The Newsroom

[schild]

I love it, but I can remove myself from the bullshit their trying to shove down my throat and just enjoy them being pretty with words.

They are very pretty with words.

Don did a great job with delivering his bit about that scum-sucking piece of shit Nancy Grace.

[WayAbvPar]

God just the little bit I had to listen to on this show made me angry. She is a terrible, terrible, awful person. And I am not even going to comment on her fucking hair style

[kaid]

nancy grace is like nails onto the chalk board for me. How that woman ever passed the bar exam I don't know.

[eldaec]

I just watched the OBL epsiode - don't know what the fuss was about.

[Rendakor]

The season finale was decent.

[Tannhauser]

Aside from one or two events, I really liked the ending. 

[Ragnoros]

Figured this would be the best place. The West Wing is now available on Netflix streaming! Go watch it.

I missed it the initial go around on TV as I never watch actual TV with commercials and having to show up at 7pm on Tuesdays and all that crap. But anyway, figured I would watch the pilot as it was on my list of shows I wanted to check out at some point. Ended up watching the first five episodes in a row. Just Fantastic. Reminds me of The Wire a bit in the way I feel like I'm behind the scenes, privy to insider info on the goings on of secret worlds.

[Tannhauser]

I envy you.  You have some great fucking TV ahead.

[WayAbvPar]

Oh, sweet! Thanks for the heads up.

in TNR news, HBO ran a marathon the other night. Caught a couple of eps in the middle (the one where Elliot got brained in Egypt and the one after)...still enjoyed them, cheese and all. God I hope he puts the relationship shit to bed though. At least the Jim/Maggie garbage. Maybe get Lisa and Sloan together and see how far we can stretch HBO's comfort level with realistic sex scenes 

[Quinton]

The West Wing is also free for Prime customers on Amazon Instant Video.  I ended up watching all of it a few months back (had never seen it when it was on TV) and really enjoyed it.  I wish the Newsroom cast chemistry was closer to the West Wing...

[eldaec]

To be fair the west wing cast weren't that different in season 1.

Josh's comedy romance partner in s1 was just as bad as scatty-but-cute-blonde-intern and sensitive-earnest-guy.

[schild]

This is back on the air - and still good.

[Rendakor]

Thanks for the heads up, didn't realize this had restarted.

[JWIV]

This is back on the air - and still good.

I'm hearing good things so far.  I've got it on the DVR, but haven't had a chance to sit down for it.

[Ironwood]

Do they still do that thing where they pretend to cover events as a real news show should, but it totally didn't happen like that ?

Because that was fucking lame.

[Bunk]

That is kinda the premise of the show...

Looks like Arab Spring/Occupy Wall Street is going to be the big topic, at least to start the season.

[Ironwood]

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.

[schild]

The show this season, as far as I can tell, has 3 things happening:

1. The lead up to the presidential election - 2012. The season apparently ends on election day.
2. A fictional story about something called Genoa. I assume it's about the cured meat ban getting lifted. I'm kidding. Anyway, this is being told through flashbacks.
3. Occupy Wall Street (lot of good that did).

I'm not sure how this show offended anyone. Also, there's an episode this season that is supposed to be a "love letter" to journalists. We'll see how that goes. The young girl was traumatized by some trip to the middle east though, that was revealed in the opener, but no one knows why.

[Ironwood]

Because it threw into sharp relief the actual state of the Media.

[Bunk]

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

Probably a dramatization of the events that female reporter went through in Egypt during the uprising?

Holy crap! I tried Googling the event to link it, and I can't because there are soo many times this has apparently happened in the last couple years, that I can't isolate the one I was thinking of. Including an assault on a Dutch reporter two weeks ago.

[K9]

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.

Well it's Aaron Sorkin isn't it? I gave up on the West Wing because even though I agreed with the stuff they were selling, the fact that everything was just so easy and perfect and 'isn't it obvious that this is the right thing to do' began to piss me off.

[Tannhauser]

I enjoyed the new show, looking forward to this season.  The scene where Mackenzie is juuuust so good at her job seemed like a course correction from her email blunder last year.  The redemption of Don continues but his story resonates with me personally
Will is still good and his American Taliban comment turns out to have repercussions.  Not sure yet on the Genoa story.  It would be better if
Any scene with Will in it and the OWS stuff was my favorite.  Jane Fonda used at just the right amount as well. 

[Tebonas]

So, is it offical now that some blogger raped Sorkins poodle and/or kicked his mother?

His vendetta against anything online can be funny at times, but at other times it gets distracting.

Also, I immensely dislike Maggie. I wish she would stay in Africa and never return. Liked the episode otherwise.

[schild]

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

[Bzalthek]

I thought journalists not actually being journalists did that.

[schild]

It's a chicken and egg problem. At some point, companies decided they wanted blogs and twitter accounts. It all went south the same time.

[Quinton]

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

Surprise, people doing a shitty job adapting to changes in technology or the world, blame those changes for their failure to adapt.  Shocking.

There's all kinds of ways for journalism to be made better by use of technology, but we wouldn't want to move away from our delivering dead trees to doorsteps or nightly news model of delivering information.

[schild]

I don't blame actual journalists for what happened. I blame the way people consume news on the internet and the people who decided their method of delivery for said news. It's not that journalists disappeared, it's far deeper than that. No one ever sat back and said "you know, maybe people still want to be informed in a decent way and be delivered signal, rather than noise."

tl;dr: I blame America.

[Quinton]

Well yeah, the audience is part of the problem, but on the other hand if publishers think replicating the newspaper experience on the web (possibly behind some crap pay-wall) is the best way to get stuff out there, they're doing a pretty piss poor job at adapting.  But, yeah, if there were more people interested in actual in-depth coverage instead of sensationalism, it'd probably be easier to convince publishers/producers to invest more in "real" journalism.  Of course that seems like it now provides an opportunity for folks in "new media" (eww) to try to compete with meaningful journalism.

TL;DR yeah, America's broken.

[Ruvaldt]

Read up on yellow journalism between Hurst and Pullitzer if you haven't.  Hell, they practically started the Spanish-American War just to get more newspaper readers.  Journalism has always been about profit and thus entertainment, and we're fooling ourselves if we ever think that there was a "real" journalism on an organizational level other than a few isolated examples

Journalism is ultimately us talking to ourselves about ourselves.  Due to that it will always be broken because we are.  Not as a country but as human beings.

[schild]

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

We suck.

[Ruvaldt]

I'd settle on the idea that we suck more, but the UK gave us Piers Morgan, and ANZ gave us Rupert Murdoch.  I'm not ready to forgive them for that.

[JWIV]

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

We suck.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what AJA does come August. Because fuck CNN.

[WayAbvPar]

Just got caught up on the new season. It is a bit of a muddled mess. Sloan continues to be my favorite character, followed by Don and Charlie. Maggie really, really needs to DIAF. I like Lisa, but I am guessing her usefulness to the story is at an end so we won't see much more from her. The whole Genoa thing is making my head hurt...it is just such an obvious red herring for both the characters (who should know better) and the audience (who does know better). Sorkin is trying to deflect the criticisms about the staff always being right (since the show is set in the recent past) by making something up so they look bad.

It really isn't very well done, but there are enough good moments that I keep watching. Sorkin really needs a co-writer or editor or someone to control him when he veers off the rails. He is a very talented writer but he gets stuck up his own ass too often.

[schild]

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

Wow, your experience of this show is basically the opposite of mine. Sloan and Don are at the bottom of the barrel for me.