The Newsroom S2

Lithose_sl said:

Watch West Wing, at least until s4 for sure. Not sure if I'll watch this, though--the last 4 episodes were really fucking painful, like bad, bad rom-com shit.

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true, but Two Cathedrals(season 2 finale) is still the best hour of TV ive watched.

This show is terrible but I like to hate watch it.

Mentioning it in the same sentence as West Wing in insulting.

khalid_sl said:

This is exactly my problem with the show. The know-it-all hindsight analysis is ridiculous. So much could be done with a show on the news, but this show always takes the "100% hindsight" route and its just silly and bad.

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That was true in the first episode with the oil spill... but after that? I guess they didn't call Gifford's death, but I don't think that's hindsight bias: you really shouldn't call that with one unconfirmed source and everyone else quoting that same source.

There wasn't any hindsight bias that I recall about the debt ceiling, the tea party, the Casey Anthony trial... do you have examples other than the oil spill that I'm missing here?

how every woman on the show is a blithering idiot (even though we are constantly TOLD and not SHOWN that they are smart).

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I don't think women mess up any more than the men in the show. Heck, Will's dating experiences have a whole story arc. Clearly telling your date how everything she believes is wrong doesn't portray him as a brilliant intellectual outwitting them -- he gets drinks thrown in his face. There are a bunch of shows where men are blathering morons and women don't make mistakes (as Bane points out), which fails to attract any criticism of sexism. In the real world, both men and women make moronic mistakes and deal with them. I've seen the same comment about the West Wing and it's beyond me how anyone could see CJ or Donna and think of them as pushovers.

Byr_sl said:

true, but Two Cathedrals(season 2 finale) is still the best hour of TV ive watched.

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I dunno if it's the best for me, but it's up there. That episode rocks balls.

I had a lot of laughs watching the premier.

Side note - holy fuck Alison Pill has never looked worse.

For some reason I really love the Waterson/Munn interactions "When we get some real HR I'm going to dance on your grave." and his later "No that was your one comeback and you blew it"

Can see some sperg outrage at Neil helping OccupyWallStreet happen further down the line. I don't really care about the realism tbh, I just find it an interesting show BUT the Jim/Pam romance angle looks like it's going to fire up again

Not to be a contrarian, but it opened with a large yawn from me. It seemed like a not particularly compelling episode broken up to pieces and rearranged in a manner to appear more interesting than it actually was. I suppose the trap with the series using recent events is that it can't possibly compare to the coverage or depth already given to the topics. The only recourse would be, seemingly, to take on the issues in a unique manner while, perhaps, offering insights that have not already been brought to light. The show fails in that regard. The romantic comedy elements are more tragic or melodramatic than anything else. I'm left with the somewhat amusing repartee between some of the characters.

It was alright. It's hard to tell where anything is at with one episode. I think I preferred Sports Night, which had most of the office elements with virtually none of the political angle. It's like the part I like most about Mad Men is when they're actually doing ad work at the office. The period society stuff when the characters go home is ~meh. I'm thankful this show isn't as bad as Mad Men in that regard, but it's hard to get fired up about actual news stories that already happened here in reality. They should just make shit up so we don't have to see Sorkin revise history to be more poetic every episode.

Yeah, this show would be vastly better if they played off political storylines instead of trying to follow actual history with 100% hindsight. A "News Night" set up much like Sports Night would be great. I loved Sports Night.

The headline was more entertaining than the article, but I am sufficiently amused. It hadn't occurred to me, and I am not looking forward to that. All the more reason for the newsroom to embrace an alternate reality.

meStevo_sl said:

lol from The Onion:Nation Hoping 'The Newsroom' Ends Before Trayvon Martin Storyline

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After the season 2 opener I said pretty much the exact same thing to my girlfriend.

Alison Phil looks like a burn victim

That's really why the bf left, not because of youtube

I am not sure what your issue is... I'll blame my SD torrent.

I can't get past her beady little eyes. She looks like a mutant.

I liked the first episode of the show. It's a minor gripe, and really more of a gripe about Sorkins writing than this specific show, but a lot of the time the super fast, rapid-fire dialogue seems very disingenuine. It makes sense in a situation like the production room where they were having to correct mistakes on the fly during a live TV broadcast, but in conversations between 3 or more people, a lot of the little quips, 1-liners, and combacks that people insert into the conversation are just a little too perfect to be happening that fast. Nobody can realistically fire back that many sarcastic comebacks in that short of an amount of time, it just doesn't feel real. It's a little too smart for it's own good at times, it feels forced occasionally.