Photo credit: HBO
The Newsroom/True Blood (HBO, Sunday) – I tend to give Aaron Sorkin the benefit of the doubt because he wrote A Few Good Men and The Social Network, which are two movies I can watch just about any time they’re on cable. That said, I don’t know if you guys have read some of the reviews for “The Newsroom,” but a lot of them have been, uh, not glowing. Yikes.
Falling Skies/The Great Escape (TNT, Sunday) – Series premiere of “The Great Escape.” The reality series pits three teams of two against each other in a race to get out of whatever location they’re in for that episode, with the premiere taking place in Alcatraz. If one of the teams isn’t Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery, I am going to be incredibly disappointed.
Common Law (USA, Friday) – This show is basically every cop show you’ve ever seen, but instead of the chief being a gruff hardass, he’s a former gruff hardass who got into therapy and zen and hippie stuff. That is literally everything you need to know about this show.
Comedy Bang! Bang!/Bunk (IFC, Friday) – Tonight’s episode of “Comedy Bang! Bang!” features Jon Hamm, as well as Nick Kroll (Ruxin from “The League”) in character as a Mexican radio DJ named El Chupacabra. They teamed up for one of my favorite bits on the podcast, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Motive & Murders/Evil, I (ID, Friday) – People who spend their Friday nights watching this stuff terrify me.
Redneck Island (CMT, Saturday) – The biggest letdown about “Redneck Island” is that it is not a sequel to Whiskey Business starring Pauly Shore where everyone in Shinbone goes on vacation together. Please, CMT. I need more of that in my life immediately.
The Glades/Longmire (A&E, Sunday) – What’s the deal with these shows? Are we watching them or not? I suppose technically it’s my job to answer that question, but I don’t have one, so here’s a GIF of Prince from Purple Rain:
GIF via
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I’m only interested in The Newsroom if Emily Mortimer begins all her scenes with, “I don’t know if you remember me…”
I’m only interested in it for Jack McCoy swearing at people. Charlie Pierce endorses Waterston’s role, so I’m on board.
Uh how could you leave out that Mr. Universe himself, Jon Hamm, is the lead celebrity guest on CBB tonight? Nothing brings me more joy than hearing him on Earwolf podcasts…well, nothing except for nibbling on a piece of Grade A, All-American Hamm.
I’m talking about eating Don Draper’s penis; my girlfriend’s cool with it.
Yeah, I just forgot to put his name in there. Fixed.
Longmire isn’t all that bad. He’s a grizzled sheriff. Grizzle grizzle.
wait how come this is now uproxx.com/tv? Did warmingglow get eaten by the Motha Ship?
I am digging the Newsroom so far.
Did that series on Showtime ‘Episodes’ begin its’ second season yet?
FYI, Nick Kroll played El Chupacabra on Reno 911 for a while. He had a hot sidekick named Chupi Chupi with tremendous cleavage. Of course, if you know what chupar means in spanish, that makes the joke even funnier.
The first episode of the NewsRoom is tough to get through. It’s long and when you watch it, it feels like you’re watching a Sorkin show before it was edited. There’s too much speechifying, monologues, spelling things out for the audience, and its too grandiose for a tv show. A great tv show naturally feels like a movie, but when you watch The Newsroom, you can feel it trying to be epic, it’s too obvious with the big emotional moments, overacting and movie-like music scores.
Sorkin’s goal or statement that he’s trying to make is obvious and not a bad one – make the news like it was back before cable news – when guys like Cronkite were in charge. That’s the type of what would now be considered rogue news anchor – Jeff Daniels is supposed to be and the kind of show he’s decided by the end of the first episode to lead. And Jeff Daniels can make it work, I think he was a good choice for the character.
There’s about 15 minutes of quality when they get to the coverage of the BP oil spill – apparently at the outset at least they have the show starting off in 2010 when the BP oil spill happened. Sorkin wants to challenge and crucify a lot of things – government failures, corporations, and the way the media handles them, and all of that is good stuff. The opening with Jeff Daniels freaking out will remind you of the Judd Hirsch freakout scene at the beginning of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
But it takes forever in the first episode to get there, too much is spent trying to introduce characters with stagnant dialogue. The dialogue has the Sorkin flavor, but it’s just off, not funny enough, trying too hard and failing at being witty. There’s some good exchanges and lines spoken, but that good stuff is smothered by constant overwrought dialogue about “how things should be”.
The knock also was that it’s unrealistic of what goes on in a Newsroom, which I could care less about, it’s expected that it will be dramatized, shows like ER and most cop shows are nowhere near realistic, if they were they wouldnt be watchable. The one exception being Homicide: Life on the Street which managed to cover the everyday mundane detective work, but do it in such a philosophical and well written way.
I think there is a good show that can be found, they just have to cut through a lot of what was in the pilot to get to it, it needs to stop trying to be so epic in every way, and dial back the forced drama.
I’m curious to see the 2nd episode and if they learned from the pilot, and maybe see how the season progresses, if they can figure it out. I went from almost stopping watching in the middle to being mildy intrigued by the end. It deserves a couple more looks before Breaking Bad gets back.