Don not meeting her parents and suggests to Jim that he would be perfect for Maggie based on this fact alone, and then at the end you see that Mackenzie is right, Jim will develop feelings for her and The Newsroom will have it's Jim-Pam-Roy love triangle going soon enough except instead it's Jim-Maggie-Don). 

Suspension of disbelief is very hard to do, especially for someone such as myself. I'm always looking for what is unbelievable in a show or film that it almost detracts the experience from me. For films, though, it's easier to get rid of the disbelief because it's a much shorter adventure but television has now become a much more respected cinematic form. It's not just procedurals and doctor adventures, its about life and how it works. Or at least that's how some of them are. The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad even The Shield operate at such a high level, sometimes you have to tell yourself that this is not real. The Newsroom, on the other hand, you have to wonder why can't this be more real. Especially with Sorkin's excessive history in writing about broadcasting, you'd think he would find a way to do this and make it feel real. However, he fails again in bringing a sense of realism to anything he does. Maybe he feels it's better that way but I find most of what he does with his script hard to believe. Like why tell the audience that your main character gave up three million dollars of his contract to fire the second main character after one week but you know that she will be on there for more of the series simply because she's second billed in the opening credits. You could drive the same point home by him attempting to do that, because now, he will end up reconciling his professional relationship with her but he still lost three million dollars. Man, I guess I can't get over that money. 

Grade: C (I'm feeling very generous this morning)

Stray Observations

- I couldn't help but get the feeling that Sorkin purposely set his story two years back so he could do his own take on contemporary breaking news. Maybe during season two, he'll pull a CNN and have Apocalypse watch. 

- Don't get any of the Harry references above? Once upon a time Jeff Daniels played the most retarded dog groomer ever, Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber. That movie was more real than this show. 

- In the beginning scene he proceeds to insult both parties. The Republicans for thinking that they're "so star spangled awesome" and for thinking freedom only exists in America, because freedom of speech exists in every other country (right?). My favorite though is he says "how come if you guys are so smart, you guys lose all the time". Like Sorkin didn't want to insult his fellow Democrats by insulting their policy so he just called them losers. They lose because they don't play dirty. 

- Like I said, this is my first show I've watched by Sorkin but I've read enough about his other programs to get a feel for what they were and it can be safe to assume that they are similar based on the fact that all but one were about broadcasting. Here's some proof

- HBO has already renewed this for a second season but don't think that it's amazing it got renewed so fast. HBO rarely picks up a show it isn't ready to renew for a second season before the first season wraps up. 

- Just how much will Sorkin continue stealing from Network. I remember in his Oscar speech, he said how much he was influenced by that film but it seems like everything he writes is based on that film. If you haven't seen it, I recommend watching it just for the similarities between The Newsroom and Network alone. Both have news anchors who have just had 'outbursts', both have female executive producers who see the opportunity in having this anchor 'speak the truth' and this is just the first episode. I expect some corrupt shit to happen with ACN so he doesn't leave no stone unturned.