Series: The Newsroom Episode Title: "Election Night, Part II" Episode Grade: C
I didn't like this episode very much. Objectively speaking, I should have liked it even less than I did. It is only because I'm a soft-hearted, mushy headed sentimentalist that I find enough enjoyable elements in The Newsroom's season finale to salvage an otherwise poor effort.
We'll start with what...well, I don't know if I'd say it "works," but it works for me. And those are the closing moments of this episode, where Aaron Sorkin, writing what seems likely was intended to be a series finale, throws caution to the wind and just gives his characters and his audience a bevvy of feel good moments.
These start with Will proposing to MacKenzie. Again, objectively speaking, this is patently silly. A tiresomely large portion of this episode is taken up with the two of them bickering over their romantic past (replace "episode" with "series" and that works just as well), and Will's decision here is less spontaneous and more mystifying. That he still loves MacKenzie is believable (and has been addressed before); that he would take this particular action at this particular moment is not.
And yet the actual proposal scene works, almost entirely on the basis of Jeff Daniels' performance. Daniels was the show's main draw when it debuted, save Sorkin himself, and he's done solid work pretty consistently. But if he hasn't exactly been sidelined in The Newsroom's second season, he has spent a lot of time in B-plots while the rest of the staff handled Operation Genoa. And Sorkin's (smart) decision to spend less time with the on-camera aspects of News Night With Will McAvoy meant Daniels got less time to play Will McAvoy, Commentator.
Daniels is outstanding while proposing, and if the dialogue he's given here is mainly just a reprise of the standard Sorkin trope of nervous, hyper-eloquent babbling, he and Sorkin both execute it well. He executes it well enough to make the moment genuinely touching, anyway.
A few plotlines converge in the newsroom at the end of the episode, all to the strains of a cover version of "Let My Love Open the Door." Will and MacKenzie announce their engagement. Reese, given the choice of accepting or rejecting Charlie and Will's resignation by his mother, announces that he won't accept them or settle with Jerry Dantana. Don and Sloane look lovingly into each other's eyes, having finally shared a kiss once Sloane figures out that he was the one who bought her book at the charity auction. And the camera pans over the newsroom, everyone hard at work and drinking champagne, before zooming in on Maggie checking a breaking news alert and cutting to black.
It's a genuinely moving ending, a reminder of the energy and passion of the people in the room, as well as the endless nature of what they do. It serves as a kind of wordless mission statement for the show as a whole, which is why I suspect this was written before Sorkin and HBO had worked out the details of a third season.
What comes before, however, in the first 40 minutes or so of this episode, is something like a perfect example of Sorkin at his worst. Some of this comes with the previously discussed re-hashing of Will and MacKenzie's past.
Even more irksome is Sorkin's continued insistence that Jim is something akin to a saint. I said last week that Jim embodied the worst sort of Sorkin character: the insufferably arrogant jackass whose insufferable arrogance is never acknowledged in-universe. "Election Night, Part II" demonstrates this brilliantly, as Jim gets not one, but two opportunities to lecture a woman in his life about how awesome she is.
The details of these are even more depressing when listed in detail, so it will suffice to say that he lectures Lisa (his ex and Maggie's friend who we haven't seen since early in the season) on her intelligence and lectures Maggie on her strength.
This is the sort of thing that Sorkin's critics seize on when they accuse him of raging sexism. Those criticisms are dramatically overstated, but watching a saintly male character gallantly come to the defense of women who lack self-confidence it's hard to say that they have no basis in reality. These "you're too good for your own doubts/the man you're with/the job you're in" speeches were tiresome when delivered in Sports Night, and they haven't grown less so over the last 15 years.
More of consequence happens this week than last, but the episode isn't nearly as good. There are problems of character and narrative here, but put simply, "Election Night, Part II" isn't remotely as fun as "Part I." The manic energy and wit of the first part is lacking, and what's left makes a poor end to what was generally a solid season of television.
Notes
There's a fun little runner where Will has to keep interrupting Sloane to throw to various reporters. "Are you doing this on purpose now?" "No, it's just working out incredibly well."
Reese wants to give a big speech announcing that he won't accept Charlie's resignation, but Charlie and Will have already decided not to quit. Reese's disappointment at not being able to do the right thing is pretty funny.
Reese: History should reflect I acted admirably. Rebecca: Is it possible the greater glory belongs to me?
Marcia Gay-Harden was a delight this season.
Jim to Hallie: "Just physically, you're hard to look at. Not homely so much, but weird-looking."
Sorkin clearly thinks a high Jane Fonda is a comedic delight. I don't agree.
Series: The Newsroom Episode Title: "Election Night, Part 1" Episode Grade: B
"Election Night, Part 1" is an example of an episode type that Aaron Sorkin has made an important part of his repertoire: a manic, hyperactive pace that somewhat shrouds the reality that nothing much happens.
So, no, there isn't much plot in "Election Night, Part 1," and what's there doesn't add up to much. But it is fun. It is a wonderful, hectic hour of television, with dialogue that bounces off the walls in a style that is reminiscent of Sorkin at his best.
"Election Night..." takes place in the aftermath of the Genoa debacle (Rebecca: You aired a bad story. Will: It was a good story. Rebecca: Shame it wasn't true. Will: Sure, we don't meet your East Coast liberal standards...), Charlie and Will still employed at ACN despite their best efforts. Leona won't accept their resignations, and Jerry Dantana's lawsuit will be filed the next day.
This story branches off in two directions: in the first, Charlie heads upstairs to beg the company president (Leona's son, in case you forgot) to accept their resignations. Turns out, Reese would love nothing more than to settle the case and chuck Will and Charlie overboard but can't, because...well:
Charlie: Then why don't you? Reese: My mom won't let me.
The other branch is much less fun, as it focuses on Will and MacKenzie and their utterly tedious romantic past. There's an interesting dynamic here, in that MacKenzie also wants to fall on a sword after Genoa, and actually has an out: Will can fire her. He won't, of course, and perhaps too much of this episode is taken up with Will simultaneously refusing to fire MacKenzie and berating her over the the failure of their relationship.
Emily Mortimer continues the good work she's been putting in over the last few weeks; she is at once harried and hassled and utterly competent. MacKenzie runs the newsroom (hey, I get the title now!) on an anarchic night with complete confidence and efficiency, but the strain of the Genoa disaster show son her face throughout the evening.
Of the many effective and funny sub-plots in "Election Night," one of the best actually belongs to Jim and Maggie. Throughout The Newsroom's run, Jim has always been the worst sort of insufferably arrogant Aaron Sorkin character: the kind we're clearly not supposed to find insufferable or arrogant.
Sorkin's critics often characterize his shows as replete with insufferable characters, which is true enough but misses the point. When Sorkin is at his best, his arrogant characters are on the side of the angels, but the arrogance is actually acknowledged and criticized in-universe. When he's at his worst, as in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the arrogance and insufferability is apparent only to the audience.
In The Newsroom, Jim has always played the latter role. So it's nice in this episode not to just see him screw up (he calls the Michigan First Congressional District for the incumbent before the sequestered analytic experts say that's kosher) but to actively avoid doing the right thing. And Jim's reluctance to have the call publicly retracted is understandable; Charlie is on the warpath regarding election night mistakes (which is itself thoroughly understandable), and the expert assures Jim that the incumbent will win.
An election night in a newsroom is really a perfect setting for Sorkin, and "Election Night, Part 1" demonstrates why. The plot lines here exist mainly to set the stage for next week's season finale, which means there's a lot that's half-formed, and what's here isn't terribly meaty. But it is an excellent display of Sorkin's ear for dialogue and raw talent, and it's simply a joy to watch.
Notes
The episode ends with Will agreeing to fire MacKenzie at the end of the broadcast. I'm looking forward to the heartfelt scene at the end of next week's episode where that decision is reversed.
Constance Zimmer is back, and that makes me happy. Her patter with Maggie where they bond over a shared hatred of Jim is wonderful.
"You're like a foot taller than a person is supposed to be."
Allison Pill gets some funny moments here, especially when she insists that Don used to shower with the chief of staff for a candidate in California (they were on the tennis team).
"There are individual showers."
Sloane has a reasonably funny sub-plot here where she finds out that someone at the network forged her signature on an economics text as part of a charity auction. Turns out it was Gary Cooper, the production assistant who accompanied Maggie to Africa. Olivia Munn is quite good playing obsessive.
Sloane wants to track down the guy who bought the book, and naturally enlists Neal's help. "You need to hurry before the trail gets cold.
Dev Patel is really doing outstanding work this season.
Grace Gummer's Hallie appears again in a Skype conversation with Jim and demands to know if he can tell her the color of her hair. "Your hair is the color of goodness?"
Charlie launches into what appears to be a stirring Sorkin speech on the beauty of American democracy, only to see it quickly become a threat directed at anyone who makes a mistake on election night.
Series: The Newsroom Episode Title: "Red Team III" Episode Grade: A-
It is striking that "Red Team III", the most important episode of this season and one of the series' best, spends precious little time on the actual event that has defined the entire season. Indeed, the airing of News Night's report on Operation Genoa is dispatched over a couple minutes, with some overly portentous music and quick camera cuts among stern, worried people.
"Red Team III," instead, is concerned primarily with the aftermath of the Genoa disaster and how the staff reacts when the story starts to fall apart. It is a flashback episode, told in the waning moments of the final depositions conducted by the attorney played by Marcia Gay Harden. As a result, there's some story furniture that has be arranged before we can move through the episode, some reminders the audience has to be provided with so that we remember what has gone into Genoa so far.
Don reminds us of the evidence. Then Neal. Then Sloan. Then Don again. This is tedious at first, but then it becomes clear what the show is doing: reminding us of how damn solid the entire story seems to be. We have two eyewitnesses from the operation. We have Marine General Stephen Root. We have the budget document Charlie's source provided.
Stacked one on top of the other, the entire structure of Genoa seems sound, and it's easy for the audience to see how the newsroom staff (including Will, brought in for the first time) believes the same thing. And that makes the revelation that the structure is a house of cards all the more devastating, even if, technically, this isn't a revelation at all; we've known it since the beginning.
So they run the story, and General Root immediately calls to complain that he never said what he was shown on the show to have said. The staff can shrug this off, but then the Pentagon issues a belated response, threatening legal action and absolutely denying the story.
Things only truly start to disintegrate when Sweeney, the first to come forward with confirmation of the use of sarin gas, does another interview on the network and reveals (for the first time) that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a previous fire fight. The primary symptom of a TBI, it turns out, is memory loss.
And this is where the episode, more workmanlike than inspired to this point, kicks into gear. Emily Mortimer does what is undoubtedly her best work in this episode, especially in a scene where she essentially cross-examines herself and finds all the flaws of her interview with Private Valenzuela, the other participant in Genoa who came forward to confirm the story.
Then the capper: Charlie meets with his source, a man named Shepherd, to get confirmation that the story is still sound. Instead, "Shep" puts a dagger in it. His son was an intern at ACN, and he was fired for posting critical things about Will's show on the internet. Things Charlie agreed with, no doubt, but interns get fired for criticizing their networks online.
Charlie didn't fire the kid, but Shepherd holds him responsible for the fact that his son died of a heroin overdose after being fired. And so he did the one thing he knew would hurt Charlie the most: he forged the mission document.
And then MacKenzie discovers what Jerry Dantana did to the footage of his interview with General Root, thanks to the shot clock at the bottom of the basketball game that was going on in the background. Her tearful reaction, and the look on her face when she tells Will, is heartbreaking, and makes up for a lot of fairly pedestrian work Mortimer had turned in prior to this episode.
The episode ends on what is theoretically a stirring note; Jane Fonda, playing the head of the network, storms in and refuses to accept resignations from Will, Charlie and MacKenzie. She refuses to settle with Dantana, who has filed a wrongful termination suit alleging he was scapegoated for the institutional failure that caused the Genoa debacle. And in response to Charlie pointing out that they no longer have the trust of the public, Fonda ends the episode with, "So, get it back!"
But however that's supposed to resonate with the audience, the feel and smell of failure is too heavy on this episode to be dismissed by one amusing scene with Jane Fonda playing a drunken businesswoman. "Red Team III" is an episode about the aftermath of a career-shattering mistake, and it is striking and compelling as a result.
Notes
Turns out Will heard similar rumors about Genoa from a source of his own. Who turns out to be Shepherd. Whoops.
I really like Thomas Sadoski's incredulity in the opening deposition, when he's trying to convey just how insane it is that Dantana is suing.
More solid work from Hamish Linklater, who does a great job in the early scenes with Red Team III playing a character who is genuinely aggrieved at his colleagues' skepticism while knowing what he did.
What doesn't work here: Jim is right from the beginning and suspects the story is wrong, all without giving any reasonable basis for his conviction. Jim's the most troublesome character on the show, and he's worth a longer discussion at some point.
Not a lot of laugh out loud comedy in this one, but I did enjoy Sloan pointing out to Don that she would survive in prison just fine by pulling a Shawshank Redemption and doing the warden's taxes. "What are you gonna do, produce their nightly news show?"
So, that game in the background? Definitely Florida-Kentucky. Once again, Gator basketball saves the day.
Series: The Newsroom Episode Title: "One Step Too Many" Episode Grade: B+
Last week, I wrote that it would be a mistake for Aaron Sorkin to step away from the reality that the staff of "News Night With Will McAvoy" had screwed up in pursuing the Operation Genoa story. With this episode, Sorkin comes close to doing just that. It works, for now, because of some quality acting from Hamish Linklater and solid writing in giving Linklater's Jerry Dantana character reasonable motivation.
"One Step Too Many" unfolds over the course of several months, but the crucial action takes place over the a couple scenes, spread out over the course of the episode. The newsroom staff tracks down a Marine general, who will henceforth be referred to as "General Stephen Root" because his actual character's name is long and not readily available on the internet at the moment, who they suspect has knowledge of Operation Genoa.
General Stephen Root, played by Stephen Root, is a chemical weapons acolyte. Charlie and MacKenzie use this to wheedle an apparent confirmation out of General Root in an excellent scene that shows how these two people actually become high-ranking journalists.
Dantana is dispatched to interview General Root, and their conversation is fascinating. Root is distracted by a basketball game (more on that in the notes); he's uncooperative enough to be disquieting, but not incoherent or apparently un-credible. He has Maggie and everyone else leave, which is easy enough for a motivated Dantana to wave off as understandable paranoia.
But Dantana doesn't hear what he wants to hear. He hears something perilously, achingly close to what he wants to hear; General Root confirms the existence of Genoa, but when Dantana presses him on the use of sarin gas in the operation, Root instead talks about how the US would use sarin if they had used it.
Back in New York, Dantana doesn't hesitate. He cuts the tape of the interview and removes the word "if" in Root's "if we used sarin gas" statement. When he presents the interview to MacKenzie, Charlie and the rest of the newsroom staff (Will is still being left out of the story), he shows them tape of Root flatly confirming the use of sarin gas.
How does all this work? It would be fair to ding Sorkin for taking the easy way out and making Dantana openly unethical. Dantana deceiving MacKenzie and Co. can be seen to remove any sense of responsibility or fault from the core cast, essentially skirting the promise of the Genoa storyline.
And yet I'm basically on board, with some reservations. Much of this comes down to Linklater's outstanding performance here; Dantana is motivated by a sincere concern over the state of civil liberties in the Obama era. Linklater spends most of the episode on the "sincere" and "passionate" side of the line, but falls onto the "strident" side just often enough to make his actions predictable.
And the the motivation here is sound. Dantana clearly believes in Genoa, and it's not hard to see how he can justify his actions; Root's statements, if viewed in the right light, with a certain amount of squinting, can be seen as something close to confirmation. Dantana didn't so much slide down the slippery slope as take one wrong step when he thought he was already off the slope.
This reading is based on what we saw of Dantana's interview with General Root, which is only a few questions. If it turns out that Root explicitly denied the use of sarin in Genoa, then Dantana's motivations become much less understandable, and the whole storyline suffers as a result.
For now, however, "One Step Too Many" is compelling television, even if it deliberately avoids some steps that could have made it truly outstanding.
Notes:
On the other hand, shouldn't MacKenzie have watched the entire interview? Unedited? She even asked Don if he trusted Jerry.
About that basketball game: General Root loves March Madness and refuses to do the interview without a game on. But what's shown is actually a regular season Kentucky game in Lexington. And, if I'm not mistaken, it's Florida-Kentucky. (Stephen Root the actor is a Florida grad. And as a "by the way," UK won that game, 76-68)
Yes, there are other storylines in this episode. Will's obsession with his ratings continues, and Nina advice leads him to an appearance on the ACN morning show. That appearance ends with Will throwing a football at a stand of lights and then breaking up with Nina. It's...not much.
"I think you're lovable, but your numbers are problematic."
There's some excellent comedy in the other story, which has Jim planning on dinner and soooo much sex with Hallie (who is still on the show, for you Grace Gummer fans). Sorkin has always done well with plots where a frustrated and desperate man has obstacle after obstacle thrown in his way.
Constance Zimmer continues to do good work as the (now-fired) Romney spokesman who tags along at Hallie's request. "I know this is a special evening for you, so of course I said yes."
Taylor: "I loathe you in ways that are unquantifiable." Neal: "Cool."
"How do you know Reagan's horse didn't dance?"
Hallie brings along a friend for Neal. She's the worst sort of Sorkin character; I really wish he'd stop with the ditzy women.
Coming off one of the series' better and more eventful
episodes, “Unintended Consequences,” the expectation might be that “News Night
With Will McAvoy” would be a breather episode, a chance to recover and take
stock of the important character developments from last week. Instead, Aaron
Sorkin and company opted for an episode veritably stuffed with plot, enough of
which works to make this a success. However, enough falls flat to keep
“News Night...” from achieving anything genuinely memorable.
Something of a bottle episode, taking place entirely in the
ACN newsroom over the course of a single show, “News Night” is very much an episode about
technology. This is dangerous ground for The Newsroom, which has too
often reveled in Sorkin's oft-expressed disdain for the internet and internet
culture and anything that runs on electrons.
Intriguingly, however, “News Night” takes a perspective that
is, if not exactly sophisticated, then at least nuanced and understanding in a way that has not
often been on display. Will is distracted by news that a Washington Post writer tweeted mean things about him. A Syrian
woman calls in during the show and tells Jim that her husband is trapped under
a bombed out building in Damascus. And, in the plot line that wins the award
for “Most Minefields Avoided With Shocking Deftness,” Sloane has to deal with
an ex-boyfriend sending out naked photos of her over the internet.
Will's mindset is also very much at the forefront of “News
Night,” as he's distracted both by the Post
writer's tweet and the news that his father has suffered a heart attack. Jeff
Daniels does excellent work here mainly by not overplaying any given scene or
emotion; he is stolid and stoic throughout, save some of the usual banter with
Emily Mortimer's character, a reflection both of his professionalism and the
extent to which he has submerged himself in his show. The moment where Will
reveals the Post writer's final tweet (“You just lost a viewer”) is an
outstanding one, both in terms of Daniels' performance and what it says about
the character.
But the acting award for tonight goes to Olivia Munn, who
had been somewhat sidelined in the early episodes of this season. She plays Sloane's
devastation and humiliation beautifully, and Sorkin deserves credit for the
writing of a plot line that could easily have been disastrous. Sloane's scenes
talking things through with Don, whose character has undergone an enjoyable and
much-needed evolution since the early days of the show, are beautiful; Don is
understanding, but, in a wise decision by Sorkin, not perfect, and Sloane
doesn't hesitate in rejecting his insinuations that she is dating obviously awful
guys. And the moment where she finally break downs and says, “I wanna die,” is
perfectly pitched and played.
While concerns about tweeting and other technological issues
engage the staff (Neal is able to find out, off-screen, that the “Syrian”
couple are actually calling from Manhattan, which nicely avoided my
expectations of Jim heartbreakingly talking a trapped survivor through his
final hours), the long-term storyline that propels this season is being handled
in the old-style: face-to-face, journalist to source, over a drink.
Charlie receives a visit from a Navy PR guy,
purportedly to discuss issues surrounding a Naval computing facility in Utah.
It quickly evolves into a discussion of Operation Genoa, the black op that News
Night has been sedulously looking into over the course of the season and that
we know is doomed to blow up in the show's face.
The end result of this conversation? The Navy man hands Sam Waterston a piece of paper, a budget report that leaves the latter convinced
Genoa is real.
I've been intrigued by the Genoa plotline since the
beginning of the season, both because it is evidence that the News Night staff
is capable of screwing up and the way in which it is becoming increasingly easy
to see how they could screw it up. Critics, including the show's many journalist
hate watchers, have argued that Sorkin's decision to set the show in the recent
past makes journalism too easy; the characters always make the right calls,
because Sorkin already knows the right answers.
With the Genoa plotline, however, The Newsroom seems to be showing how easy it is to screw up while
chasing a story. And by making the story they're chasing all the more
convincing, Sorkin shows just how difficult the practice of journalism really
is.
The episode ends with a fairly standard Sorkin trope: the
last-minute bombshell that one character knew for a while, then calmly explains
to another character (and the audience). In this case, it's Will telling
MacKenzie that his father died.
Never having met Will's father, or having heard much about
him aside from a brief discussion in a psychiatrist's office (which was
helpfully included in the “previously on...” vignette before the show”), this
can only have so much effect on the audience. Its effect on Will is what it's
interesting; we now know that Will went through a lengthy segment of the show
with his father's death on his mind and never showed it. And there's a touching
scene where, coming back from commercial after telling MacKenzie the news, Will
stares blankly for several seconds before moving on with the final segment of
the show.
“News Night With Will McAvoy” is an episode that relies
heavily on its actors performances and works because of it. Ultimately,
however, our read on this season is going to depend in large part on how the
Genoa plotline develops. Showing the News Night staff as mortal and fallible is
a good step; it would be a mistake for Sorkin to back away from it.
Notes
·What didn't work about this episode? Maggie.
Those inclined to be harsh toward the show, who have frequently complained
about the alleged misuse of Allison Pill, will see her storyline, both the
revelations that she's been drinking and sleeping around and her mistake
editing the George Zimmerman 911 call, as further proof of Sorkin's inability
to write a competent, together female character. I'm a little more charitable,
in that the behavior is portrayed as an understandable reaction to a traumatic
event instead of a character flaw and her explanation for the editing mistake
(she had five minutes to cut a six-minute tape to 20 seconds and removed a
crucial bit of context) is reasonable, but it's not a particularly compelling bit
of television.
·“The country is divided between people who like
sex and people who think it’s kinda gross…” Not the most nuanced depiction of
the culture wars.
·Also falling a little bit short is the
conclusion to Sloane's storyline, which has her beating up and photographing
the ex-boyfriend. A nice little “Fuck, yeah!” scene for Olivia Munn, but too
trite and neat by half.
·Don lecturing Sloane on being better than her
boyfriends also rings false, and is the only bad moment in their conversations.
·“I am feeling something so intensely I don't
even know what it is.” A good line, and well-delivered by Munn.
·Comedic storyline not covered in the review:
Don's sarcastic comment about a candidate for the Solicitor General position
speaking to a jihad group is the source for a World Net Daily piece. This is
basically just a re-hash of a real life case where a reporter joked about Chuck
Hagel speaking at a benefit for “Friends of Hamas,” then watched in horror as
it was reported as fact in Tucker Carlson's rancid Daily Caller. It does give Olivia Munn a funny moment, where Don
tells her not to laugh while he's on a speaker phone call with a WND editor and
she says, “How am I supposed to when all I've been doing is laughing for
hours?”
·Yet another plotline has a kid from Rutgers
planning on using an appearance on News Night to come out. It's basically a
two-scene story, but there's a nice moment at the end where the kid says it was
“one way to tell my parents without being there.”
·Hey, Will understands the concepts of Twitter
followers and re-tweets!
I've
recently decided to stop reading reviews of The
Newsroom, HBO's Aaron
Sorkin-scripted drama that is currently in the middle of its second
season. The simple reason for this is that I seem to be watching a
different show from the one reviewed by most critics; episodes that I
enjoy, that consistently make me laugh and intrigue me with their
plots and character work, are routinely eviscerated by critics whose
work I like and respect.
This
isn't to say I'm right and they're wrong, or to claim that history
will vindicate The
Newsroom. There's a
perfectly reasonable chance that, soon after the show comes to an
end, we'll all view it as the ridiculous nonsense its critics argue
it is. But even if my own oft-expressed admiration for Sorkin's past
work biases me to an extent that I can't see the reality in front of
me, the fact remains that I'm frequently baffled by what I read from
TV critics.
I
don't mean to say that the show's critics have no substantive
complaints with the show; they do, revolving around issues of gender
and race, characterization, plotting and the insufferability of just
about every main character.
I
find some of these complaints dramatically overstated (Dev Patel's
Neal, for example, is not nearly the fool the show's critics accuse
Sorkin of portraying him as), some of them reasonable (the complaints
over gender) and some of them incomplete (the characters are quite insufferable, but they're also called on it frequently and
suffer consequences for their arrogance).
Still,
my differences with most observers over The
Newsroom go beyond
differences of opinion regarding specific characters and plot points.
In fact, this gulf is, to my mind, remarkably illustrative of an
important philosophical difference between the way I watch TV and the
ways most critics do. It is a clash of approaches that not only goes
a long way toward explaining how I can truly enjoy The
Newsroom while so many
dislike the show, it also says much about the elevated location in
which I place Sorkin in my personal pantheon of great artists,
certainly as compared to those who actually think and write about TV
for a living.
Because
it seems apparent that Sorkin's stock with TV critics is at the
lowest point it has ever been. Certainly, Sorkin's reputation has
fallen dramatically since his earliest ventures into television;
SportsNight was a critical darling, if a commercial flop, while The
West Wing was critically praised, commercially successful and
showered with awards.
Much
of this decline in the critical evaluation of Sorkin's work can fairly
be attributed to an actual decline in Sorkin's work; Studio
60 on the Sunset Strip,
while often castigated with a passion that far exceeds what is
justified by the show's sins, was too-often a mess, and The
Newsroom, while far
better than Studio 60,
is certainly a lesser work, albeit one I greatly enjoy.
But
even broader portraits of Sorkin, ones that take into account the
earlier two shows, are often not kind to him. Watching an Aaron
Sorkin drama is often looked at as the television equivalent of
eating whipped cream straight from the aerosol canister; fun, and not
without its many pleasures, but ultimately an empty experience, one
that should be replaced with a far heartier diet.
That
Sports Night and The West Wing weren't initially regarded in such a
fashion is where the nub of the issue lies. What has changed since
those shows debuted (1998 for Sports Night, 1999 for The
West Wing) is the landscape of television, and what we view as
quality TV drama.
Since
The West Wing had its heyday, we've seen the complete (or
near-complete) runs of many shows that are cited in arguments that we
live in a new Golden Age of television. That list includes The
Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Rome, Breaking Bad, Mad Men
and more.
These
shows set standards for unique and skillful storytelling. And all had
at their centers complex, difficult protagonists, men who weren't
just tempted by their worst demons, but often sought them out. These
were torn and tormented characters, and their internal dramas were
often even more compelling than the events swirling around them.
For
critics who have come of age with this dynamic, Sorkin's work, even
previously well-regarded programs like The West Wing, can't help but
retrospectively suffer. It is an anti-heroic age, and Aaron Sorkin
keeps writing heroes.
Compared
to Al Swearengen, Don Draper, Tony Soprano and Walter White, Jed
Bartlett, to many critics, will always look quaint, at best, and
hilariously simplistic at worst.
We
all value different things in our entertainment. When it comes to
television, some people like great acting performances. Others prefer
production values or atmosphere. Like most of those who think and
write too much about television, my biases are for writing.
Where
I differ from many in this bias is how I define “writing.”
Quality television writing is often defined by skillful character
work, or vibrant world-building or intricate, well-structured plots
and narratives.
I'm
in favor of all those things, of course. No one is against them.
But
what I value, what I most hold dear in the TV I consume, is language
itself. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, I have a
word-centric view of writing. And this explains much, if not all, of
my regard for Sorkin; the star of a Sorkin drama isn't Martin Sheen
or Peter Krause or Jeff Daniels, it's Sorkin's words. This bothers
many who believe Sorkin's writing is obnoxiously insisting upon your
attention and utterly unrealistic. By contrast, it has always
captured me.
To
demonstrate exactly how this differs from many of the critics I quite
respect, it is illuminating to look at a review of The
Newsroom's season
premiere. The review, written by Todd VanDerWerff of The AV Club,
nods at a few areas of praise, but generally falls on the scathing
side; at one point VanDerWerff says the show is “beautiful poison.”
At
the end of the review, in a section for miscellaneous notes,
VanDerWerff says, “Sorkin
still has a way with words, and there are passages of dialogue here
that are mesmerizing in their structure and rhythm. I just wish they
had something to say beyond, 'Agree with me! I am right!'”
Put
another way, in a review evaluating the quality of an episode's
writing, VanDerWerff believes “a way with words” is so
unimportant as to merit a dismissive, dashed off note.
The
AV Club obviously isn't an entirely representative entity; it has a
particular style and set of preferences. And Sorkin is about as
popular as chlamydia with the site's readership and commentariat
(what's the difference between chlamydia and an Aaron Sorkin
monologue? With the right medication chlamydia will eventually end).
But the site is a respected and valuable resource, not to mention one
of my favorite on the Internet.
And
I don't single out this review and this reviewer for any special
opprobrium. VanDerWerff is a prolific, passionate critic whose
insights on television are to be greatly valued. Instead, I note it
simply because the attitude expressed in that one line is quite
emblematic of the dynamic I identified earlier.
Even
Sorkin's sharpest critics acknowledge his skill as a writer; that is
to say, they acknowledge his skill as a crafter of prose and
dialogue. But for those who dislike The Newsroom and dismiss The West
Wing, Sorkin's snappy dialogue, clever phrasing, well-crafted jokes
and eloquent speeches are something akin to a bowl of chocolate
sprinkles. It's all fine as accents, as something used to bring out
deeper, more important and substantive stuff, but consumed on their own they're just meaningless.
And
that's where I part company. Those words of Sorkin's, those
wonderful, forceful words, are worth the watching themselves. When we
argue that the beauty of the prose is largely irrelevant compared to
the depths of the characters or the subtlety of thematic
developments, we lose sight of a crucial element of great art.
Two
comparisons always come to mind when considering this point; one
reasonable, the other ridiculous.
Shakespeare
is the more reasonable comparison, which should demonstrate exactly
how ridiculous the other is. It is true that there is much to love in
Shakespeare beyond the beauty of the words. Certain plays have
excellent character work; the title character and his wife in
MacBeth, for
instance, and Hamlet's internal torment. And some of these plays have
crisp, tense, dramatically stuffed plots; again, MacBeth
is an excellent example.
But
it's long been recognized that the plots of Shakespeare's plays,
where not taken straight from history or stolen wholesale from other,
long-forgotten works, often rely on absurd coincidences and
unrealistic behavior patterns. And for every great character in
Shakespearean drama there is a villain who will turn to the audience
and say, “I'm evil because I like being evil.”
And
yet...and yet little of this matters. Shakespeare's words echo across
time and oceans because of their beauty and eloquence, because of
their ingenuity and wit. It's hardly an issue that these words are
often put in the mouths of stock characters and used in the service
of propelling forward ridiculous plots.
Speaking
of ridiculous, that other comparison....let me acknowledge here that
this is an absurd attempt to bring in a vastly different kind of work
in a vastly different medium. However, when thinking of Sorkin's
writing and how it affects me, I can't help but consider
Michelangelo's justly beloved David.
There
is little sense in looking at the David that one is looking at an
actual human being; the head, hands and feet are all
disproportionately massive, and the sculpture boasts Michelangelo's
usual unrealistic musculature. In fact, “the David: the actual
human body::Sorkin dialogue:actual human dialogue” isn't a bad
little analogy.
There's
also little attempt in the sculpture to identify the man as David
himself. Oh, he's holding a slingshot, but it's not prominently
displayed, and if you removed it from the sculpture few would notice
or complain (but try and use a chisel to prove this theory and the
Italian police get so
worked up...). As such, there's no story in the sculpture, no
narrative or conflict, as we can't really draw on our established
memories of the David and Goliath battle.
To
look at the David, then, is to stare at a grossly unrealistic
portrayal of a human being doing nothing. And yet we understand when
we look at him that we are engaged in something sublime and amazing;
it is an atheist feeling as if he is in the presence of the divine.
A
man carved from cold stone a figure of such power and beauty as to
survive the centuries. The David is nothing but beauty for beauty's
sake, artistic power that serves no greater purpose than to remind us
of what human hands are capable of. And we adore it, and rightly so.
It's
what I think of when I watch an Aaron Sorkin drama. Critics listen to
the grandiloquent speeches his characters deliver and find them
unrealistic and unnecessary; they hear the patter of the dialogue and
complain of the way it undermines characters. They observe the jokes,
recognize the skill involved in their crafting, and dismiss them as
irrelevant asides that deserve little consideration in evaluating the
work as a whole.
That
is fine and fair. We all have our preferences in art. We all have our
priorities. This is not and never can be a question of right or
wrong.
But
I see the same speeches and I hear the same dialogue and I observe
the same jokes, and I am struck by the eloquence and power of the
words involved. It is all a reminder of the heights to which our
prose can travel, and like the David, it is a reminder of what we are
capable of. When a Sorkin line is deployed in service of inspiration,
it is inspiring. When it is deployed in the service of humor, it
makes me laugh, which is, perhaps, an even greater accomplishment.
Language
has value, considered on its own. Words have value, considered on
their own. And Aaron Sorkin's words do more for my enjoyment of
television than most deep, tormented characters and well-structured,
well-crafted plots.
Take,
to use the most famous example, the scene below from The West Wing's
extraordinary season two finale, “Two Cathederals"; it is my favorite scene in my favorite hour of television:
When
evaluated by the standard of basic human behavior, this is patently
absurd. There is no recognizable human being, no matter how eloquent
or educated or erudite, who would curse God in Latin in the National
Cathedral. If word leaked out that Barack Obama used a dead language
in the National Cathedral to castigate God, the House Judiciary Committee would convene a hearing to discuss the question of whether the President was the anti-Christ.
And
yet there is something exceptionally powerful and moving about this
scene, even going beyond Martin Shen's bravura performance. We are
carried past disbelief at the unrealistic behavior by the power of
Sorkin's prose.
Bizarrely,
I sometimes think about how the cathedral scene would be played if it
was handled in the style of The
Americans,
FX's outstanding, critically acclaimed show about Soviet spies living
in an American suburb.
The
Americans
is very much about all the words left unsaid, the speeches unspoken,
the emotions unexpressed (until Margo Martindale and Keri Russell sit
in a car together, in which case “on the nose” is the order of
the day).
This
is a recipe for much critical praise, and quite a lot of it is
justified. So, obviously, The
Americans'
version of the cathedral scene doesn't involve Jed Bartlett
monologuing in Latin. It probably revolves around Martin Sheen
stubbing out the cigarette on the floor of the National Cathedral,
then sitting in tense silence for 30 seconds while he considers the
implications of his decision.
That
would undoubtedly be more “realistic” and more believable, and it
would offer a great deal of character insight while moving the plot
forward in a much more subtle way, calling back to an earlier
flashback where a younger Jed had talked with his father about
putting out cigarettes on a church floor.
But
what that version of the scene gains in realism, believability and
subtlety it loses in power and beauty. It loses that element of the
spectacular, the conspicuous ambition for grandeur that, in Sorkin's
hands, is as moving as it is out of style.
This
is not to say that The
West Wing,
for instance, is just quips and eloquence. There is plenty of
exceptional character work and well-tuned narrative drama in that
show, which is why it's an all-time great program. By contrast, The
Newsroom
leans heavily on the strength of Sorkin's dialogue and his humor; it
entertains consistently, but rarely reaches great heights (season
one's “Amen” perhaps coming closest to those levels).
