Second Chance?

So I did it. I went back and watched the rest of this series called The Newsroom, created by Aaron Sorkin. Resuming my mixed feelings of frustration and wonder, at the end, I am really surprised with myself because of the way I found the reasons’ so vividly to this series’ annoyance, because, really, I find it to be incredibly annoying. This show focus mainly on these three sides, I guess: news broadcasting and politics and on the other hand romantic causes/issues. My inclination and later annoyance it is with these characters’ way of communicating but this situations cause necessarily a huge hole, a sick hole in the entire conflicts on the day to day lives of them and ultimately of the show. Plus, I never came across with such an incredibly annoying hero of a character. So, “Oh my god, it still sucks’ were my thoughts.

Because no, Aaron Sorkin didn’t want to write an almighty character in Will McAvoy, he wanted to write someone above God, a man better than God, and you know what I mean by God. There’s nothing that he do or might not do that will in any way diminish his intelligence, his righteousness, his powerfulness, his almighty influence. He is god. You see it in this episode when one of his co-workers is almost beat to death in Cairo, when other of his journalists is kidnapped and his life is also threatened, Will McAvoy still is the hero and why? Because he’s the one who gives the money so that the young journalist is released; really he had to sacrifice a lot, really a lot. No he didn’t have to sacrifice anything because he’s rich. Still, Will co-workers all gathered around and give checks to him and clap their hands like he was the hero, like he was the guy assaulted or kidnapped. And this goes on and on.

Which on the other hand, there’s nothing that women do that might sometime stop their diminishing actions. The writer humiliates them and it’s just hard to watch. Take Olivia Munn, for example. I actually suffer every time she’s in a scene because her character is demeaning; Sorkin diminishes her character in ways it’s just hard to swallow. In her first scene, she’s supposed to come as an independent, confident and competent worker but that’s not in any way what he represents. Instead, Sloan Sabbith becomes for the most part of the scenes this really superficial and unreal caricature of a woman. He shows her womanly ways, in the way her male and female co-workers come to ask her advice on relationships. The way she doesn’t want to substitute someone as an anchor but once someone tells her she can wear Gucci she immediately changes her mind and finally as with yet another complicated missed shot on a romantic link, but I don’t think this is even the negative part. The negative part it’s the way she sticks to Will, no matter what.

The all Maggie and Jim situation is ridiculous, it was a constant back and forth situation through the entire season and what happened at the end is it stayed the same. And Maggie, oh Maggie, it's like her head is  simply hollow. Maybe some characters aren't just credible enough. Should I even begin to mention McKenzie McHale? I wonder how Emily Mortimer must feel representing a character that is constantly humiliated by her efforts. She screams and yells and the end Sorkin turns her into this hopeless distracted kind of woman. Like all she knows is to shout. 

(*not this one...)

People have flaws*, oh so many flaws. Sometimes even the most evil flaws are accepted in film because there’s an interesting and reasonable background, three dimensional developed characters and other times it’s just plain acceptable. But this writer fails with his conflicts. Because it lacks tolerance, it lacks humanity. Most of the time, these men and women don’t sound natural, maybe only with some exceptions from the broadcasting scenes. I wonder if my frustration is somehow exaggerated, given that this story is so rich in research. It is clear that this show has a tremendous work on that level and it has surely a tremendous will to show different sides of politics. But it just fails on levels that are hard to cope with the show, as a whole. At the end, I kept watching this show not because of Olivia Munn but because it challenges myself.

But still, these are my emotions - or my head - when I am watching scenes from this series, or any scene with Sloan, for example this one above.