On Newsroom

Last week, Aaron Sorkin's Newsroom aired the final episode of its final season, season 3 to be precise. What started as perhaps the best openings of any TV series ever, Newsroom's ratings plummeted with every season. Newsroom had it all - support from HBO meant complete freedom, a talented cast except with couple of minor hiccups, a subject matter that deserves attention and fresh treatment and most important, Aaron Sorkin at its helm. Yet, even with all of this, something was always amiss.

The first season of Newsroom was quite creative as it showed real life incidents being covered live by a news channel. With the power of hindsight, Newsroom was able to poke holes in the coverage of the present news channels such as Fox or CNN and at the same time, it tried to project how an ideal coverage would look like. It would have been a great season had it not been the unnecessary romantic sub-plots infused into the media story line. More than 50% of key newsroom characters are in a relationship with another main character. Any time spent in going into their personal lives was a drag.

Not everybody liked the fact that Newsroom was covering actual issues. I am not sure with how much seriousness Sorkin takes the fan reaction, nevertheless, the second season was completely fictional. Newsroom's fictitious channel is in the middle of airing a fake story regarding US defense. The show deconstructed how a story is manufactured at such a grandiose level and what are the  repercussions of airing a fake story.

Season third consisted only of six episodes and has no major arc whatsoever. There is a small arc with Neal gets access to some highly confidential Govt. documents and rest of the series mainly talk about issues regarding source protection.  The final episode has a big flashback component and it was put in there because Sorkin wanted to write it in to give the show a background.  The background in no meaningful way compliments the finality of the episode.


The fundamental problem with Newsroom is its sub-plots and side characters. A lot of criticism comes because Sorkin's dialogues are actually monologue rants between two individuals who tend to disagree. Even when there is no disagreement, there is still a monologue rant. I agree with the charge but I disagree that this is the issue with the Newsroom. Newsroom suffers because it fails to put these rants in the right context of things. The rant-ing characters are only utilized to air these rants. Most non-rantish discussions are related to office romance which nobody cares about for the most part.


Maggie is one of the most awful and frustrating character in the entire series. It is not because of the actor's acting but just how the character is defined. She is emotionally vulnerable yet emotionally strong, and she goes into these extremes every other episode. It is impossible to empathize with her. Other side characters are not developed enough and suddenly are given enough screen time to make us like them but it rarely works that way.

The other charge against Newsroom is its pushed-down-to-throat idealism. It is preachy, like a self help book, rather than based on observations and experiences. No-one likes to read a self help book.  This type of thing worked on West Wing because it was a point of view from a democratic government standpoint and there were enough contrast points to add richer flavors to the argument. In comparison, Newsroom has its own point of view which is the only one and it is right as well. Newsroom appears smug in many conversations and hence the audience fallout.


The problem with Newsroom began when even loyal fans of Sorkin failed to defend him. The failure of this show lies entirely in the treatment of the subject matter and nothing else. But, it was okayish entertainment overall but in patches, it was magical. This fan will wait for another Sorkin series, atleast he is trying to raise the level of programming.