Monsters of Television

“Very graceful.”

I don’t know why people were complaining so much about episode 4 of this show. Episode 5 is so much worse.

Let me rephrase that. I’m trying to temper my opinions of the show and base them on adjusted expectations. The Newsroom isn’t the serious, groundbreaking drama we thought it was. It’s not even a groundbreaking workplace comedy. But my thoughts on this are well-documented and well-shared throughout the community nerdy enough to discuss such things (one I love dearly).

Even while relieving the show of a haughty premise, “Amen” is infuriating. It makes me curious about the industrial complex at HBO surrounding Sorkin. In this new golden age of television, we have a lot of “auteurs” to whom we direct our praise and aggression but they generally collaborate heavily on a program or, at the very least, have to deal with a studio. Vince Gilligan often notes his collaboration process with his room for Breaking Bad. Matt Weiner had a much-publicized debacle with AMC between the fourth and fifth seasons of Mad Men. Shawn Ryan (The Shield) can barely get a network to stick with him long enough to grab an audience (see Terriers, The Chicago Code).

But Sorkin’s influence on this show must be more comparable to Louis C.K. on Louie, a showrunner who has the deal every young aspiring television writer in the world would love to have: complete autonomy. The reason I say that is because, just like on Louie, sometimes, stuff just doesn’t work. And those things that don’t work (to the degree that they don’t on these shows) usually don’t make it to air on programs that have a lot of studio oversight. The viewing public has given Louis C.K. the right to stumble because (a) even those stumbles are at least comedic/storytelling experiments worth trying and (b) how do you not love that ugly mug? Sorkin, however — sigh. Someone needs to tell him.

The most striking thing to me about this episode is how completely out of touch it is with the real world, more so than usual. The news events happen around the same time and, I’m assuming, the coverage is correct for the time (since they’re just reusing broadcasts from other cable news channels. It’s more about how the characters are portrayed and how they behave.

The female characters carry most of this burden. While the male characters get to be pious, righteous, and worldly, Maggie, Mac, and Sloan are all narrow in ability and ignorant of everything else. They’re all very good at their jobs but their knowledge of the world seems to stop there. They are whiny, juvenile messes in anything not having to do with producing a television show. Sloan doesn’t know how to talk to people, Mac collapses into a heap every time Will does something remotely contrary to the height of his pedestal, and Maggie — ugh, Maggie — can’t make up her ladybrain as to what condescending boy she wants.

With the exception of Sloan (who is probably a Cylon), the females on this show need to be saved by the men all the time. It’s a broken record with every episode but it seems to be all the girls can think about while the boys are all involved with the news. Lisa, Maggie’s roommate, is all spit and vinegar after being stood up for Valentine’s Day, despite dating a man that is obviously married to his job and is constantly asked to work ridiculous hours. That’s not to say that she shouldn’t be upset but she stomps into the newsroom acting like an insane person, demanding Jim’s head. He apologizes. They’re okay.

And that’s a perfect example of the emotional instability of the females on the show (except for Sloan, who, as I said, might be a robot). The slightest cue from the male object of their attention and they turn into unpredictable, unreasonable monsters. Maggie with the Valentine’s gifts for Lisa on Jim’s behalf, Mac turning into sludge while reliving what she did to Will three years ago through the gossip mags. And what are the men doing? Becoming a newsman martyr after getting beat up in the streets of Egypt, stoically and righteously standing against a known conspiracy, sacrificing a social life for the good of reporting, sacrificing life for the good of reporting, and saving a colleague from the bowels of the wrong side of a revolution.

The Rudy thing is another example of the stunning disconnect with reality. Not only do we have an overexplanation of the jersey scene in the movie by the group, parceling it out to the only dude in the room (possibly the United States of his age) as if they had collectively told this story a hundred times. And it’s way too long. Sorkin seems to think that having his characters retell the story dramatically is going to evoke the same kind of emotion that it does in the movie itself. It’s also set-up for the cheesy scene at the end of the episode when it get reenacted by the staff in Will McAvoy’s honor.

The trouble with this is several fold. (1) The scene has zero parity. Rudy is a kid who’s come up from nothing to achieve his dreams. The coach, to whom the players bring their jerseys during the “famed” jersey scene, has kept Rudy from the squad and the players sacrifice themselves for Rudy’s sake. In The Newsroom, staffmembers donate their checks to repay Will (who they call Coach for this scene) for his sacrifice. (2) Who is Rudy supposed to be? Khalid? The staff isn’t sacrificing their position so that Khalid can be employed/live. It feels like the rich old man who tossed his money around is being honored here. Is Sorkin trying to say the Coach in Rudy is the actual hero of that movie? (3) WHO IS STILL WRITING CHECKS ANYMORE? I haven’t written a check in almost a decade. I can’t fathom that those kids in the newsroom even have checkbooks. (4) The only story-based excuse I can find for this situation to get all ca-ca is that it was orchestrated by Mac. Afterall, she is just a girl.

Dissonance in parity is not only present in the Rudy situation but also in the economic education Sloan gives Mac throughout the episode. With Mac withering in front of the Munn-face, you would assume that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act would have some at least tangential relationship with what is happening between our leads. But it really never does (maybe slightly if you consider commercial banks to be Will and Wall Street to be the dude she fooled around on him with — but even that’s forced). In fact, it doesn’t even have much grounds to be in this episode because you never actually see Mac go to a conference. So, either this was just a way to shoehorn Sorkin’s take on policy into the show or set up for a later story involving the economic collapse. Unfortunately, I have to assume the former.

In all of my reviews, I assume this is Sorkin doing a show the way Sorkin wants to do it. That this is Sports Night without interference or his soapbox couched in a premise that allows him a narrative bias. But what could have just been a flash-sideways where this timestream runs parallel to the one we know and we can get an inside look at how people reporting the news would react to the gravity of the current events, it comes off more pedantic and broad. Unlike Louis C.K.’s attempt to tell stories with a grittiness that is tough to achieve with oversight, Sorkin seems to be more interested in telling whimsical, sentimental stories couched in fantasy but with a relationship to history. It comes off nauseating and frustrating at best, pedantic and condescending at worst.

But hold on. Maybe this actually is a giant storytelling experiment. Clearly he’s breaking genre by making an hour-long sit-com. He’s also created a cast of people so unlikable, the only character anyone can root for is Charlie and that’s probably just a Law & Order hangover, yet people keep watching. The biased narratives are packed in so tightly, they resemble packages on a cable news show, complete with terrible transitioning between the stories, and contain the same careless storytelling.

So you tell me: is this on purpose?

Other things:

• I didn’t mention all the bodily harm the men of the newsroom experience. Elliot gets jumped in Cairo, Jim needs stitches from being banged by a door (twice), Neal socks computer monitor and breaks his fingers, and Don sprains his shoulder trying to break in a door. All doing things that are more important that Valentine’s Day, during which all of the girls are emotionally injured.
• I also didn’t mention the whole Wade and Mac debacle where Mac gets used and severs ties. It’s the strongest moment for her in the series where she passive aggressively makes Wayne wait in the cold on the terrace and then tells him to go to Hell.
• I forgot my birthday is Britain’s 9/11 (7/7).
• Amen has exceptional teeth.
• I don’t understand the ripped heart. It can’t be as cheesy and awful as I think it is right? An effect of him still being heartbroken?
• The Rudy thing is one of the worst extended metaphors on television.