The Newsroom

Anyone else watching this?

Disclosure: I never watched The West Wing, so I don't have any real history with Sorkin other than Studio 60, which I thought was terrible. And ... I think this show is pretty terrible, too. Its female characters (with the possible exception of Sloan) are a joke. MacKenzie, who's supposedly a brilliant person and the "best E.P. in the business", knows nothing about the economy, can't do simple math in her head, gets gum stuck in her hair (!), and can't stop yammering about how she cheated on Will.

I read the reviews and opted not to watch..and you are just helping me with that decision.

I thought Maggie and Jim were cute at first, but now I pray for limited interaction each episode because they cannot have a conversation without Jim just telling her all the ways she is an idiot. And I find the actor who plays him totally adorable, but the writing is so off-putting. The last straw was the episode where he told her how to have a panic attack because he once knew someone with panic attacks, which definitely made him the expert over someone who actually has them. "A person like you should always carry your medicine!" Yeah. Thanks.

The episode where Mackenzie asks Sloan for help prepping for the talk she has to give and then whines on and on about Will, it's like can you shut up for ten seconds about your boy problems, Mackenzie, we are trying to learn economics here!

I vacillate each episode over which I hate more, the portrayals of women or of people who use the internet.

On a positive note, I really like Olivia Munn on this show. Also, Don!

I can't stand Maggie for so many reasons, not the least of which is her oft-repeated threat to punch Jim in the face. Not only is threatening violence not cool, but Jim is her BOSS. You wanna know how many times I'd get away with threatening to punch my boss in the face? (Not that I ever would; I love my boss.) ZERO. Zero times. I'd be out the door so fast.

It makes me sad, because I loved Alison Pill in Goon (which was filmed in my home town).

The finale was last night. Anyone still watching? My overall impression of the first season is this: If anyone told me there would be a show that made me like Olivia Munn and hate Emily Mortimer (not just in terms of the characters they play but as actors), I would have said they were crazy. Congratulations, Aaron Sorkin. You have truly managed the impossible.

I'm still watching, or "hate-watching", I guess. I'm actually enjoying it from an "Oh, COME ON, gimme a BREAK!" perspective. But yeah, the female characters are (to me) still horribly written, Emily Mortimer has apparently forgotten how to act, and Maggie still bugs the crap out of me.

I watched the whole thing. Enjoyed it would be a bit strong, but I stuck with it, so I guess I kinda liked it?

I quite liked the first episode, and *hated* the second one, almost didn't watch anymore. (I had about 6 or 7 episodes on the dvr before I started watching, so it was easy enough to keep watching.) I think my complaints are the same things mentioned here - the women are horribly written. We are told MacKenzie is brilliant, but are shown a flailing, neurotic idiot. (Which isn't to say she can't be both, but I didn't see a lot of the mentioned brilliance going on.) Maggie should've been fired several times, and was just plain irritating. But, I quite liked the whole love plot with Jim and the roommate etc.

I thought Jeff Daniels was great, ditto Olivia Munn, Jane Fonda, Sam Waterston, Dev Patel and several others whose names escape me. I liked them doing "real" stories (I think that's part of what I liked about the pilot, the whole oil spill plot.)

I found some of Sorkin's dialogue to be too witty, in a way that people just don't have conversations. It seemed self consciously smug in a quick-talking, this-is-brilliant kind of way. I loved West Wing but haven't watched any in years, so I can't remember if that style amused and entertained me more back then or if there just wasn't as much.

So I will continue watching another season, not expect to be any less irritated by Maggie & MacKenzie, and hope that the things I like outweigh the things I don't.

Emily Mortimer has apparently forgotten how to act

It's amazing how terrible she is in this. I know the character is awful and unlikeable (although I think we're meant to like MacKenzie, amazingly enough). Somehow Jeff Daniels is pulling off good acting as Will who's not exactly warm and fuzzy. I'm not sure I'll be back next season if Mortimer continues to substitute shrieking for real human emotion.

Right?!? I'd also like to find the person who told her to do that "bite-lower-lip-and-look-winsome" thing - she did it TWICE in the season finale, and it drove me nuts. I found myself yelling "STOP IT, I HATE YOU" at the screen more than once.

Also, since when does MacKenzie call Will "Billy"?

I'd also like to find the person who told her to do that "bite-lower-lip-and-look-winsome" thing- she did it TWICE in the season finale, and it drove me nuts.

Ugh. Yes. Just awful. She veers from supposedly cute little girl tics to shrieking harpy with not so much as a rolling stop at mature, reasonable woman. I noticed that Billy thing too. It was just the once during the finale, right? I never heard it in the previous epsiodes. The weird thing was that Will didn't seem to react to it at all. So why bother with it?

Also, Hope Davis deserves better than playing Nina Howard, although presumably she won't be back if ACN is getting rid of TMI.

I've surprised myself by liking Olivia Munn in this, except WTF was that weird interaction with Neal a couple of eps ago that involved her being crazy insecure about her (entirely non-existent) big butt????? First he implies it, which isn't OOC for him, but instead of shutting him down and being professional, she dissolves into bullshit insecurity and "do they really?" when Neal offers some stupid reassurance. That made me hate the writers, because that shit? Is not that character, no matter how much you want to make all the women on this show simultaneously high-powered so you look feminist yet neurotic and hopelessly dependent on the opinion of men.

And yes, to what you've all said about MacKenzie.

Yeah, I would've loved it if Sloan had merely looked amused by the "you've got a big arse" comment and said "Really? THAT'S the most horrifying thing you can think of to say to a woman?".

I've surprised myself by liking Olivia Munn in this, except WTF was that weird interaction with Neal a couple of eps ago that involved her being crazy insecure about her (entirely non-existent) big butt????? First he implies it, which isn't OOC for him, but instead of shutting him down and being professional, she dissolves into bullshit insecurity and "do they really?" when Neal offers some stupid reassurance. That made me hate the writers, because that shit? Is not that character, no matter how much you want to make all the women on this show simultaneously high-powered so you look feminist yet neurotic and hopelessly dependent on the opinion of men.

Yeah, that scene was ridiculous.

I kind of liked the last three episodes more than the past several weeks. I say this because the number of times I wanted to punch people in the face can be counted on one hand so we're making progress. This time I only wanted to punch

Spoiler:

My husband likes this show, but I have to leave the room when he watches it. The English woman has one of THE most annoying voices I've ever heard, and her character is as dumb as a rock. The younger blonde girl (Alison Pill?) looks sickly and weird. She freaks me out.

Watching from Australia, here. The only Sorkin things I've ever watched are A Few Good Men and two half episodes of The West Wing (didn't see The Social Network because of I am frightened of caveman Jesse Eisenberg), so his writing style is new and very off putting to me. It must be as fun as hell to act, but no one talks like that! The only people in the workplace who make conversation in the form of batting lectures back and forth are those with no social skills, and sadly often a mild case case of Asperger's. And I hate how every episode thus far has ended being wrapped up with a shiny bow with Jeff Daniels delivering some wise lines of dialogue summing up the Righteousness of the News Done Correctly, with the founding father Sam Waterson looking sage and quietly approving.

I've got to repeat all your comments - who'da thunk it that Olivia "If you don't like me, it's because you're fat" Munn would give the most likeable, sensible female performance on the show? God, Emily Mortimer is terrible. She's in her mid 40s, bounces around like a skittish teenager and relies far too much on batting her eyelashes. What kind of manager would act like that? Oh yeah, a terrible one. Alison Pill is the classic case of a good actress who overacts wildly for the cheap seats. She did the same thing in In Treatment.

And it's just not them. The love triangle is a waste of time. While I'm glad to see Asians represented, Dev Patel is playing a non-part. And most surprisingly, Jeff Daniels is not up to scratch. I would have thought his everyman qualities would be sufficient, but it also really needs a movie star type with overwhelming charisma for this part, like Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington in grumpy mode. Because as it stands, I don't see why McAvoy is worth all the effort. Case in point, the gun scene with Kathryn Hahn was just off-balance.