Why? Because there are no hot chicks w/ graduate economics degrees that would realize this was about to be a huge issue? Or because you think what to do with the debt ceiling wasn't in play during the 2010 election? (It was.)

There are plenty of things to criticize about the show, but this doesn't come close to making the cut.

I remember lawerence odonnell asking about the debt season on election night.

I mean, not in the sense that everything he touches turns to gold, but he's a huge name in a field that doesn't have a lot of huge names.

Finally, a show about intellectual liberals not afraid to take on conservative media and society. Refreshingly new viewpoint on the world that HBO had the courage to put out. Much like the brave liberals who take to the streets and create anarchy when Israel or the U.S. are accused of human rights violations! Those courageous human rights activists who mysteriously are M.I.A when actual barbaric countries like Syria and Iran butcher entire cities. Courage! And here we have a newsman not afraid to call out American deficencies and the courage (I don't use that word lightly) to tread on new territory like anti-tea party sentiments.
I for one am proud that this kind of groundbreaking T.V. can be produced and hopefully HBO and even showtime can put out some more liberallly leaning shows.

Bravo! Bravi! Brava!

Same here.

A lot of good things last night. I think the show is doing something interesting re: the metaphorical parallel between politics (we're more polarized than ever) and relationships (we need to compromise to make them work, but fail at that) but it's still in the larval stage.

I also thought Jane Fonda was awesome. Nice bit of casting (she was married to CNN prez Ted Turner) and her performance was really strong. Gallagher continues to be super likable, and even technically -- music, editing, etc. -- the show was on point in ep 3. Can't wait to see how the season develops.

Am I the only one who liked the actual show part of episode 2?

I thought they had a good opportunity for comedy during the trainwreck segment, but the gun nut and the beauty pageant queen and the other guy were too over-the-top stupid and that made it kind of lame.

How is this going to go 2 seasons? What is there to develop? Also, we skipped 2 years from eps 2-3. Maybe this show will get interesting when it catches up to real time and they start actually messing up news coverage because theres no fully developed hindsight yet.

I did enjoy Will's apology to start the episode, but I can see it being too self-important for some.

The Social Network and Moneyball are two of the most praised films of the last few years.

This

Also, given the amount of good drama that is on tv now it'd easy to forget how revolutionary TWW was. I think he'd have lived off that for the rest of his career even without the movie successes.

I'm in for the season. No question about that. No matter how bad it gets. But it's gonna be a bumpy ride. I think I read somewhere that the 2nd half of the season will get fairly intense (at least as much as this show's world will allow) so this show still has a chance to suck me in. But I'm starting to think that the "intense" stuff will all be their personal issues since it cant really get that intense politically. If thats the case, then this show can suck me off instead.

this was an even bigger problem in ep.3, and it's a big problem with the show. west wing was liberal masturbation, but at least it had smart characters making points on the other side of issues. this show just has will educating dumbasses on basic facts as they smile at him.

this is getting bad. and i'm finding it harder to disagree with nath et al. about sorkin's women characters after the stupidity shown this week.

Jane Fonda was the most powerful, put-together, smartest character in the series so far.

I actually thought about this and wondered if instead of using cable news as the setting, they used something like the daily show / colbert instead. That way Sorkin could still be heavy handed in the liberal propaganda, and it could be a much more interesting setting. Turn it into a 30 minute show to get rid of the relationship filler and then you have a good show about the news and its failures.

And will stay that way until such time as she becomes aware Ted Turner is dating a younger woman. She also had about 8 lines.

Again, the issue isn't that Sorkin writes women as idiots. It's that he writes presumably strong women who consistently turn into idiots when things go wrong in their personal lives.

But how could he possibly make his points better than those shows do already? You'd end up with a half-assed Daily Show combined with behind the scenes and relationship crap we all agree we just don't care about.

For as much as I take issue with the show- this isn't fair. This isn't liberal propaganda. It's liberal something, but propaganda probably isn't the right word for it.

right, my reference to "stupidity" was about how mackenzie and maggie both were shown as quivering wrecks, the latter of which needed to be saved by the associate producer/army medic.

my point about will beating up on morons on-screen is not changed by fonda's character, who is never shown defending the other side of any of the issues.

For it not to be propaganda you'll have to prove that Sorkin isn't trying to influence his audience politically which I think you'll have a hard time doing. I understand that propaganda has extremely negative connotations in our society but it seems to me like the perfect word for it and I say that as someone with the same political leanings as Sorkin.

He won a screenwriting Oscar for The Social Network and also wrote the quite successful Moneyball and Charlie Wilson's War. I don't think HBO would have given him a series after the Studio 60 fiasco if he hadn't been doing good work in the meantime.

I didn't realize he did moneyball. Dude should stick to movies.

halfway through ep 3 and I'm not sure I'll even finish it.

The main problem with this show is that it uses real life events as its news stories. It completely undercuts Newsnight's stated purpose of being a responsible news show because Sorkin doesn't have time (or doesn't want) to portray these snippets from history in anything more than a reductive, sanctimonious light.

In other words, because our history and the show's history are the same, Newsroom has basically become meta-Newsnight. And because Newsroom still has to cater to dramatic considerations while providing a critical analyses of the last 2 years of news, it stretches itself too thin even if it wanted to be Newsnight.

I mean, maybe its theoretically possible for the show to succeed like this, but I think either Sorkin simply wants to have it both ways, or is too lazy to do it properly. He laments the disappearance of responsible journalism while disrespecting its very spirit to score cheap political points.

I got a bit of a Leo flashback towards the end of that post

Is it a coincidence that each of these is a true story about real people? IMO, Sorkin really struggles to create fully fleshed out characters on his own. When he is given defined characters to work with, he does stellar work. When he has to do it himself he relies on sterotypes, generalities and his own set of archetypes. Thus, we get The Newsroom.

TWW, The american President, AFew Good Men