Newsroom - Episodes 3 & 4

Sorkin says he is "pretty certain" his is leaving television after Newsroom ends and I wonder if there's a bit of senioritis.  While he says it's not as a result of the critical reception of Newsroom, one couldn't blame him.  I know I would grow weary under constant accusations of sexism, technophobia and condescension.  Especially when those accusations are based on perceived traits of fictional characters.  It is like calling Thomas Harris a serial killer.

While episode two featured Will recapping what could have been done in a previously, episode four featured Will explaining the court process he was facing, then the episode took us through that same court process.  Unfortunately it removed any suspense, much like how Homeland Season Three removed the suspense by explaining Saul's plan in its entirety, even though keeping the viewer in the dark benefited the first third of the season greatly.  Sorkin is a good enough writer though that we don't come for the plot, but for the dialogue, and it does not disappoint.  And for his sake, it has the benefit of taking up minutes of screentime as we play out the wire of Newsroom.

Funny enough, as big screen actors, writers, directors take their turns at television in order to employ the storytelling benefits the medium has, Sorkin expects to move full time to the movies.  His recent movies, Moneyball, The Social Network, are unqualified successes.  Charlie Wilson was another entertaining movie.  All are adapted screenplays from books.  Sorkin's plots have never been his strongest point, something he readily acknowledges *.  So please, continue to ply this man with decent source material so he can shape it into his own voice.  The movies are the place for that.


* "My parents took me to see plays when I was very little, and very often times to ones that I was too young to understand, like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which I saw when I was 9. But because I couldn't understand the story, what I really focused on was the language. It sounded like music to me, and I wanted to imitate that sound. As a result, I love dialogue, but I'm very weak with story. I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. But when I'm writing, the way the words sound is as important to me as what they mean."

This season has taken great pains to explore two or more sides of every issue its faced.  Whistleblowers versus security.  Old media versus new media.  Ratings versus reporting.  And the show is not necessarily better or worse for it, it is merely different. 

At the Newseum there is a map which represents each country's World Press Freedom rating.  Many visitors are surprised that the United States is not the top rated country, or even int he top five.  Or ten.  Or twenty five.  It is in a tie with Micronesia and Austria for 30th place.  Part of that is some of the countries ranked higher are so small and/or isolated that they have little press to speak of (and thus little reason for the government to suppress it).  It does not mean the United States received a bad rating (21/100, where top ranked Sweden Norway and Denmark all rated 10).  It merely means there are issues that Freedom House, the independent watchdog organization that compiles the report, takes issue with.  For example:

Press freedom suffered from heightened restrictions on reporters’ access to officials from the Obama administration and to government information, particularly concerning national security; government eavesdropping on journalists and news outlets; and continued efforts to compel journalists to reveal the sources of leaked information.
 [...]
 Some 39 states have shield laws that give journalists either absolute or limited protection from orders to reveal confidential sources or other information gathered in the course of their work. The federal government, however, offers no such protection, and efforts to adopt a federal shield law have stalled due to opposition from the Obama administration and congressional unwillingness to treat the issue as a priority. After the administration was criticized in 2013 for accessing the telephone and e-mail records of journalists, it reversed course and indicated a favorable attitude toward a revised federal shield bill.  

Will
I know Reece stated Will's motivations as trying to attain Mac's approval.  But I think it has more to do with his establishing journalism cred and becoming more in touch with his staff over the course of the series.  We know will was an legal analyst  on television who fell into his anchor job by chance.  So he didn't make his bones via embedded reporting or even J-school.  He makes a lot of money for reading the news and opening his broadcast with a Special Comment-esque soliloquy.  His income, his background, or lack thereof, and his celebrity put him at a distance from the journalists/producers that work in the lowercase-n-no-italics-newsroom.  He counts himself as a journalist though and makes a point to name himself one in the conversation between him, Neal, Rebecca and Mac.

Since the pilot where he was phoning it in and didn't know who was on his staff and colleagues, he's established relationships with Jim, Don, Sloane, that girl he hired, and also marrying the English one.  We've seen the team build not through trustfalls or rope courses but from Will behaving in a manner that creates loyalty (like the Rudy-esque check donations).  He goes into his own pocked because he has faith in Neil's hunch.  And now he puts himself in the line of fire of a DOJ inquiry which will address both his journalistic creds and his dedication to the staff.  He also has (had) a chance to be the face of a story that blows that restores credibility to the network following Genoa, a story he also was the face of.

Post NewsNight with Will Macavoy
Is it too much to hope he follows through on his proposition to Charlie and they go report sports?  Because Parenthood is ending, freeing up Peter Krause.  Josh Charles has left The Good Wife.   A SportsNight movie?

I'm sure there is zero chance of this actually happening.  We have to settle for guest appearances on KO.
 
BULLETIN

• Besides Will's filibustering, the Sloane/Don/HR storyline was confirmed as benign.  Hopefully in the last two episodes the most interesting couple and characters on the show will get something worthwhile to do.
• Anytime there's day of the week card smash cut like that, it makes me think of The Shining
• Here's to small weddings!
• Dev panel, when getting the scripts, must've been disapointed to not have any screentime these last two episodes.  And only two left.
• Thank you, HBO, for airing something on Thanksgiving weekend.  You joined Elementary and Survivor (both on CBS) as the only new programming I watched this week.