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Trailer for new Sorkin-penned HBO show THE NEWSROOM

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Patryn

Member
This about sums it up perfectly. Really playing to his strengths. Hopefully not too much so that it becomes tedious and repetitive.

Best case scenario - Sports Night and West Wing, combined. But better. Because HBO.

Worst case scenario - We've already seen every single episode, from the overall plot devices right down the the character quirks.

I have high hopes, but I really hope there is someone there to help keep Sorkin's insanity in check. Because it's really obvious that as good as he is, the man does need to be reeled in back to earth on occasion.

Well I guarantee you one thing: The finale of the first season will be titled "What Kind of Day Has it Been".
 

Cheebo

Banned
but I really hope there is someone there to help keep Sorkin's insanity in check. Because it's really obvious that as good as he is, the man does need to be reeled in back to earth on occasion.

He wrote every episode of the first season solo so I am guessing there is no one to keep him in check. Plus he is coming off an oscar win.
 

Patryn

Member
He wrote every episode of the first season solo so I am guessing there is no one to keep him in check. Plus he is coming off an oscar win.

Well, supposedly he completely rewrote every single episode of the first two season of the West Wing, but left the names of the original writers on the scripts.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Well, supposedly he completely rewrote every single episode of the first two season of the West Wing, but left the names of the original writers on the scripts.
From what I read, it's a little more complicated than that.

He penned the scripts, every line of dialogue from start to finish, but the other writers provided stories for characters to tell or to be incorporated into the plotlines with proxy characters/situations. After having watched his West Wing eps a couple of times apiece I've gotten pretty good at recognizing these moments. A bunch of the sports anecdotes on Sports Night probably came about the same way.
 

Ohwiseone

Member
Loved sports night, fucking shame that show didn't get more than two seasons.

West wing is the west wing, that show is one of the best shows ever (church scene in season 2 I think is still fantastic).

I like Sorkins writing, I hope this will be just as good, (say what you want but the Social Network script was fantastic).

If there is no walk and talk however, I will be disappointed
 

Macmanus

Member
Came in excited to find out about a new Sorkin show, left more excited finding out about the political comedy staring Dryfus and written by the Peep Show folks.

What if they're both good? What if Girls is good as well?

Jesus...
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Loved sports night, fucking shame that show didn't get more than two seasons.

West wing is the west wing, that show is one of the best shows ever (church scene in season 2 I think is still fantastic).
Sports Night was so mistreated by the network. A fucking laugh track? I love how it fades hilariously through the first season and then just ceases to exist at the start of the second, like the network is just going "shhh, there were never any canned laughs, you're imagining things..."

That scene you're thinking of is the season finale of season 2 of TWW, Two Cathedrals.
Gratias tibi ago, domine. Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem!
Untranslated, unsubbed Latin rant against God in a church on broadcast TV. Hail to the Swag.

I like Sorkins writing, I hope this will be just as good, (say what you want but the Social Network script was fantastic).
That script is paced within an inch of its life. There is no filler.

If there is no walk and talk however, I will be disappointed
Is Thomas Schlamme on board for this?
 

Macmanus

Member
Iannucci wrote Peep Show?!?

Simon Blackwell is writer I see that has time on Peep Show and is now writing Veep.

Edit: Both Iannucci and Blackwell worked on In The Loop together, so I'm going to assume that is the flavor to expect for HBO's Veep.

Very exciting!
 

Ohwiseone

Member
Ive watched the trailer a few more times, I really don't want to wait till June.

And as someone said earlier, you can see sports night in some of those sets.
 
Came in excited to find out about a new Sorkin show, left more excited finding out about the political comedy staring Dryfus and written by the Peep Show folks.

What if they're both good? What if Girls is good as well?

Jesus...

Girls looks great. I want to fuck Lena Dunham.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Holy shit @ the critical response on Twitter:

Jace Lacob (Televisionary)
I really, really, really enjoyed the pilot. Now I can't stomach the show.

Pilot strengths now a distant memory.

James Poniewozik
Yeah, from the pilot (which gets v good at the end), ppl will think we're nuts. Going to follow a SMASH trajectory, methinks

Emily Nussbaum
BTW, re: Newsroom, although I obviously hated it, there were a few small things I liked. One was Olivia Munn, who was great in a tiny role.
Link to her review.

Shit, I need to adjust my expectations for this.
 

ChiTownBuffalo

Either I made up lies about the Boston Bomber or I fell for someone else's crap. Either way, I have absolutely no credibility and you should never pay any attention to anything I say, no matter what the context. Perm me if I claim to be an insider
I don't get the reactions. How many episodes have they seen? They seem to like the pilot but hate the show?

TV critics usually get a screener for 4 episodes I think.

O.Munn is supposed to be a Maria Batriomo type?

Oh mo.
 
Yup. That review is straight fire. Getting Studio 60 vibes.

Nussbaum said:
Sorkin is often presented as one of the auteurs of modern television, an innovator and an original voice. ... Some of this banter is intelligent; just as often, however, it’s artificial intelligence, predicated on the notion that more words equals smarter.

Nussbaum said:
In the fourth episode, the show injects a real-life tragedy into the mix, pouring a pop ballad over the montage, just the way “E.R.” used to do whenever a busload of massacred toddlers came crashing through the door.

Nussbaum said:
The dialogue makes fun of McAvoy for calling him Punjab and referring to him as “the Indian stereotype of an I.T. guy,” but the show treats Neal with precisely that type of condescension.

Nussbaum said:
It gave me flashbacks to one of the worst plots on “Studio 60,” in which the comic played by D. L. Hughley—the “smart black guy” who was always reading the newspaper—went to a comedy club to anoint the one true young black comic among the hacks and mediocrities. Sorkin’s shows overflow with liberal verities about diversity, but they reproduce a universe in which the Great Man is the natural object of worship, as martyred by gossips as any Philip Roth protagonist.

Nussbaum said:
“The Newsroom” is the inverse of “Veep”: it’s so naïve it’s cynical. Sorkin’s fantasy is of a cabal of proud, disdainful brainiacs, a “media élite” who swallow accusations of arrogance and shoot them back as lava. ... Whenever McAvoy delivers a speech or slices up a right-winger, the ensemble beams at him, their eyes glowing as if they were cultists.

tumblr_m4btwgitjC1qcvteuo1_500.gif
 

ivysaur12

Banned
Besides Sorkin, these creators include Shonda Rhimes (whose Washington melodrama, “Scandal,” employs cast members from “The West Wing”); Amy Sherman-Palladino, of “The Gilmore Girls” (and the appealing new “Bunheads”); and David E. Kelley, who created “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Legal."

Exactly.
 
Oh wow. I already had a season pass set but now I really can't wait to watch this. It sounds like it will be a great show to mock mercilessly.
 

moojito

Member
Damn. Really sad to hear this might not turn out so well. I've been rewatching the west wing to bathe myself in sorkin awesomeness in preparation.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Mo Ryan: 'The Newsroom' Review: Aaron Sorkin's New HBO Show Gets Almost Everything Wrong

The biggest problem with "The Newsroom" -- and it's one of many, many problems -- is that its goals and its narrative strategies are in direct conflict with each other. The result is a dramatically inert, infuriating mess, one that wastes a fine cast to no demonstrable purpose, unless you consider giving Sorkin yet another platform in which to Set the People Straight is a worthwhile purpose.

Don't be trivial, television viewers! "The Newsroom" isn't about stoop to dumb stunts like telling stories or exploring the nuances of human nature. No, these people exist to Tell Us What's What, especially Will, yet another middle-aged Sorkin hero who bears the heavy burden of being smarter than everyone else. Can he help it that he's fated to save the stupid people of America from themselves? It's not easy, you know! I think we're meant to think that Will is a flawed, yet brave man, but I found him to be an smug, self-absorbed windbag.

There is a way to enjoy "The Newsroom," one that doesn't necessarily involve drinking Scotch every time someone references the heroic ways in which Will's show (all by itself) is keeping the American electorate informed: You can view it as a long-form "Saturday Night Live" skit parodying Sorkin's worst instincts.

Welp...
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Nussbaum's review might be the best TV criticism, in terms of both prose and analysis, I've ever read.

Edit: What a pity, she's married.
 
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