The two-part episode is a television staple. Growing up, I remember watching two-parters for all of my favorite shows, and I always got that feeling that was a mixture of disappointment and excitement when I realized that a show was not going to be able to wrap up it’s plot in time. There is a…
Tonight’s episode was, by “Newsroom” standards, rather slight. There were no big surprises in it, and there was no real conflict either. The news team spent very little time debating how to cover the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and thus Sorkin did not spend too much time criticizing how the Bin Laden story was…
There is a YouTube video that made the rounds after the pilot episode of “The Newsroom” that demonstrated how writer/creator Aaron Sorkin likes to reuse his best lines. This video was an arrow in the quiver of those critics who sought to take down “The Newsroom” from the beginning – only a hack would reuse…
I remember this feeling from “The West Wing.” A great episode of that show – and of any Sorkin show – was so tightly crafted. Current events blend seamlessly into character arcs. Seemingly random conversations from early in the episode find their way into the denouement. I find myself feeling real joy as the show…
NOTE: This post has been updated from its original content. Critics of HBO’s “The Newsroom” – and there have been many of them – have chided the show’s writer-creator Aaron Sorkin for being too preachy. These criticisms have come from both the right and the left. The Wall Street Journal wrote that “preening virtue…weighs on…
Recently, I had begun to think that “The Newsroom” had a serious problem – that its intent and structure were flawed at the core. “The Newsroom” aims to show us what good journalism looks like by replaying the events of the last two years. So far, show creator and writer Aaron Sorkin has shed a…
On any television series, there are going to be good episodes and bad episodes – except for “Arrested Development.” They were all good. Still, it is generally unwise to get too worked up about any single episode, good or bad, as an indication of what’s to come. Having said that, tonight’s episode of “The Newsroom”…
Second episodes are tough. Often, there are as many new viewers of a show watching the second episode as there are with the first, so you basically have to re-introduce all of the characters and restate its themes. As one of the few defenders of last week’s pilot episode of “The Newsroom,” I was tempted…
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