On fiction- sorta reviewing "The Newsroom"
Recently a friend of mine showed me, or tried to, the first episode of the new-ish series from Aaron Sorkin, "The Newsroom".
Do I need to preface this by saying that the following is my opinion? The show has been renewed for a second season, so obviously quite a lot of people like it (including at least one of my friends), but I can't for the life of me see why. As the first episode reached its halfway point, I took out my decades old mobile phone and started a game of Snake Xenzia in a desperate bid to escape the boredom emanating from the TV screen.
The key problem with "The Newsroom" that I can discern, based on half of a first episode, is that everyone is essentially the same person: loud, obnoxious, jacked up on amphetamines (they don't show that part but we all know it's there), power driven and keen to get into territorial fights and grandiose-sounding speeches. Oh wait, the new girl is shy and too afraid to assert herself in the presence of all the massive egos galumphing around. Have no fear, another character assures us, soon enough she'll be just like everyone else.
Fuck you.
The ways people interact in the show are all various degrees of yelling at each other establishing who can piss further in the wind, but since the characters are all an indistinct incoherent mess, "character moment" scenes end up being like watching somebody masturbate. I see some critics of the show (for it does have a sizable share of detractors) suspect that Sorkin is making sweet love to his own ideology and forcing us to watch the proceedings, but I haven't had much opportunity to detect a political angle in that first half of an episode. Just incredibly boring drama.
To make things even worse is the frantic pacing. There's a constant vibe of "come on guys, it's the news, stuff's happenin', everybody look alive and do important newsy things just like they do in real life" which, coupled with sameness of plot and character, produce the dramatic equivalent of somebody mashing the same piano key over and over while on speed. Soul crushingly boring.
But hey who cares. Second season's good to go. You go crush those souls Mr. Sorkin you!
Do I need to preface this by saying that the following is my opinion? The show has been renewed for a second season, so obviously quite a lot of people like it (including at least one of my friends), but I can't for the life of me see why. As the first episode reached its halfway point, I took out my decades old mobile phone and started a game of Snake Xenzia in a desperate bid to escape the boredom emanating from the TV screen.
The key problem with "The Newsroom" that I can discern, based on half of a first episode, is that everyone is essentially the same person: loud, obnoxious, jacked up on amphetamines (they don't show that part but we all know it's there), power driven and keen to get into territorial fights and grandiose-sounding speeches. Oh wait, the new girl is shy and too afraid to assert herself in the presence of all the massive egos galumphing around. Have no fear, another character assures us, soon enough she'll be just like everyone else.
Fuck you.
The ways people interact in the show are all various degrees of yelling at each other establishing who can piss further in the wind, but since the characters are all an indistinct incoherent mess, "character moment" scenes end up being like watching somebody masturbate. I see some critics of the show (for it does have a sizable share of detractors) suspect that Sorkin is making sweet love to his own ideology and forcing us to watch the proceedings, but I haven't had much opportunity to detect a political angle in that first half of an episode. Just incredibly boring drama.
To make things even worse is the frantic pacing. There's a constant vibe of "come on guys, it's the news, stuff's happenin', everybody look alive and do important newsy things just like they do in real life" which, coupled with sameness of plot and character, produce the dramatic equivalent of somebody mashing the same piano key over and over while on speed. Soul crushingly boring.
But hey who cares. Second season's good to go. You go crush those souls Mr. Sorkin you!
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