I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.
I will not say goodbye to the Newsroom.
…okay, I will, but only because I am forced to. Please note that this is under great duress.
So this show has easily been my favourite among recent years and will go down as one I treasure along with Aaron Sorkin’s other writing. A great show consists of believable characters you fall in love with who then grow and change; a script and plot that are captivating and make sense because if everybody is scratching their head trying to figure out what the hell happened and why it did so your audience is not really enjoying themselves; a flow and pacing that prevents boredom.
An amazing show goes beyond that. An amazing show leaves an impact on its audience well after it ends, it imparts a message or meaning that its audience carries with them – that they will mentally flashback to when it is relevant in their life.
A remarkable television show makes its audience want to be better.
The Newsroom is both an amazing and a remarkable television show.
It starts with a fleet of characters, who over time manage to melt your heart and make you genuinely care what happens to them. I have literally ranted about what happened at the end of Newsroom episode 5 of season 3, “Oh Shenandoah”. From the beginning, several are easy to like: Mack’s earnest enthusiasm, Jim is awkward but dedicated, Will is gruff but entertaining, Neil is hilariously neglected and eager to contribute to more than Will’s blog; Maggie believes in loyalty, Charlie is drunk and instantly loveable and Sloane is a brilliant financial mind with no social skills.
(gif from indiewire via google images)
Others it takes longer to like: Leona Lansing is cold but at least makes a few jokes; Reese Lansing is a snivelling weasel; Don Keefer seems overly ambitious and gossip columnist Nina Howard initially lacks any moral base. But slowly, Sorkin and his team give nearly every character well rounded personalities so the audience can sympathize with each and every one of them. Leona and Reese rise up to take the higher moral ground after the Genoa scandal; Don proves he upholds the same ideals of journalism that Will, Mackenzie and Charlie champion.
Add in a snappy dialogue that rotates through heartwarming, heart wrenching, charming and funny. Include a well selected soundtrack and a fascinating plot and you’ve got a great show.
But here’s where Sorkin kicks it up a notch: on a show about a newsroom, he decided to use real world news events. He uses the BP oil spill, the shooting of Senator Kathy Gifford, Obama’s second election, the trial of Casey Anthony, the Boston Marathon bombings, and other now historic events that were covered by various news outlets. So much research and time was put into ensuring the accuracy of the events on the show that writing the scripts and shooting the episodes were delayed waiting for news events that hadn’t happened yet. This prevented the Newsroom from airing seasons on a regulated schedule like other shows. Season one started in June 2012 covering events from April 2010 to August 2011; season two in July 2014 featuring events from August 2011 to November 2012 and season three began airing in November 2014 and starts from the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013. The Genoa plot of season two was not in itself factual but was based on the events of Operation Tailwind which was falsely reported as having used sarin nerve gas in a CNN/Time report. Peter Arnett and the producers involved in the report were fired.
So we have these great characters that are easy to care about and a television show doing something unprecedented. Excellent first steps.
It’s easy for the audience to draw parallels from their own lives to those of the characters. Many people have been cheated on or have cheated on someone. More than that – everyone has wronged someone or been wronged. Watching Mack wait for forgiveness and Will struggle with being unable to let go shows something everyone experiences at one point or another. It pushes the viewer towards introspection – to question who they have not forgiven or who has not forgiven them and why. It encourages everyone to look at the motives of what people do.
On its simplest and most basic levels, The Newsroom encourages its audience to follow current news events or even research past ones that it covers. I myself have researched more about the Oppose Wall Street simply because of the way it was presented on the show. An informed public is an empowered public.
But like before, Sorkin takes it further. Not only has the Newsroom passed its love of current events to its audience but it has somehow along the way instilled its ideals in the people watching: it presents cunning and common sense arguments in favour of feminism, from Maggie’s speech about how there is nothing wrong with openly liking sex to rape-victim-turned-justice seeker Mary’s spot-on rant about treatment of rape victims.
(gif from ‘We just decided to‘ on tumblr)
Will’s famous “mission to civilize” to restore integrity back to journalism instills a wistful longing to see it mirrored in the real world: a moment against gossip and ‘take-down pieces’ and a resurgence of honest relevant journalism. It probably won’t happen – fiction influencing relating is extremely rare – but if it instills even a little quixotic idealism in its viewers it has succeeded on a level that few even aspire to.
The beauty of the Newsroom is in its vision: to go beyond the television screen, to be more than entertainment. To encourage and inspire an audience to better themselves through information and intellectual debate. It refuses to target the lowest common denominator and encourages people to reject mindless television in favour of entertainment that engages the thoughts and emotions of its audience. The Newsroom, clearly a display of Sorkin’s evolution from Sports Night and the West Wing, is his crowning masterpiece. I salute you, Aaron Sorkin, and thank you for a television show that will forever be one of my favourites. It’s only true fault? Having only 25 episodes.
(gif from f***yeahthenewsroom on tumblr)
tvaddictress 