The Newsroom's Still Overrated But Two Stories In Season Two Showed What It Was Capable Of

 

 

In one of those events of kismet less than a month after I ranked HBO’s The Newsroom as one of the most overrated series in TV history one of its networks reran the entire series multiple times, no doubt in correlation with this year’s elections. I had a chance to see several episodes of the series for the first time in many years.

My original thesis holds true. I acknowledge that it’s not quite as terrible as I made it sound in my first review but the ranking it has on imdb.com is ludicrously high. It’s worth reminded readers that the metric is aligned more towards series during the 21^st century then any that have come in the previous one, that it ranks limited series in the same way it does shows that have longer runs and that by this method series that have fewer episodes such as The Newsroom would by definition rank higher than ER or Law & Order. But even allowing for all of this, the fact that the show ranks around the same level as Boardwalk Empire and Justified and slightly ahead of Mr. Robot is another reason why it is fundamentally faulty. All of these series were contemporaries of The Newsroom (or in the case of Mr. Robot began their run immediately afterwards) and no critic worth his salt would say The Newsroom deserves to share the same breath as any of these three dramas much less The Good Wife or Homeland.

Indeed having seen the series over the last couple of weeks I’m actually more disappointed by the show then I was before when I learned who some of its regulars were. Here is David Harbour, in what would be his most famous role before he started playing Roy Harper on Stranger Things as Elliot. Here is Chris Chalk who is one of the most brilliant character actors in recent years (I loved him as Perry Mason) who bares the misfortune of being named Gary Cooper. Here’s Salli Richardson-Whitfield prior to doing work on a different time of television on The Morning Show. And those are just the semi-regulars. In guest roles that take over much of the length of the series are Chris Messina, Hope Davis, Grace Gummer (yes, one of Meryl’s children) Marcia Gay Harden and Terry Crews. All of them are among my favorite performers of the last decade on TV (and in some cases before) all of them are saying Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue and all of them are being horribly wasted.

What makes it all the more frustrating, after seeing much of the series, is that there are so many times when the show almost works and you can see the vision Sorkin had in mind. This is particularly true during the second season which for much of its run does seem to have the potential of what Sorkin was driving at when he created the series. It is two major storylines – one drawn directly from contemporary events, one based on them – that what Sorkin was trying to get comes through clearer than it has at any point in the series.

I intend to focus on those two storylines mainly because of the parallels it has to today’s political issues which I’ve discussed to an extent before and no doubt will again. In many cases they work because they are the kind of sweet spot Sorkin found both in The West Wing and so many of the movies he had made before and since. But the reason that I still consider the show overrated is because so much of it shows Sorkin at his absolute worst on The Newsroom as well as so many of its other flaws.

It's clear that ever the first season Sorkin chose to redirect his energy in a different format. The first season had been entirely episodic with only a minor plotline running beneath it; the second season has from start to finish an underlying storyline that has embroiled the news division. Sorkin continues to focus on some of the minor plot points he did before but he is no longer making the frequently heavy-handed points that drove the first season the center of every episode. Sorkin seems to have remembered that subtlety works better. There’s also a clear contrast between the first season and the second. In the first season Will and the news division were focused extensively on how the Tea Party and the conservative movement was destroying so much of the politics. There’s still a focus on that in Season 2 – Jim spends half the season following the Romney campaign and its flaws – but the majority of the season deals with what would be considered the worst aspects of what was coming to be called progressivism and how its disenchantment during the Obama administration has equally contributed to the fall of discourse during the 2010s.

The direct storyline that deals with this is when Neal (Dev Patel) learns from an email that he believes might me ‘America’s Arab Spring’. Mac (Emily Mortimer) thinks very little of the idea of Occupy Wall Street but by now Neal is a trusted member of the team and she allows him to go and chase it. From the moment he gets there its clear that the movement is already beginning to trip over its own feet the head of it a teacher named Shelly Wexler (Aya Cash, for those of you who are fans of The Boys) in a way that has the worst elements of a student movement. She makes it clear that the press isn’t welcome.

Neal keeps trailing her and learns she was a leader at the WTO protests in Seattle.  Neal continues to learn what the movement is becoming and he quickly becomes alarmed at how much its beginning to spiral. One of the demands is the passage of a constitutional amendment that will overturn Citizens United. “You’re going to stay here until ¾ of all 50 states pass this amendment?” Neal points out. Shelly spends the entire conversation lecturing Neal in a heavy-handed manner that the viewer knows is meant to make us show the oblivious nature of the left. We’ve seen just how hard CAN has been working to make an objective and new approach to the news for the past season and how much they’ve had the suffer because of it. In the eyes of Shelly, just like so many leftists, this is meaningless because they are not covering the stories that they want them to cover. That Neal points out this movement – which he wants to succeed – can’t work without leadership or the press and that Shelly rejects it outright shows the divide between the left and the press in a subtler way that Sorkin did with the conservative divide last year.

By the second episode the movement is in full swing and AWN is covering it. Neal is seen there and is arrested while the cameras are rolling. Will goes to have the arrest voided and is infuriated with what happens, more because of his own issues than what he’s actually seen.

In October Shelly agrees to sit down with Will for an interview. In Will’s interview he comes across as smug, though hearing Shelly during this interview she comes across frequently as clueless. At one point Will asks her when do you see this movement ended and Shelly tells him that she doesn’t ever see it ending, even when it brings about the goals. When Will points out they expect to do this without political power, she tells him: “Change comes when it comes.”  When he asks her what the point of the movement is, she tells him: “To draw attention to it.” Will says: “I’m pretty sure that’s already happened.”

At the end of the interview Shelly is furious – at Neil. She claims she was humiliated and demands an apology from Will. When Neal tells her that she tanked Shelly punches him in the stomach. Will is fine with what happened but Mac wants him to apologize because she was the lead to a tip on a major story (more later). Will refuses. Both Sloan and then Don go to talk Shelly in his place, in both cases she refers to them as elitist and out of touch, and in both cases they are remarkably patient before they each tell her to go fuck herself.

At the end of the episode Will goes to her class. He tells her he has no intention of apologizing. When she tells him you made my movement look ridiculous, he is blunt:

Your movement is ridiculous. The abolition of slavery, civil rights, Vietnam, they all only worked with the political capital behind them. Last night there was Republican debate and not one of the eight contending candidates mentioned Occupy Wall Street.

Will does apologize for his tone: “I beat you up to shore up my credentials as a moderate and for that I’m sorry.” Of course by that point he has made it clear they’ve already found who they were looking for without Shelly’s help.

Sorkin has spent much of his career on The West Wing beating up the far left as he has the far right. The storyline here illustrates with great credibility how good Sorkin can be when he needs to. The final interaction – when Will asks if he can audit her class for the last few minutes – shows the willingness to have a dialogue which is equally key to Sorkin.

The overarching storyline of Season 2 involves what is called ‘Operation Genoa’. It’s led by a new character Jerry Dantana (Hamish Linklater in one of his better roles). Jerry has been called up with Jim left to go to the Romney campaign (I’ll explain why later) and he ends up having a conversation with a guest star about a story that ‘wins awards and brings down Presidents”. Jerry is reluctant to pursue it – he knows the guy’s been struggling – but he ends up doing so.

Jerry eventually brings in Mac to look at Operation Genoa, a rescue mission in Afghanistan in which one of the survivors claims the military used sarin gas. Jerry, more than anyone seizes on the possibility this story is true and drives it against the reluctance of so many of the higher-ups including Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston)

During the season credible evidence is gather about the veracity of this story, some of which is doubtful, some which seems solid. We follow the show through each level of the discussion and in all of them Jerry is increasingly driving the train.

Jim: Sarin gas?”

Mac: I don’t believe it either. And I also don’t believe in Santa Claus, but if I saw eight reindeer take flight…

Jim: You haven’t seen eight reindeer. You’ve talked to someone who’s seen eight reindeer.

Jerry: And we have someone who’s tweeted about the reindeer and a third witness who’s interviewed victims of the reindeer and a highly placed confidential source who’s confirmed that in this place, at that time, reindeer flew.

Naturally the argument devolves to the number of reindeer but it is clear in this episode and the rest of the way Jerry is the only one who has no doubts about what they are doing. Charlie is unsettled about what he considered an impeachable offense. Don knows that if this happens there will be demonstrations abroad that will lead to anti-American violence. Jim is by far the most adamant about his issues with the story and how much it will damage America abroad.

The critical moment – the one that is the impetus for everything that we’ve seen having in the flashforwards – comes when Jerry is interviewing a five-star general who HAS knowledge of Operation Genoa. The General sets certain terms, demands that his face be hidden and his voice be altered, and insists the room be cleared. However he only tells Jerry if we used sarin, here’s how.

We then see Jerry alter the footage so that the general says sarin was used. However when the Red Team sees this and say that it’s not enough Jerry is infuriated. It’s in that moment we learn what this is truly about and that is has nothing to do with Operation Genoa.

When we first met Jerry he was expressing disgust about Obama’s decision to authorize a drone strike and how the media wasn’t covering it. He now tells all of his bosses that their problem is that they like this president. “When is this going to be enough for you?” he demands.

It’s now clear that Jerry is angry that the media that the conservatives claim is liberal isn’t liberal enough. That he has violated every code of journalistic ethics means nothing. The investigation only goes forward after a third witness comes forward and much discussion.

Not long after the episode the military posts a response claiming not only that they are pursuing legal action as well as the Espionage Act. Not long after that  it becomes clear that there are flaws in the story – including their critical witness has a brain injury. By that point everyone is beginning to have doubts but Jerry remains certain in his cause.

Even when the truth comes out he makes it clear he has no issue. “We don’t do this,” Mac tells him. Jerry starts to rant: “Yeah, we don’t murder, we don’t torture, we don’t bomb…I wouldn’t have done this with any other story and I wouldn’t have done it unless I was sure!”

What we’ve seen is the aftermath of the lawsuit Jerry has caused for wrongful termination, blaming ACN for what he refers as institutional failure. In his mind the crime he committed couldn’t have happened if the network hadn’t allowed it. Don is infuriated by this when he talks with Rebecca Holiday (Harden) who is running the depositions.

This is one of the best stories in Sorkin’s wheelhouse. The problem with it is that every step of it involved the worst aspects of The Newsroom. The only reason Jim has left to cover the Romney campaign is because after kissing Maggie in the Season 1 finale, Don has asked Maggie to move in with him. They break up when Don sees the footage in that same episode but by that time Don is in New Hampshire. This is one of the most heavy-handed ways of starting the story and it only gets worse.

Maggie (Alison Pill) deals with the break-up by throwing herself into her work and decides she wants to cover a story in Uganda. While she’s there she witnesses horrible events which cause her to undergo PTSD and the series handles that horribly as well. It doesn’t help that Sloan and Don, who kissed in the season 1 finale and Don reacted by asking Maggie to move in with him, are acting awkward around each other. As I mentioned in my original article Sorkin doesn’t handle relationships well and the fact that he makes it essential to everything involving Genoa shows how badly he does.

But the real problem comes after the deposition. Will has decided that after election night he and his team, including Charlie Skinner will resign for the good of the network. And then Leona Lansing (Jane Fonda) who spent most of Season 1 trying to find a way to get Will fired and has not exactly been on their side in Season 2 shows up and tells them not only is she completely on their side, but actually seems kind of disconnected from reality. When Charlie shouts: “We don’t have the trust of the public anymore!” Leona says: “Get it back!”

This is a great end-line but its completely out of context with corporate reality. And what makes it even worse is that having spent the entire second season dealing with Jerry and the ramifications of Genoa, we never see him again nor do we deal with the lawsuit. Indeed the episode ends with everybody celebrating Will and Mac’s engagement which is tonally off from everything we’ve seen on the series so far.

Sorkin has dealt with ominous storylines on The West Wing quickly but there were consequences to them. When Jed Bartlet revealed his MS, he was investigated by Congress and ended up taking a Congressional censure, something that was practically unprecedented. Similarly when the administration made the decision to assassinate a Middle Eastern warlord, Sorkin spent several episodes leading up to it and then much of Season 4 dealing with the consequences both abroad and from the press. Sorkin knows better than anyone that actions have ripple effects.

But on The Newsroom, where this could very well have brought the entire network crashing down, not only is this washed off but we never refer to it again. Events like this have ramifications -  a story on 60 Minutes that had ethical problems involving George W. Bush’s draft record led to Dan Rather being forced to resign as anchor of CBS News – and Sorkin was clearly using a story like this as one of his models. The idea that Aaron Sorkin would follow reality so closely and at the very end delve into fantasy goes against not only his behavior but how Peak TV was working at the time and in the years since. It should have been a dirge at the end, not a party.

I will acknowledge that both these stories not only work creatively but speak to the larger messages we see in so much of Sorkin’s greatest work, not merely The West Wing but The Social Network and Molly’s Game. But Sorkin’s inability to stick the landing with Operation Genoa – something he’s done superbly in almost every other work he’s ever done – make me certain that The Newsroom is by far the weakest show in Sorkin’s entire library. This is a position that, unlike with the story here, I proudly stand behind.