The Newsroom Finishes Its First Season as Aaron Sorkin's Burn Book

The Newsroom has the ability to hit the right notes, both dramatically and comically. Unfortunately, that is so few and far between that it gets lost. Most of the problems come from the absolute cheese that Sorkin stuffs into every episode. The worst thing being use of music and montages. Did every episode feature a Coldplay interlude, or did it just seem that way? They did everything but fix up a house while LMFAO played in the background this season. The use of Baba O’Riley as Maggie brings Will a bunch of pieces of paper with presidents’ names on them? Shut. Up.

I guess the one of the worst parts about The Newsroom is the way that sources and solutions fall into the laps of characters. It started in the very first episode when Jim Halpert Harper had a cousin at BP and another in some other convenient place that has to do with the story. I can’t tell if the best connection was Lisa going to high school with Casey Anthony or the random nurse having Dorothy Cooper as an aunt.

The One of the worst parts of The Newsroom throughout has been Emily Mortimer. She is was awful. Has she always been awful? Or is the Mackenzie MacHale character just the most insufferable character on television? Typing out her name just now I realized she is Mac MacHale. Mac Mac. What a stupid name. What an annoying, awful character.

Jeff Daniels said that… Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

Woof. What could possibly matter about last night’s episode of The Newsroom? Are all the gossip blogs finally going to shut down? Will we finally stop and help those lonely prostitution solicitors before they commit suicide?  And what in the hell is the head of a major cable news network doing talking to a production assistant about internet trolls!?

Neal doesn’t do anything worthwhile. This is supposed to be a serious, important news newscast and he’s bringing stories about Bigfoot and internet trolls? How has no one told him to get the fuck out of the building yet? They’ve spent 4 episodes trying to make it seem like he’s part of some great undercover operation. You know how long it takes to be a troll on the internet? 5 seconds. You find someplace to write something on the internet and you write something there. Aaron Sorkin has no idea there is a difference between a hacker and a troll.

You can’t equal the drama of finding Will in his bathroom unless you have everyone search his apartment and check everywhere except the bathroom. On a list of places in an apartment where you might find someone, you have living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom and bathroom right? Not necessarily in that order either. They needed a fucking blood trail to find someone in one of the rooms in his house. If there wasn’t a dramatic speck of blood on Will’s face on the magazine cover no one would have ever checked the bathroom. Or noticed the trail of blood. That’s why Terry Crews makes $1700 a week, plus benefits. If you were curious, Terry Crews makes $88K annually to follow around Will McAvoy.

I don’t hate Sam Waterson, Olivia Munn and Terry Crews. Notice that Charlie Skinner was a functioning alcoholic in the pilot episode? Did he have a drink after that or just become a sober beacon of justice because an annoying British lady entered his life?

Back to the horrible characters. Maggie. Why would anyone covet her? She’s ditzy. She’s annoying. She’s less attractive than her many contemporaries. (Speaking of which – Good job by Sorkin to keep Maragret Judson’s very important character around by giving her 1-2 lines an episode. This truly is an ensemble.) As far as I can tell, Jim likes Maggie because Mac told him he should like Maggie in the first episode? Then he fell madly in love with her despite the fact that she is a bumbling, moody idiot most of the time. At least Sorkin finally got to take a shot at… Sex & the City?

Why does everyone hate Don? In the first episode, he was a dickhead and totally wrong for Maggie and OMG he doesn’t want to meet her parents, but after that he turned into a guy who was just kind of doing his job. Guess we should root against him because he has a girlfriend who likes another guy? The fuck did Don do? And where in the world did he get all those candles in the finale?

So the suicide (how dramatic btw) informer guy sent a parcel from the East River with a soup recipe. Then the News Night crew took that yellow envelope into a meeting, threw it on the table and got the one guy to admit he had been doing illegal wire tapping. And he didn’t even try to deny it. Whatever.

The Newsroom is what Sorkin has made it and he doesn’t care that people have problems with it. He’s too buys telling Republicans and Tea Partiers and the Internet to suck it. There were a few bright moments every now and then, but what does it matter?  It’s an 8.8 on IMDB(!), so maybe I’m wrong! Or maybe this is the exact mass appeal bullshit that Sorkin is railing against in The Newsroom.