Atticus Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 is fantastic. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cre618 Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Really? I have a like/hate relationship with this show. Liked Season 2 very much, until the ending ruined it for me. Sometimes I can't stop watching, sometimes I want to throw things at my TV. Really disappointed that Jeff Daniels won the Emmy last night (over Spacey/Hamm/Cranston.) I just don't buy him on that show as anything but the selfish, self absorbed person he is, when he veers into a romantic character I find it cringe-worthy. But, YMMV of course. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Doug C Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 is fantastic.Yes. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Atticus Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 until the ending ruined it for me. I get the feeling they wrote that like the show was ending. It seemed more like a movie ending than a proper Sorkin end-of-season ending. but still, episode in, episode out, this felt like watching the 1st three seasons of West Wing. Such great writing. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gogo Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Such great writing. I felt that the women were particularly underwritten/poorly written in the first season, and was hoping for an improvement in season two. Nope! Just as awful. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
NoJ Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 The sexual tension between Lou and Mary could be cut with a knife. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Atticus Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 I felt that the women were particularly underwritten/poorly written in the first season, examples? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
RaspberryJam Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 I was all ready to say something about the women, but Maudie beat me too it. All of the female characters' abilities to do their jobs seem to hinge on how their relationships with men are going. And I'm bothered that they have to keep saying how smart Olivia Munn's character is instead of just letting her be smart. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gogo Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 First episode, first season: Mac, who is supposed to be an intelligent, accomplished woman, is a dithering idiot who manages to send an embarrassing personal e-mail to the entire corporate e-mail list. Every episode, both seasons: pretty much everything Maggie does. Several different episodes: women get angry and physically assault the men they're arguing with. Why? Would this happen on a regular basis in real life, in a professional setting? So unlikely. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Atticus Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 All of the female characters' abilities to do their jobs seem to hinge on how their relationships with men are going. examples?First episode, first season: Mac, who is supposed to be an intelligent, accomplished woman, is a dithering idiot who manages to send an embarrassing personal e-mail to the entire corporate e-mail list. what does this have to do with her being a woman? The issue there (to me) was that she was old-school and therefore not email savvy. That she spent a big chunk of her career on location/embedded, etc. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Atticus Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 Every episode, both seasons: pretty much everything Maggie does. Maggie goes from being a grunt intern to an associate producer and then is given the Africa assignment. How is she under- or poorly-written?Jim seems to be the character most painted as not being able to cut it at his job because of relationship issues--taking the stint on the Romney bus. (While Maggie sucked it up and stayed on doing her job, and well) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gogo Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Wouldn't being on location/embedded actually make her MORE tech savvy? And I feel that that scene set a tone for the entire show so far, Mac is consistently dithering and fretting about something. Her background and experience should make her the coolest cucumber on the show, not someone who goes frantic on a regular basis. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gogo Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Maggie goes from being a grunt intern to an associate producer and then is given the Africa assignment. How is she under- or poorly-written?Jim seems to be the character most painted as not being able to cut it at his job because of relationship issues--taking the stint on the Romney bus. (While Maggie sucked it up and stayed on doing her job, and well) I never really saw anything in Maggie's story line that would give her credibility as an associate producer, and the Africa assignment seemed like she was getting thrown a bone, as much as anything she'd earned. And Jim is just an asshole. That thing that he was doing to Lisa in the last episode, harassing her at work after she'd already been warned by her boss to get rid of him, is exactly the same thing he did to her in the dress shop in the first season. Her job matters to her, Jim, just because it's not THE NEWS doesn't mean that it's not worth even acknowledging that it's happening. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Jules Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 women Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Atticus Posted September 23, 2013 Author Share Posted September 23, 2013 since my penis precludes me from having credibility on issues of feminism, I'll just cite an article that reflects my feelings and slowly back away from the computer. LINK Whether you’re a fan or a hater of The Newsroom, pretty much everyone agrees that Aaron Sorkin has a "woman problem." Nearly every feminist writer with access to the internet has taken to the blogosphere to criticize Sorkin’s female characters as "ditsy," "incompetent," obsessed with their love lives, and in constant need of being "set straight" by men.But I'm a feminist, and I love Sorkin's women. I think the women of The Newsroom are compelling, funny, strong, realistic (impossibly witty banter aside), and yes, flawed.Critics cite episodes like this one in which Mac, the executive producer of News Night, accidentally sends a "reply all" email as evidence of Sorkin’s pattern of depicting women as incompetent and overly-emotional. Apparently having a character who happens to be a woman make a common mistake proves he’s a misogynist. More to the point, those critics ignore the fact that Will McAvoy responds to the accident just as emotionally, if not more so, than Mac herself. Critics argue that Mac isn’t the only ditsy or emotional female character, and the email incident wasn’t the only problem. It just one scene in a much larger pattern of storylines with incompetent female characters. What about Maggie? She gets tangled in her headphones, forgets her notes, and is constantly making maddeningly bad decisions in her love life.It’s true. Sometimes the female characters make silly mistakes. Sometimes they make big mistakes. But so do the men. Don Keefer, for example, can’t assemble his desk chair and literallyfalls on his ass in the office — not once, but twice. Jim trips over luggage before being introduced to his subordinates. Will forgets the combination to his own safe. Far worse, Will eats potbrownies the night Osama Bin Laden is killed, does the news high, and leaves a foggy voicemailconfessing his undying love to his producer and ex-girlfriend. That all sounds pretty incompetent and emotional to me. When men make mistakes, it’s just funny; not a statement about Sorkin’s inability to write competent male characters. Sorkin is similarly criticized for having his female characters obsess over their love lives at work, but Will is forced to go to a psychiatrist to talk about his romantic feelings for Mac. Jim is similarly paralyzed by his inability to handle his romantic feelings for Maggie. In fact, in Season two, he skips town and takes a demotion to be an embed with the Romney campaign because he can’t stand being around her. If anyone can’t seem to separate their romantic and professional lives in this show, it’s the men.Meanwhile, Mac goes from being an embedded reporter in a war zone to sitting in the control room during Will’s show, where she regularly saves him from looking like an idiot on national TV. Maggie volunteers to report from a war-torn region of Africa and narrowly avoids being killed. Sloan Sabbith holds a PhD, goes toe-to-toe with the president of the news division, punches Wall Street jerks, speaks fluent Japanese, and stands up for what she thinks is right, even when it means physically threatening her executive producer. Leona Lansing owns the network and, it’s safe to say, scares the shit out of almost everyone, including her male subordinates.The Newsroom is chuck-full of robust female characters. When faced with flawed women, we find ourselves utterly incapable of appreciating them for who they are as characters. Instead, we see them as universal representations of their gender, which means Sorkin doesn’t have a "woman problem." We do. Feminism, as a movement, constantly begs Hollywood to depict, "real" female characters. We refuse to accept the overly sexualized "hero" like Cat Woman or the sexless, overworked bitch like Miranda Priestly. We’re starving for smart, funny, flawed female characters who, if they don’t actually "have it all," are struggling to get there like the rest of us. But, when we actually see those characters on TV, we immediately complain about what we said we wanted all along — we turn on the writers of those shows for not crafting the "perfect" female character.Sorkin knows that women can make mistakes without those mistakes being representative of womenkind. Women can be funny without being incompetent. While real sexism in Hollywood is certainly rampant, we should be able to laugh at ourselves without seeing misogyny behind every corner. With the amount of attention Sorkin has received from the feminist blogosphere, you’d think he was a Todd Akin-like wing nut, when in fact he’s the classic Hollywood liberal conservatives love to hate. This is the creator of The West Wing for god’s sake. This is the writer that gave us Abby Bartlet, CJ Cregg, and Nancy McNally. I’m certainly not arguing that writing a few strong female characters gives Sorkin blanket feminist immunity for the rest of his life, but when we spend 10 times as long criticizing The Newsroom as we do talking about shows like this, we’re not using our time or our voices wisely as a movement.So, I know it’s trendy to hate The Newsroom right now. However, when feminists write that the women of The Newsroom have less agency than the women of '60s-era Mad Men, we're taking part in the most self-destructive act of serious cultural and political movements: refusing to pick our battles. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
RaspberryJam Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 examples? Olivia Munn's character and the porn. Maggie's work suffered when the boyfriend saw the video. When she was in Africa without a boyfriend, she did great.And I can't believe Mac has gotten as far as she has in her job with her never seeming to know what is going on Jeff Daniel's character is more interesting when he's not involved with someone, you can't say that about the female characters.Interesting article. Thanks, it makes me feel a tiny bit better about Aaron Sorkin. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gogo Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 since my penis precludes me from having credibility on issues of feminism, I'll just cite an article that reflects my feelings and slowly back away from the computer. LINK a. I'm not questioning anyone's credibility on these issues. I'm just stating my own case, trying to back up why I feel the way I do about these characters. If the writer of this article disagrees with me, so be it. We're all entitled to our opinions. b. "This is the writer that gave us Abby Bartlet, CJ Cregg, and Nancy McNally." This might be exactly why I'm so disappointed with the women on The Newsroom. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
NoJ Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Whats this about Olivia Munn and the pron? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
RaspberryJam Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Her ex boyfriend put up an "art film" on one of those revenge upon ex sites. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
chisoxjtrain Posted September 23, 2013 Share Posted September 23, 2013 Least favorite out of the 4 Sorkin shows. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
anthony Posted September 24, 2013 Share Posted September 24, 2013 I have only seen a few episodes, but have enjoyed those. Snappy writing, quick dialogue, humor, poignancy, ... I'm on board. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Radiant Witch Face Posted September 24, 2013 Share Posted September 24, 2013 I hate this show. ever character is just like another version of Aaron Sorkin. each character is more irritating than the last. I made this decision after watching the first couple of episodes of the first season. terrible. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
NoJ Posted September 24, 2013 Share Posted September 24, 2013 Why does everyone know who Aaron Sorkin is and what he's like? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
winterland121072 Posted September 24, 2013 Share Posted September 24, 2013 watched first 7 episodes of season 1 with my wife. Really liked the Jeff Daniels character but the supporting characters were very difficult to digest. The young blonde female actually made us quit watching the show. The idea is great, the over the top political bias was hard to swallow, but the horrible writing surrounding the blossoming in the shadow romance of the young blonde female and the other guy ruined the show for us... Daniels beat spacey, hamm and cranston for the emmy? wow....whatever credibility the emmys had was lost with that decision... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir Stewart Posted September 24, 2013 Share Posted September 24, 2013 Does Emily Mortimer's character suffer from Avian Bone Syndrome in this? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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