f13.net

I'll watch what happens, I really enjoyed the West Wing first two seasons especially.

People enjoy fiction because it isn't an accurate depiction of reality!?

I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling. What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy’s sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?

I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people…

But after seeing the Social Network and reading some his nonsensical remarks on net culture

When he wrote the screenplay, he had never used Facebook. It's a good screenplay, superimposed onto the Facebook saga. He's got NOTHING to say about net culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM3nvATF-U8

'Why America isn't the greatest country in the world anymore' spiel by Jeff Daniels...

Makes me wanna check out the show, TBH.

Loving it! It makes you sad when an episode is over and you think about the reality, though.

I’m reminded suddenly of a comment I made after I read the script, to the effect that the show was a televisual fantasy exploring the idea of whether or not Jeremy Paxman could get work in America.

Well - here's the first episode - HBO put it up on youtube

http://youtu.be/1U4ZhFDFYvE

How so? I'm honestly asking because I never really felt like the drama was heavy handed until they were reporting one of the worst disasters ever, which justified being dramatic.

Its hard to put into words exactly, but a good example it just felt forced and unnecessarily dramatic.
 

I'll tell you what felt off about that speech. Jeff Daniels character is, from my understanding, a Republican. Yet his speech is basically a liberal speech. That makes it feel really off to me.

The first episode was good the second was pretty terrible. Why would anybody hire such a bumbling incompetent for such an important job and who would trust her enough to go with any idea she may have.

Say what you want about Rocinante, but she was a horse, not a donkey.

Say what you want about Rocinante, but she was a he. Way to add insult to injury.

SO, I'm not gonna lie...I got a little choked up at the end :)

Looking for some opinions on Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy... He is local to me and I think my opinion may be scewed but I think he's doing a great job.

There are some heavy-handed and cringeworthy moments, but I am just a sucker for Sorkin's flavor of pablum. I love this show, which means it will get canceled for killing horses or something any day now.

It has already been signed for a second season.

Don gets better.  He's part human now. 

That didn't stop them from canceling Luck.

He is method acting with all his bourbon Scotch* so the odds of that are reasonably high, I would suspect.

Really, you felt better about the US after that episode? Because all I could think was "If that is how a confirmed lefty sees this, then all hope is lost for our brothers and sisters across the pond and we'll have to nuke them from orbit to save the planet sooner or later."

I don't know if that was the intended purpose.

"It's the Americans Sir !"  "Well, it's about time !!"

Then I don't want to spoil you any further. Try to have fun, I would really like to know if there is a Non-Us citizen who liked this. Personally I think this will be standing alongside the movie Independence Day in infamy.

What a load of jingoistic crap. I'm officially done now as well.

Be glad you quit before this one, Ironwood. I think you would have popped a blood vessel.

Killing OBL was never about fixing anything. It was about vengeance.

Fuck you.  Just accept that that was pretty much how 90% of Americans saw it that day, and we don't give a shit if the rest of the world doesn't like it.  OBL was a dead man walking and the injustice would have been if he managed to die of natural causes before the SEAL's shot him in the eye and dropped his body in the ocean.  That's why we keep hardcore bastards like them around, because sometimes you just have to kill somebody.

Yes, except for a handful of pacifists, that's exactly how even the "left" in the US sees things.

--Dave

 Honestly, I don't actually know either of your viewing habits, but I don't know why in the fuck you'd watch The Newsroom - of all things.

Edit: I can answer that schild. Because I loved the West Wing and thought I might like this as well. Obviously I was wrong, but how should I have known that beforehand?

Well then, taking 4 episodes to call it jingoistic crap seems a little... silly. Doesn't it?

Yes, I didn't know that even leftist Americans were like that. Therefore seeing it this vividly came as a shock.

Last episode was crap, jingoistic or not.  It was just so awkward, sometimes it looked like people were seconds away from breaking into song.  Terry Crews just looked like someone told him Santa Claus is real.

Yes, I didn't know that even leftist Americans were like that.

Nobody thought it would change anything except that OBL would be dead.  That was more than enough.  Yes, those parts of the American populace that are both paying attention and not quietly hoping for a new Crusade would like to find a way to defuse the situation, and are not under the impression that killing one man solved the problem.  We were still *very* glad to hear about it.

Anyway, I'm going to try and avoid verging too far into politics (as much as is possible when discussing a show that is very much about politics).  The episode struck home with its intended audience, and it's the first time in forever I didn't fast-forward through the ending credits.

Pacifists wind up on the American left by default, but you'd do well to remember that Democratic presidents were in charge for about half of our wars (including both World Wars).

--Dave

On a more serious note: This show really, really wasn't made for non-Americans. Every episode is hand-picked to appeal to a certain subset of viewers from their overall demographic. Some of them will very likely be worse than others for most folks.

When the episode for European-Cunts-That-Probably-Like-Dr.-Who comes on, I'll let you all know. Honestly, I don't actually know either of your viewing habits, but I don't know why in the fuck you'd watch The Newsroom - of all things.

[The West Wing] told a story of how America could actually be the world leader it always pretends to be.  Without anyone actually minding, which was the interesting bit.
This show is not powerful.  This show is self indulgent, fantasy twaddle.  It doesn't even show me how people Could Be, because the characters in this are as akin to reality as Pantomime characters.

“The Newsroom” is, of course, an aesthetic train wreck (Olivia Munn as a Ph.D. in Economics is particularly risible), but most troubling about the show are its naïve presuppositions: that once upon a time, there was something called “the news,” a profession whose calling was answered by noble citizens who dutifully and faithfully reported only the truth, divorced from partisan politics. All this come in contrast to the news networks of today; specifically, in contrast to Roger Ailes’ factually dissembling (though immensely popular) Fox News network.

“Fair and Balanced” is Fox News’ cri de coeur, taken at face value by its loyal viewers, and correctly seen as a bit of Orwellian doublespeak by everyone else. Reasonable people understand that there are not two sides to every story (e.g., climate change, evolution), and therefore every story does not need “equal time”. With “The Newsroom”, Sorkin is deliberately harking back to a supposed Golden Age of television news as a corrective to what Ailes us, as it were.

But the foundation underlying “The Newsroom” demonstrates that myth-making is not exclusively the preoccupation of conservatives and Tea Baggers, though Saint Ronald Reagan remains an unparalleled example of absurdist hagiography. Aaron Sorkin’s myth-making is more subtle (in keeping with the tastes of establishment liberalism), though no less disingenuous, and is therefore more pernicious.

If today’s televised newscast is conspicuous for its “potato/po-tah-to” dynamic and its corporate fealty—NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC by Disney, CNN by Time-Warner, Fox by NewsCorp, and so on—then the newscasts of yesteryear was equally conspicuous for their deference to authority. Sorkin is right in saying in the old days, there weren’t two sides to every story, there was just the news. Left unsaid is that “the news” was one side of the story—the government’s side.

Then I don't want to spoil you any further. Try to have fun, I would really like to know if there is a Non-Us citizen who liked this.

This is back on the air - and still good.

 The young girl was traumatized by some trip to the middle east though, that was revealed in the opener, but no one knows why.

Yeah, I know, but it had two things :  That Premise and The Characters.

The Characters were fucking stupid and so was the premise.

I watched the show.  I even liked the show.  I just don't think I fancy sitting through it again.  The more you thought about it, the more offensive it was.  Kinda like if they put out a show about my Marriage where everything was fucking awesome and I got blown every night.

Bloggers represent, basically, the death of journalism. Sorkin is NOT the only person that shares that opinion.

Ehhhhh, we're broken as a country. CNN International vs CNN for example.

We suck.

Sloan continues to be my favorite character, followed by Don and Charlie.

This show discusses a lot of interesting issues so I want to watch it but I have to force myself. The writing is horrible. The characters all speak with the same voice.

He's like the Joss Whedon of TV.