The Newsroom (2012–2014)

Aaron Sorkin has made his TV show again

Welcome back to February’s instalment of this ongoing and remarkably long series, in which we re-watch the complete works of Aaron Sorkin in timeline order. (You can find earlier entries here.)

One thing we’re beginning to understand about Sorkin is that he is incredibly inconsistent. He is equally capable of brilliance and blah, transcendence and toss, perfection and poopypants. So, as Aaron would say: what kind of a month has it been?

It’s been the kind of month that makes us question not only the worth of this enterprise but also the meanings of words, the directionality of time, and everything in our lives that led us to this point.

Anyway, let’s get this over with.

The Newsroom is about a team of TV news journalists working on a nightly news/magazine show. It was more successful than Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, but that’s not saying much. Each of its three seasons had fewer episodes and viewers than the one before.

As is the way with these shows in the US, the fictional show - called News Night — is highly editorialised and revolves around a blowhard anchor who hands down his personal opinions on tablets of stone. To Brits (and probably to most Europeans) these American news anchors seem to suffer from an absurd misunderstanding of their own significance, like a suburban Hohenzollern or a PE teacher. Sorkin, though, wants us to take their importance as read; the opening title sequence is a tasteful paean to Walter Cronkite and all those other American mid-century news-reading guys.

Sorkin, who exerted an iron control over a small writers’ room, used real news stories within his scripts. News Night’s fictional and deeply revisionist ‘coverage’ of big and often tragic events (such as the Boston Marathon bombing, the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the 2012 presidential election) is presented as being better, stronger and more courageous than the coverage that was produced in real life. Unsurprisingly, this infuriated every single person working in news journalism in the US. Well, we say ‘unsurprisingly’; Sorkin was surprised by it – which is a measure of how odd he is, frankly – and later said he regretted it.

---

At the beginning of The Newsroom, the News Night anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) decides that everything is going to change. He no longer wants to sit in the big boy chair spouting pabulum and reading corporate press releases and giving politicians an easy ride. (This rather raises the question of why he’d been doing all of that in the first place, but whatever.) McAvoy resolves that he’s going to re-set News Night by simply – and you’re going to want to sit down for this, because it’s going to blow your mind – telling the truth and doing journalism.

His resolution is tested by scheming network execs, uncomprehending viewers, and most of all by the hiring of his complicated ex (Emily Mortimer) as producer. Supported by a superannuated executive gnome (Sam Waterson being weird) and a newsroom full of highly photogenic production staff, can News Night overcome the odds and make America righteous again?

Muuuuuum! Aaron Sorkin has made his TV show again!

So here’s an admission. This time, we didn’t watch all of Aaron Sorkin’s TV show. We’ve watched it once (The West Wing); we’ve watched it twice (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip); but The Newsroom proved a show too far. Third time unlucky. We watched all of season one, skipped season two, got three episodes into season three, and bailed. So maybe the last three episodes were great! But we wouldn’t put any money on it. Any money at all.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip begins with the aging show runner having an on-air screaming fit. The Newsroom begins with anchorman Jeff Daniels yelling at a lecture theatre full of cowed teenagers. Both are blatant rip-offs of Network (1976), in which newsreader Howard Beale has a meltdown on air, railing against contemporary media and morals. In all three, the self-righteous tantrum turns the successful rich guy into an even bigger star. Because who doesn’t enjoy it when an ill-disciplined, powerful man loses his temper? Everyone loves that shit!

Network, however, is a dark satire; it ends with Beale being assassinated for ratings. The Newsroom is… not a satire. (Sorkin is capable of being satirical, but only about things such as ‘young people’ and ‘the internet’.) His ranting Boomer guys are intended to be inspiring, like a black-and-white photo of The Beatles on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

The Newsroom asks viewers to believe that a studio full of journalists will be inspired to new professional heights by angry dad McAvoy and his emotionally incontinent producer, MacKenzie McHale (Mortimer). (Who on Earth is called MacKenzie McHale? It sounds like pleurisy.) And maybe there is a universe in which we could have gone along with that premise. But in this universe, The Newsroom’s defects prove insurmountable.