The Newsroom....whaddya think?- Page 7

[javero]

Posted: 8/27/12 at 11:43pm

I'm all for more Fonda as long as the show doesn't turn into Dynasty meets Dallas meets Falcon Crest (meets Political Animals).

Ordinarily I don't care for elective plastic surgery but Jane looks dayum good on HDTV.

And Phyllis, I admire your courage because you could not begin to imagine how much I wanted to write that the wonderful Alison Pill plays Maggie like a retard. Who the hell would hire (or retain) her character in a real newsroom?

Finally, that bit about her (Maggie) hiding under the bed while her man knocked off some other chick during her college days was the most cringe-inducing scene I've over seen on tv. There is no recovery from that.

[romantico]

Posted: 8/27/12 at 11:46pm

A great scene with Fonda. This may be considered a spoiler so click with caution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts0UmMywQVY

[strummergirl]

Posted: 8/27/12 at 11:59pm

There are parts on the show I do like. Don, independent of Maggie, is actually fine as is Jim (though the AV Club commenters noting the likeness to being a less smug Jim Halpert is an apt comparison).

Maggie as a character needs to go through a serious character makeover or be written out-- not like her character leaving the business after an off-screen nervous breakdown is any stretch. I will say Alison Pill is a capable actress of doing some awesome three-dimensional female characters in ensemble works i.e. Kim Pine in Scott Pilgrim and that she is literally flailing around in this role is really disappointing.

I grew more acceptable to Emily Mortimer as Mack as the overly invested romantic at office relationships even if I still don't buy her in the war zone. Her and Daniels are fine together, but just make them a couple again already. Had Sorkin just dropped that part of her character biography, which he cannot seem to resist, I think the character would be more tolerable. Instead we got sold goods about who she is supposed to be and none of her actions this season (the power outage) did her favors.

I do like Sloan, though I generally had no opinion/cynicism of Olivia Munn before this which makes me .000001% of the internet. Her scenes with Don were nice but so undercut by the fact that he is still neck-deep with Maggie and the show is at an unprecedented love pentagon (Sloan-Don-Maggie-Jim-Lisa). Glee never even got to that despite its whole incestuousness with relationships. That's saying something.

I also like Tess among the girls though keeping her with just one-liners and passing remarks is fine with me.

Lisa at this point probably feels like Bridget Fonda in Single White Female.

There needs to be more Jane Fonda if to perhaps balance the eye-rolling notion of old=wise with Charlie, and I waffled on Waterston on this show. I wouldn't mind mirroring the Murdoch phone-hacking trial to at least build a more interesting fictional world within the show besides the relationships.

Daniels as anchor seemed more like a hybrid of Jack Cafferty and Keith Olbermann. The whole conceit of Wills as a Republican is just getting so unbelievable. So the Tea Party ruined the Republican Party for you but not 8 years of Bush-Cheney? Nothing about nation building in Iraq shook your fiscal conservative core?

It's also pretty bad when I side with the Republican party guy over that mock debate set-up in the last episode.

Nothing done on NewsNight did not get featured on Rachel Maddow, MSNBC Weekend, the BBC, Al-Jazeera English, CNN International, Current TV, or Colbert and The Daily Show. That 'Baba O'Reilly' montage did not impress me one bit. I feel like if this show had a lesser well-known show-runner the earlier developments would have made Jeff Daniels/Will McAvoy closer to the Charlie character and had somebody younger, greener in the anchor spot but this is Sorkin we are talking about. In his world, people wait for Will McAvoy's autograph like a Broadway stage door.

Updated On: 8/28/12 at 11:59 PM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 12:02am

what the hell happened to Bridget Fonda?!?

[romantico]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 12:04am

Last I heard she married Danny Elfman.

[Tom1071]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 1:19pm

According to IMDB:

In 2003, [Bridget] Fonda suffered head and neck injuries when she drove her Jaguar over an embankment and off the Pacific Coast Highway. Later that year, she married Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman and has since retired from show business.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 1:30pm

I had no idea that Danny Elfman's calling card was Oingo Boingo.

[theaternut]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 1:31pm

I thought she married one of the Baldwin brothers?

[Wynbish]

Posted: 8/28/12 at 1:35pm

That's Chynna Phillips