Dated, But Worthwhile: The Newsroom Was Sorkin's Most Original Work In Ages!

The Good: Exceptional details, Good acting, Interesting characters
The Bad: Exceptionally dated and plot-specific
The Basics: The Newsroom had only three seasons, which amount to a body of wonderful television that ages poorly.


When it comes to the works of Aaron Sorkin, there are a number of things that casual viewers do not immediately recognize. For example, Sorkin recycles a lot of his lines and plotlines. When people quote The Social Network (reviewed here!), they often recall the line about how if the Winklevoss brothers had invented Facebook, they would have invented Facebook. While it is memorable and was used in many of the trailers, loyal fans of Aaron Sorkins work will easily recognize the line as a bastardization of one of Sorkins lines from Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (reviewed here!). In a similar fashion, Sorkin's latest television work, The Newsroom, used a few of its plots from Sorkin's work Sports Night (reviewed here!). Despite the third season of The Newsroom using the network sale plot from Sports Night, most of the HBO series is actually fairly original.

The Newsroom - The Complete Series is a compilation of the discs from:
The Newsroom - Season 1
The Newsroom - Season 2
and The Newsroom - Season 3 with new packaging, but no new material.

The Newsroom is an hourlong show that explores the behind-the-scenes aspects of a cable news show. Fighting for legitimacy and credibility in a 24 hour news cycle, jaded reporter Will McAvoy accepts his ex-girlfriend as his new Executive Producer whose goal is to make the news show on their cable news network great again. Instead of softball news, McAvoy and MacKenzie McHale fight to change the tableau of nightly news by delivering stories the right way.

While breaking stories on the Deepwater Horizon (BP oil spill), Egypt's coup and the shooting of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords, McAvoy tries to expose the Tea Party as extremist hijackers of the Republican Party. McAvoy gambles his newfound principles by covering the Casey Anthony story in an attempt to get a strong Republican primary debate. Failing that, ACN gets lured into reporting a story that gets the team in legal trouble. The series climaxes with the fight between legitimate news and crowd sourcing the news when ACN is bought by a young, hip man who does not value McHale's approach.

As one might expect in a work by Aaron Sorkin, the writing in The Newsroom is exceptional. The dialogue is fast and witty and the characters are interesting. Unfortunately, The Newsroom is somewhat erratic. The first season is rooted in real-world events that are incredibly specific and remarkably dated (even now). The second season detours from the harshly realistic to create a fictional story that was analogous to how less-legitimate news sources get bamboozled. And in the third season, The Newsroom relies upon Sorkin's fictional African nation to sell a plot that allows for a contempt of court story for Will McAvoy.

Wound amid the stories are the behind-the-scenes dramas of the relationships of the people who work at ACN. Will McAvoy and MacKenzie McHale are exes who struggle to have a relationship that works while working together. Jim Harper is a professional who has a weak spot for Maggie, but can't seem to get it together with her. And Sloane Sabbith is a consummate professional not looking for a meaningful relationship when her most meaningful friendship develops into a shockingly good romantic relationship.

The Newsroom is dominated by distinctive characters and the essential characters are:

Will McAvoy – The lead anchor of ACN’s flagship program, NewsNight, he is unliked by his underlings and peers at the outset. When MacKenzie returns to the show, he starts doing the show they both wanted. He returns to integrity while fighting the Tea Party on air and standing by his employees,

MacKenzie McHale – Executive Producer of NewsNight, she loves Will and works to get him back on track. She is smart, efficient and runs the newsroom with integrity,

Jim Harper – MacKenzie's loyal assistant, he travels with her from her pre-ACN rut to ACN. There, he starts running the newsroom efficiently, despite developing feelings for Maggie. He starts dating Maggie's roommate at her insistence and tries to avoid her by going off on the Romney press bus,

Maggie Jordan – Initially in a bad relationship with Don, she works the newsroom with mixed professional results. To avoid her feelings for Jim and the consequences of confessing those feelings in a viral video on the internet, she takes an assignment in Africa that leaves her fundamentally shaken,

Don Keefer – The executive producer of the show that follows McAvoy's Newsnight, he is treated poorly by McAvoy's staff after being replaced by McHale. He dates Maggie until her true feelings come out and then he finds himself in an unlikely relationship with Sloan,

Sloan Sabbith – The economics expert at ACN, she is smart, efficient and professional. Despite that, she ends up in multiple personal quagmires - usually by men treating her poorly - and struggles to warn ACN of an impending hostile takeover,

Neal Sampat – He is the director of ACN's online presence who is ridiculed by his peers who do not see the internet as a legitimate way to gather information. But, after years of following internet clues to stories, he becomes mired in the heart of a story that exposes genuine government corruption,

and Charlie Skinner – The president of ACN, he fights for Newsnight to make the transition from soft news back to strong journalism.

The Newsroom is led by Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer and they bring instant credibility and gravitas to their roles of Will and MacKenzie. Younger performers like Allison Pill, Dev Patel and Olivia Munn play off the mature portrayal of Charlie Skinner by Sam Waterston and the mix of actors creates an environment that feels very real.

Ultimately, The Newsroom makes a good argument, but it belabors that argument and ends up as a body of work that was timely, but sadly ineffective.

For other works that are or were on HBO, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Game Change
Veep - Season 1
Game Of Thrones - Season 6
Girls - Season 1
True Blood
Carnivale
Rome
Extras
Six Feet Under
Sex & The City - Season Three
Da Ali G Show
Jim Henson's The Storyteller

5.5/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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HBO Enters That Irksome Spot Between Brilliant And Bastardly With The Perfect Third Season Of The Newsoom!

The Good: Engaging plot development, Great acting, Good character development
The Bad: SHORT!
The Basics: In its final season, The Newsroom is short, focused, original, and perfect, which is wonderful and frustrating!


Unlike a lot of networks, HBO has the tendency not to kill shows before their time - Carnivale (reviewed here!), notwithstanding – so when it does cancel a series, it is usually because it has gone long past its prime and is no longer drawing an audience. When HBO announced that the third season of The Newsroom would be its last and it would only be getting six episodes for the season, fans like me wondered what the hell was wrong with HBO. After all, The Newsroomwas one of the network’s smartest shows and there did not seem to be any deficit of excitement for Aaron Sorkin’s latest series. Coming off the disastrous plot for the Atlantis Cable News team in the second season (reviewed here!), there seemed like plenty of interesting potential directions for the third season (and beyond) to go in.

The result of Sorkin only having six episodes to wrap up The Newsroom with is that Aaron Sorkin created one of his best seasons of television yet. The fear for Sorkin fans with some of the elements that set-up the third season – the potential buy-out of ACN smacked of the conclusion to Sports Night (reviewed here!) – was that Sorkin would once again reuse some of his previously created character arcs, plot devices and (especially) witty lines. Fortunately, for a series that was always in danger of being derivative, Sorkin and his team pulled it out with six episodes that create a tight, powerful, meaningful season of television that allows The Newsroom to go out on a high note and end before it succumbed to Sorkin’s lack of creativity.

Picking up in the wake of ACN’s expose of a fictitious story, NewsNight With Will McAvoy struggles for credibility among its cable news competitors and its dwindling audience. When the bombing of the Boston Marathon occurs, Will McAvoy and MacKenzie McHale are incredibly cautious about their sources with reporting the story – so much so that they end up discrediting a number of other reports that use false leads. While the rest of the ACN team is championing good reporting while social media gives law enforcement bad leads in the Boston Marathon case, Neal finds himself in possession of tens of thousands of documents of classified intelligence materials. Neal is handed a story about how U.S. operatives planted stories in foreign newspapers and one of those stories led to a riot in which thirty-eight people (including three Americans) were killed.

Almost immediately, Will and MacKenzie realize that Neal has committed a serious felony (encouraging his source to commit espionage) and when the Justice Department descends upon ACN, Will has Neal flee the country. As the Justice Department interrogates Will (Neal told him his source), Sloan realizes that ACN is the subject of an impending hostile takeover. Attempting to avoid a buyout by a ruthless billionaire who wants to make ACN into a network serviced by “citizen journalists” and social media, Charlie and Sloan find themselves completely at his mercy. When Lucas Pruit buys ACN and retools it, the team tries to keep things together without Will McAvoy’s leadership. Jailed for contempt for refusing to reveal Neal’s source, Will struggles to maintain his sanity while imprisoned and Mac, Don and Jim fight with Charlie to maintain the network’s integrity.

At its worst The Newsroom was always in danger of retreading where Sports Night had gone fifteen years prior. Fortunately, while the set-up for the final season of The Newsroom was identical to the final arc of Sports Night, the third season of The Newsroom takes the series in a different direction. Instead of being a savior for the beloved show, Lucas Pruit becomes an antagonist who menaces everything the protagonists for the series have built. The difference makes all the difference: it allows The Newsroom to go out on a completely different note than Sports Night and it allows Aaron Sorkin to finish the show with a sense of originality that his prior two works have lacked.

The third season of The Newsroom is notable, as well, for telling some stories that are not actual news story, sucking it out of the real world and into the fictional world of The West Wing (reviewed here!). That makes it problematic as it blends fictional television universes (Equatorial Kundu, which is at the heart of the story that captivates Neal and Will, is a construct of The West Wing) and the real world (Edward Snowden is on monitors in Charlie’s office and the Boston Marathon bombing coverage is relayed in a fashion identical to reality). While this might seem like a real conundrum only for fans of Sorkin’s works (how to reconcile a world where after Bartlet and Santos, Bush and Obama came to power), it guts the authority of The Newsroom for fans of this show alone as well. After all, The Newsroom has been very rooted in speaking truth to power as we know it in the U.S. right now. A show that called out the Tea Party and explored genocide in Africa that then cannot come up with a real story to use to tell the whole journalist integrity/espionage story seems troubling.

Regardless, The Newsroom Season Three manages to be entirely engaging and even pull out some real surprises. “Oh Shenandoah,” especially, is unlike anything else on any other Aaron Sorkin production. The result is a pleasantly surprising season of television that is almost impossible not to binge watch into a single sitting!

For those unfamiliar with it by this point, The Newsroom is dominated by distinctive characters. In the third and final season, the essential characters are:

Will McAvoy – The lead anchor of ACN’s flagship program, NewsNight, he is engaged to MacKenzie. Their marriage plans soon go awry when McAvoy buys Neal the computer he needs to get his informant to trust him. McAvoy stands by his ethical standards to fight the government cover-up in Kundu, going to jail rather than naming Neal’s source. His time in prison for protecting his source is a transformative one for him,

MacKenzie McHale – Executive Producer of NewsNight, she loves Will and works to protect his legacy while he is in prison. She realizes very early on how much trouble Neal and Will are in, thanks in part to a friend in the intelligence community with whom she confides. While trying to fend off the hostile takeover of Atlantis Cable News, she actually meets their source face to face. Her wedding plans are very suddenly altered, which leads her to make an important, abrupt, decision,

Jim Harper –After getting his girlfriend a job at ACN, he is shocked when she makes an ill-timed Tweet and he is forced to take her to Charlie to be fired. They have a falling out over the type of job she gets afterward, where he worries that she might be wooed by ACN’s enemies, and that sets him and Maggie up for a relationship. He gets little done as Producer at ACN, though he and Maggie attempt to get an interview with Edward Snowden as he leaves Russia,

Maggie Jordan – Having recovered from the incident in Africa, she returns to a more traditional look and refocuses on her health and professional development. She overhears a potentially big story from an EPA source while on a train and she decides not to take the salacious story in exchange for reporting the more substantive one. She starts dating another man she met on the train and they have tension based on Maggie’s attraction to Jim,

Don Keefer – He starts dating Sloan, though the two struggle to hide that fact from a member of Human Resources. He is given the unenviable task of vetting a young woman with a problematic website for the new ACN, which leads him to his ultimate conflict with Charlie,

Sloan Sabbith – Giddy over her new terminal that seems to give her inside financial information, she is the one who figures out that Reese and his mother are about to lose ACN. She starts dating Don and fails his tests when he realizes that she is very much like him in relationships,

Neal Sampat – He is eager to get respect and legitimacy from his coworkers and, in the process, eagerly gives the ACN encryption key to a source who requests it. To prove to himself and the others that the source is legitimate, he informs the source how to transfer the classified documents from the U.S. internal sites to him. After inadvertently inciting espionage, he goes on the run while the rest of the team fights for his rights and freedoms back in New York,

and Charlie Skinner – The president of ACN, he goes toe to toe with Lansing’s other children, who will inherit and buy enough of the company’s stock to completely own the company. Fearful of the direction they might take it, he tries to suck up to them and then tries to find a buyer who has as much integrity as Reese and his mother. Under Pruit’s ownership of ACN, he is truly miserable and finds himself fighting against his own goals and agendas.

In its third season, everyone on The Newsroom know their parts and how to play them expertly. This is a flawlessly-delivered season of television and the few guest stars for the season, like Kat Dennings and B.J. Novak, figure out how to play perfectly within the seasoned cast who know their characters backwards and forwards. Jeff Daniels uses the last few moments of the show to infuse Will McAvoy with his own interest and talent (singing) and he is such a professional that he makes it seem organically like a trait of McAvoy instead of Daniels. That is a talent that few actors possess!

All of that adds up to an engaging season that packs a lot into six episodes and makes one figure that HBO is brilliant and figured out how to get something new out of Aaron Sorkin . . . even as it infuriates viewers with how the show is already done!

For other works from the 2014 – 2015 television season, please check out my reviews of:
House Of Cards - Season 2
Doctor Who - Season 8
True Blood - Season 7
”Now Is Not The End” - Agent Carter
”Aftershocks” - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

10/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Build-up To Catastrophe, The Newsroom Season Two Is Good, Not Exceptional!

The Good: Good writing, Great acting, Interesting plots and characters, Engaging plot construction
The Bad: Dramatic tension hinges on forgetting how the season begins?!
The Basics: When The Newsroom returns for Season 2, Aaron Sorkin tries something new, but the season’s sense of dramatic tension builds on something of a folly.


As a big fan of the works of Aaron Sorkin, when I reviewed the first season of The Newsroom (reviewed here!), my biggest criticism of the new Aaron Sorkin series was how much Sorkin recycled from the other works he wrote. The Newsroom proved that Aaron Sorkin either does not understand just how much of a fanbase he has or that he is the biggest pro-recycling advocate working in entertainment today. The second season of The Newsroom starts out appearing to buck that trend, though the astute fans will find a lot in the nine episodes of the second season that is familiar.

In fact, the new concept season for The Newsroom actually appears on the surface to be the freshest thing Aaron Sorkin has done in years (though fans of his works will be utterly unsurprised by the prevalence of lawyers in this season – Sorkin has legal entanglements and depositions in virtually all of his major projects), though it has two fundamental flaws. The minor flaw is that the first season made a big deal of Jenna Johnson (the former student who set off the firestorm that began the series) joining the ACN team as a new intern. The second season finds Jenna in a background role in only a few of the episodes; the nearly-absent Lisa (Maggie’s roommate) ends up having a vastly more significant role in the season than the new ACN intern! So, there is the feeling that the bloated cast is not even using the supporting talent it had when it loaded up with two to three new recurring characters for the second season.

The far more significant issue with the second season of The Newsroom is that the nine episode season has a continuous arc that hinges almost entirely on the viewer forgetting the first five minutes of the season. The concept of the second season of The Newsroom is that ACN reported a story on the air that was quickly debunked. Given that the season starts with lawyers taking depositions from the key staff, the viewer knows what is coming, so there is a distinct lack of dramatic tension that the season seems to be trying to build. As the pieces of the story begin to come together, only the inattentive viewer (which is not, traditionally, the HBO audience) forgets where the story is going.

Opening with most of the senior staff of ACN being interviewed by Rebecca Halliday, a wrongful termination lawyer, the season flashes back to the beginning of the 2012 Presidential Primary season. In the wake of Maggie confessing her feelings (inadvertently) to Jim and the footage of her rant making it onto YouTube, Jim flees New York for the Romney Campaign’s tour bus. Aboard the Romney tour bus, Jim becomes frustrated that his role there is largely to provide the candidate with good press and he becomes a malcontent, even as he starts a relationship with Hallie, a reporter who is on the assignment that is likely to be her last.

Back at ACN, Jim’s replacement Jerry Dantana shops a story that instantly troubles Mac and Charlie. Dantana has a source that claims that during a black op in Pakistan, the United States military used sarin gas on civilians while extracting U.S. Marines. Slowly, Jerry, MacKenzie, and Charlie follow the thin leads surrounding Operation Genoa. Long before the final betrayal that leads to the onslaught of lawyers turning on ACN and a huge rift forming between Will and MacKenzie, the staff of ACN becomes troubled by the leads surrounding Genoa and the appearance that the story might be valid.

The Newsroom is a season with severe tension among the main characters. Fans of Sorkin’s works will be unsurprised that Will develops a relationship with Nina Howard (anyone who knows of the saga of Casey and Sally will see this coming a mile away) and there is something refreshing in how quickly it dissolves. But most of the season’s emotional melodrama comes from Will McAvoy and MacKenzie McHale rehashing how their relationship dissolved before the series began. To fill the gap left by the rising sexual tension between Maggie and Jim, The Newsroom slowly builds the romance insinuated at the very end of the first season between Sloan Sabbith and Don Keefer. The romantic aspects of the Sloan and Don subplot is almost enough to overlook just how dark Sorkin goes with Maggie’s character.

Like all great dramas, The Newsroom Season 2 is about great characters. In the second season, the essential characters are:

Will McAvoy – A Republican cable news anchor, he starts calling out candidates during the Republican primary. As ACN takes fire because of Will’s scathing commentary on the Tea Party, Will pushes for a more conservative approach to presenting the news, hinging all his hopes on presenting a real debate for the Republican candidates. Pulling his punches and kept out of the loop on Genoa until the last possible moment, he becomes the public face of ACN’s scandal leading into Election Night coverage,

MacKenzie McHale – As executive producer of News Night, she feels the loss of Jim most acutely. Not quite trusting Jerry, she still feels compelled to investigate Genoa, while at the same time being frustrated by how Will keeps her at arm’s length,

Jim Harper – The News Night producer goes rogue to work well beneath pay grade and position to try to get coverage on Mitt Romney that will expose the contradictions in his campaign. Jim is deeply interested in bringing to public attention the public policies Governor Romney changed once he began running for President. He returns after a fumble on the campaign bus to discover the distance between him and Maggie has grown insurmountable, especially as he continues to grow his relationship with fellow reporter Hallie,

Maggie Jordan – An Associate Producer on News Night, she pushes for a story in Africa. There, she has a traumatic experience that leads her to cut off almost all her hair and dye what was left. Maggie begins engaging in risk behaviors including drinking and promiscuous sex with strangers in the wake of the incident in Africa,

Don Keefer – The ex-producer of News Night, he is now the executive producer on the ten o’clock show. After the fallout with Maggie, he becomes a pretty harsh critic of Jerry Dantana and the Genoa story. He starts to let his attraction to Sloan and she becomes one of the people who counsels him more than anyone else,

Sloan Sabbith – An economist with two Ph.ds, she starts to act as Will’s “big sister.” She is horrified when a book she did not actually autograph sells in a charity auction,

Neal Sampat – The writer of Will’s blog, he finds a serious lead in the Genoa story using Twitter. He becomes obsessed with the idea of Occupy Wall Street and works to bring that story to the attention of ACN, with somewhat disastrous results. He works to control the negative Tweets surrounding Will and News Night. He also tries to get MacKenzie’s Wikipedia page updated as a gift to her,

and Charlie Skinner – The head of the news division, he continues to go head to head with the corporate owners of ACN. Despite drinking quite a bit, he remains highly ethical and serious about keeping ACN focused and delivering hard-hitting news. As the Genoa story becomes more and more of a reality, he remains one of the longest holdouts to airing the story.

In the second season of The Newsroom, the acting remains exceptional. Led by Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer (who, despite all the teasing on the first season’s commentary tracks, does not appear naked in the season!), The Newsroom provides its performers with the opportunity to play triumph and heartbreak in almost every episode. Sam Waterston is tragically underused as Charlie, though he has some wonderful moments he provides both gravitas to go head to head with Jane Fonda’s Leona Lansing and goofy humor to deliver some of the season’s most memorable lines.

Thomas Sadoski almost entirely removes the bastardly qualities from Don Keefer to make him a surprisingly watchable and interesting character for the second season. The attention paid to Magge Jordan in the first season in The Newsroom is gone in the second season. Alison Pill surrenders most of her acting talent and substance for the season in exchange for a brutal haircut and a scared look in her eyes. She is easily outshined by recurring guest star Marcia Gay Harden, who starts out as efficient and sarcastic in the role of Rebecca Halliday (the lawyer) before degenerating into a pretty typical Sorkin female character who craves male attention.

Still, The Newsroom is worth watching in its second season. The show looks good and despite the structural issue, the season goes a decent distance to assuring fans that Sorkin still has some new tricks up his sleeve, even if they do not entirely land.

For other works by Aaron Sorkin, please check out my reviews of:
Moneyball
The Social Network
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
Charlie Wilson's War
The West Wing
Sports Night
The American President
Malice

7/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Middle-Of-The-Road Medical/Legal/Psychological Thriller, Malice Fails To Land.

The Good: Moments of character and plot development
The Bad: Most of the performances are unimpressive, Nothing stellar on the writing front.
The Basics: Malice is a largely underwhelming thriller that is hampered more by stiff acting and a mediocre sense of purpose.


With the return of The Newsroom (season 1 is reviewed here!), I am just as excited as other Aaron Sorkin fans to be a fan of the writing of Aaron Sorkin. However, unlike a large contingent of Sorkin fans, I’ve paid enough attention to his works to realize that Sorkin is a master recycler. He reuses character arcs, specific lines and conditions (just as in House, M.D. it’s never lupis, but lupis is always brought up as a potential diagnosis for a condition, it seems almost no one in the Sorkinverse has a baby without preeclampsia complicating the pregnancy). So, as excited as I was for the return of The Newsroom, I was actually more psyched to go backward in Sorkin’s career. To that end, I took in Malice, the 1993 thriller written by Sorkin that was his next project following his breakout hit A Few Good Men. While I’ve yet to re-watch and review A Few Good Men, until today I had never seen Malice, though one of my friends in high school was obsessed with the movie.

And, having seen Malice now, I see why the film is usually overlooked by Sorkin’s fans as being essential to his pantheon. Malice is a crime drama or thriller that progresses from a medical drama to a legal conflict and back to a character-centered mystery. Unfortunately, most of Malice lacks the spark and zest of all of his other works. The acting is fair at best (though Bebe Neuwirth is characteristically wonderful and it is fun to see a young Gwyneth Paltrow in a bit role), the characters are hardly interesting and it lacks truly memorable quotes. Fans of Sorkin’s other works will instantly recognize one of the early quotes in the film which he later recycled, but otherwise the movie is lacking in distinctive and fresh dialogue. The “I am god” speech is no “You can’t handle the truth!” That said, Malice has the benefit of being truly different from his other works.

Within nine hours of arriving in Massachusetts, Dr. Jed Hill saves the life of a college student who was brutally assaulted. Hill encounters Andy Safian, a college professor who married his favorite student, Tracy, years prior. Hill and Safian went to high school together and when a $13,000 plumbing bill is assessed against their house, Andy and Tracy reluctantly rent out their third floor to Hill. Tracy is quickly annoyed by both Andy’s overprotective nature and Hill’s womanizing with different women in the room above their head. When one of Andy’s students ends up as the victim of the serial rapist and is killed, Andy is a suspect. His old friend, Detective Dana Harris, quickly rules Andy out as a suspect, but while that is happening, Tracy’s chronic abdominal pain leads to her collapse.

Tracy, as it turns out, has a necrotic ovary and Dr. Hill is on call to perform surgery. Hill removes the necrotic ovary and he makes the decision to remove her other ovary on the belief that it is diseased as well. When the pathology on the other ovary comes back, it turns out it was healthy and Tracy – who long wanted children – is devastated. As Tracy goes litigious on Dr. Hill, Andy gets evidence that the fetus removed during Tracy’s surgery was not his, he goes on a personal mission to find out who was sleeping with his wife and, in the process, uncovers a conspiracy that challenges all he knows about the love of his life.

Dr. Jed Hill is an interesting enough villain, though he is presented with a pragmatism and a weird professional ethic that make it possible to care about him. His motivations are interesting enough, though how he and the film’s primary antagonist are truly connected is not made plausibly clear. Even the main antagonist in Malice includes enough backstory so their motivation makes sense, even if it does not make the film better.

One of the detractions to Malice is the acting. Malice is led on the acting front by Alec Baldwin, who is fine but completely unsurprising as the arrogant Dr. Hill, followed by Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman. Kidman travels through Malice looking like she is trying to remember not to speak with an accent (which she pulls off) and Bill Pullman is just stiff. In fact, Pullman is so stiff that even though director Harold Becker utilizes him in a similar niche to Jeff Daniels’ Will McAvoy and this is an Aaron Sorkin work, never once did I think Pullman could have been considered for the role in The Newsroom. Pullman and Kidman have no on-screen chemistry (he has more chemistry with the subtle relation he has on-screen with Bebe Neuwirth) and Alec Baldwin does not even tap into the full depth of his charm to make Hill a plausible womanizer. The result is that most of the acting in Malice fails to raise the limp writing into something magnetic or engaging.

Ironically, it is Bebe Neuwirth who steals her scenes. Her character of Detective Harris is running around the whole movie working on the serial rapist case (which, as it turns out, is only a tangent in Malice and is not meaningfully resolved) and when she pops up, Neuwirth presents the character as efficient, but in touch with her very human emotions (a very nice change from her popular character Lilith from Cheers and Frasier). Neuwirth plays the role of the determined detective very well and her presentation is so strong that it is almost enough to make the viewer lament that the plotline that seems to be the a-plot at the film’s outset is not the point of the movie.

In the end, Malice is an unremarkable “thriller” that is low on thrills. The film develops, but it is populated by unsympathetic characters who are not presented in a captivating way. In other words, Malice is very much the exception to the rule of Aaron Sorkin’s works.

For other works with Bill Pullman, please visit my reviews of:
Scary Movie 4
The Grudge
Independence Day

5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Sports Night 2.0: The Newsroom Season 1 (My 2300th Movie/Television Review!)

The Good: Exceptional writing, Great acting, Interesting plots and characters, Great DVD extras
The Bad: Recycles so much stuff from other Aaron Sorkin works!
The Basics: The Newsroom Season 1 returns Aaron Sorkin to television and it is incredible . . . except for fans of Aaron Sorkin’s other television works.


Right off the bat, I need to say that I am a big fan of the works of Aaron Sorkin. At this point, the only thing by Sorkin that I have not yet seen (to the best of my knowledge) is Malice. So, when I sat down to watch The Newsroom - The Complete First Season, I was excited because I love the writing, characters and settings Sorkin creates. And The Newsroom is great . . . for everyone but the fans of Sorkins works. I have to say, I’m not entirely sure The Newsroom is a Sorkin work: the season finale is not called “What Kind Of Day Has It Been.” Die-hard fans of Sorkin’s works will get that joke.

They’ll also get that some of the best moments in The Newsroom are lifted directly from Sorkin’s other works. In two different episodes in the first season, Emily Mortimer’s MacKenzie and Sam Waterston’s Charlie deliver lines that Sorkin wrote for William H. Macey’s character Sam Donovan from Sports Night (reviewed here!). Sorkin recycling from his works is not a new thing; he took advantage of the fact that Sport Night tanked to use entire lines and plotlines from Sports Night in The West Wing (reviewed here!). The Newsroom is not at all unsurprising for Sorkin fans: it begins with a character in crisis who begins to turn his life around, finds the characters embattled against an entrenched adversary (2/3 have been “The Network,” for the other Sorkin television work, it was Republicans), and features a relationship that is on again/off again or dissolving. Fans of Sports Night will see a lot of Isaac in Charlie, Dana in MacKenzie, Casey in Will and Natalie in Maggie. After a decade off the air, Sorkin hopes that viewers will have forgotten about his beloved Sports Night characters, but his fans will not.

So, fans of Aaron Sorkins works will not be surprised by any number of the early “surprises,” like the fact that MacKenzie cheated on Will in their backstory, that Maggie and Don do not actually break up and Isaac, er, Charlie, stands up for the show without telling Will and his team just how endangered they are.

And, despite all of the Sorkin conceits familiar to the fans, The Newsroom Season 1 is still amazing television. In fact, it is better than 95% of the other programs that are on the air and the only show in recent memory where my wife and I got at least one chill per episode. When, by episode four “I’ll Try To Fix You,” the series creates a perfect episode (10/10, absolute perfection!), it is hard to deny that the viewer is watching something absolutely incredible. It is so easy to overlook the recycled lines and Sorkin conceits in the season.

As the title suggests, The Newsroom is set behind-the-scenes at a cable news network. Opening with a college seminar panel where anchor Will McAvoy declares that the United States is not the greatest nation on Earth, ACN – Atlantis Cable Network – puts McAvoy on three weeks of forced vacation. When he returns to work, he finds most of his staff gone and his ex-girlfriend, MacKenzie McHale, is being brought on as the nightly news’s new executive producer. MacKenzie comes with some of her own staff and her assistant, Jim, begins to have real chemistry with Maggie Jordan, who is still in a relationship with Will’s ex-executive producer, Don. Together, Charlie and MacKenzie push Will to produce news that is informative and substantive, as opposed to safe and easy.

Over the course of the season, Will takes on the Tea Party and does his best to stop their stranglehold on the Republican party leading up to the 2010 midterm elections. The staff covers the shooting of Gabriel Giffords, the coup in Egypt, the nuclear reactor meltdown (or near meltdown) in Japan, and the Casey Anthony trial. The season climaxes in the debt ceiling debate and the way the Tea Party is holding the U.S. hostage.

The Newsroom features Aaron Sorkin’s trademark banter and characters who have moments of intense social awkwardness. It is one of his more serious endeavors, trying to be less overtly humorous than The West Wing. This is Sorkin’s attempt to actually educate viewers to the dangers of the Tea Party and its corporate sponsors. The ten episodes of The Newsroom Season 1 present hour-long stories that re-evaluate incredible news stories from 2010 – 2011. But for viewers who want to see how poetic and packed with information scripted cable dramas can be, The Newsroom delivers.

Like all great dramas, The Newsroom Season 1 is about great characters. In the first season, the essential characters are:

Will McAvoy – A Republican cable news anchor, he misses the days when the news meant something and did something other than cater to the corporate sponsors of the network. He remains emotionally damaged – three years later – after breaking up with MacKenzie. As he, Charlie, and MacKenzie transform News Night into a hard-hitting news program, he begins dating again (a string of women) and that gets him in trouble with the tabloids. He becomes outraged at how the Republican Party has been co-opted by the Tea Party faction. He gets gunshy when he realizes just how dangerous a position he is in, given that he renegotiated his contract in order to be able to fire MacKenzie and that left him vulnerable to the machinations of Leona Lansing. He works to civilize a tabloid writer and spends money on saving lives, though he refuses to let others know. He becomes the target of death threats and in the process has to have a bodyguard,

MacKenzie McHale – Returning from being embedded in Afghanistan with Jim and the military, she tries to inspire Will. In the process, she takes control of News Night. She dates Wade, a man who wants to run for Congress and takes it personally when Will brings in the man she had an affair with to write a story on News Night. She is smart, articulate, and principled, but socially awkward. She is, arguably, Jim’s best friend in the world,

Jim Harper – A producer who is the assistant to MacKenzie, having been embedded with her in Afghanistan. He is efficient and has contacts that help Will break his first major story with News Night 2.0. He has a crush on Maggie, who is antagonizing to him without reason, but starts dating Maggie’s roommate when she doesn’t make a move and Don pushes him toward it. He has a great deal of authority on the show and has real issues when Maggie acts unprofessionally, though he helps her out when she has panic attacks,

Maggie Jordan – An Associate Producer on News Night, she has an on-again, off-again relationship with Don, though she is instantly attracted to Jim. She is easily flustered, but very smart,

Don Keefer – The ex-producer of News Night, he becomes the exec on the ten o’clock show when MacKenzie comes aboard. He is initially a jackass, but fights for the good stories and starts to fight for Maggie. He wants to be a star and make his anchor into a star above Will, but when push comes to shove with the corporate parents, he steps up to do the right thing,

Sloan Sabbith – An economist with two Ph.ds, she is brought on News Night by MacKenzie to make economic issues relevant. She is incredibly socially awkward and yet passionate about the economic issues that she knows about. She overcompensates from Will's pep talk by embarrassing a Japanese official on the air! She reveals very late that she has feelings for someone else on the staff,

Neal Sampat – The writer of Will’s blog, he has an obsession with bigfoot. He becomes instrumental in getting News Night its Egypt coverage,

and Charlie Skinner – The head of the news division, he looks out for Will and works to protect News Night. He is older and something of a curmudgeon and he is tested by an NSA employee who wants to break a story about U.S. wiretapping of cell phones. He likes MacKenzie and he drinks a lot.

The Newsroom Season 1 features an amazing cast. For probably the first time that I have seen her in anything, Emily Mortimer impressed me with her performance abilities as she was anything but white bread as MacKenzie. Jeff Daniels leads the cast as Will McAvoy and every moment he is on screen, he is credible as a seasoned news anchor. Dev Patel and Sam Waterston round out the supporting cast of seasoned actors as Neal and Charlie and they are unlike they are in any other work in which they have appeared.

The younger cast members are led by Alison Pill, who plays Maggie. Pill is able to emote incredibly with her face and eyes alone. She gives some of the season’s most delightfully goofy lines and makes them seem incredibly real, making Maggie seem like anything but a parody of a young newswoman.

On DVD, The Newsroom is a wealth of bonus features, which is what one expects from HBO. Each episode has a featurette about the episode featuring Aaron Sorkin talking about how he developed the episode. There are commentary tracks on the pilot and a few other episodes – the one for “I’ll Try To Fix You” is actually entertaining as Emily Mortimer describes her experiences with nude scenes and the guys in the room resolve to make season two memorable in that regard! There are a handful of deleted scenes and a featurette on the entire season.

The Newsroom Season One is hard-hitting and smart and the punch it packs will be seen in 2014 if the show can reach enough of the electorate to usurp the Tea Party. While that is not the entire focus of the season, it is a vital component and one of the ways the show tries to be something far, far more than a well-written soap opera set in a news organization. And, even for fans of Aaron Sorkin’s works, The Newsroom is worth watching; the setting is as engaging as in his other works and for his poetry, humor, philosophy and intellect, more is certainly better.

For other current shows, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Game Of Thrones - Season 3
New Girl - Season 2
Happy Endings - Season 3
The Walking Dead - Season 3
Arrested Development - Season 4
House Of Cards - Season 1
True Blood - Season 5

8.5/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The American President: The American Intellectual, Sorkin Hits The Big Time!

The Good: Intelligent dialogue, Interesting characters, Romantic, Quality acting
The Bad: Standard plot, Light on DVD extras
The Basics: A fun romantic comedy that is intelligently written and wonderfully acted and foreshadows more greatness to come from writer Aaron Sorkin, The American President is still worth seeing!


Aaron Sorkin, the literary brains behind the brilliant Sports Night (reviewed here!) and the television blockbuster The West Wing (reviewed here!), started off with plays and films and this is one of his. When I first saw the movie, I enjoyed it so much I watched it a second time immediately. Seriously. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have seen a movie and sat and rewatched it right away.

President Andrew Shepherd is finding life as President less than stellar when a political rival begins to publicly attack his policies as a ramp up to election season and his own bid for the presidency. As Shepherd tries to ignore Senator Rumsom's sabre-rattling, he marshals his staff to try to pass a gun control bill which he watches steadily get gutted of all meaning. At the same time, the environmental lobby puts pressure on Shepherd to pass a strong environmental bill.

The environmentalists hire Sydney Ellen Wade, one of the best lobbyists in the business and she begins to work her magic of drumming up support for the bill. Wade and Shepherd collide and the president finds himself instantly attracted to her. As the two begin a relationship, Sydney's past, Shepherd's widowerhood and the ambitions of Rumsom all begin to get tremendous media attention. When Shepherd's chief of staff sees an opportunity to get the gun bill passed while burying the environmental one, a conflict is set off between the new lovers that threatens both of their careers and their agendas.

The plot is fairly simple: Michael Douglas plays the widowered president of the United States who falls in love with an environmental lobbyist. In the course of their courting, political adversaries fight the president and personal rivals attack Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening) and their budding relationship is threatened. Pull out the social roles and it's just about every other romantic comedy ever written. The plot is not at all original. Indeed, the plot is terribly formulaic and director Rob Reiner seems to know that. He directs The American President with a very safe look, such that it appears as virtually every other romantic comedy does.

But that is where the conventionalism of The American President ends and it comes back to the genius that is Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin has an amazing knack for dialogue and characters. Sorkin's Shepherd, Wade, and staff members Lewis, Robin, and Leon all speak like we wish our American politicians and public servants would speak. They use a level of diction that makes them seem like they know what they are doing. They sound convincing and they take principled stands. But the level of dialogue, the sheer volume of words spoken in this film so truly captures the reality of human interaction and conversation like too few films do.

And the thing is, Sorkin does not shrink away from this. He even acknowledges it. One of the funniest moments in the film involves Shepherd watching Rumsom on television doing a campaign speech and critiquing his closing line. It's great and it acknowledges for the audience that Sorkin understands he is creating an ideal world that fills the viewer with some sense of hope and yet roots it with a realism that is just on the recognizable side of fantasy.

The characters are niche characters that manage to overcome their niches. So, for example, First Daughter Lucy acts like the docile daughter who has lost her mother, but also is able to confront her father in a way that is realistic and not bratty. The few scenes she is in humanize Shepherd like none of the rest of the scenes do. Similarly, Lewis Rothschild could easily be seen as the generic young upstart as one of the President's aides. But when one would expect him to be motivated solely by personal ambition, he takes an ethical stand and works with the president rather than to usurp him.

And Shepherd and Wade are not the typical romantic comedy lover characters. For sure, their jobs define much of what makes them different and unique, but Wade's past and her sense of ethics makes for a compelling character. Similarly, Shepherd's refusal to mudsling, even in the face of Rumsom's attacks, makes him a truly compelling character that is unlike most politicians we see on screen. He has a very Capra-esque quality to him.

And Wade and Shepherd make for an intriguing couple that works. Their romance may be somewhat predictable, but the characters work well with one another and there is a very real sense of chemistry between them. It helps that Shepherd is quite presidential and Wade is quite self-motivated, making for two strong, opinionated characters to come together, which usually works quite well for a story.

Shepherd is played by Michael Douglas and for an actor who seems to be relegated to many roles with action and adventure subtexts, he pulls off being presidential in this with amazing quality and consistency. Douglas is nothing like, say, his performance in The Game (reviewed here!). He is rational, dignified and always in control. Even while Shepherd's poll numbers slip, Douglas maintains a strong backbone and the sense that he is ready to accomplish anything. He infuses the character with a true sense of fighting spirit, despite the almost complete departure from anything resembling a physical role in this part.

Similarly, Annette Bening gives another phenomenal performance as Sydney Ellen Wade. A tremendous departure from her neurotic, stressed out role in American Beauty (reviewed here!), Bening is articulate, collected and surprisingly normal as Wade. Indeed, the strength of her performance is that she takes the character who - on the page - could be fiery and overshadow the leader of the free world and instead tempers her performance with a very realistic quality of deference. Bening's strength is illustrated in her scenes where she plays Wade as a tough lobbyist and her humanity is illustrated by the way she softens - especially her facial expressions - when Wade and Shepherd begin their courting. Bening makes much of the film seem realistic as a conduit into the unreal world of Capitol Hill politics!

But more than that, the supporting actors are wonderful. The American President has a tremendous supporting cast which includes Martin Sheen, Richard Dreyfuss and Michael J. Fox. The actors are astounding and believable. They were perfectly cast and the film is just packed with talent.

They come together under the writing of Aaron Sorkin who has a ridiculously amazing control of the American English language. He knows how intelligent people speak and he creates a situation filled with intellectuals speaking fast and smart to each other. A fair number of the lines are packed with double meaning or deeper meanings or understandings. And the film holds up well over multiple viewings, even when you watch it one time right after another.

On DVD the film suffers from a lack of genuine bonus features. Sure, there's the trailer and a few production notes, but there are no commentaries, no featurettes, no flair. This is a film that deserves a better DVD treatment.

But this is an occasion where the strength of the material makes it easy to recommend, despite the limitations of the media it is presented in.

For other works with David Paymer, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Bad Teacher
In Good Company
Bounce
State And Main
Payback

9/10

For other film reviews, be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The MPAA Relents For Aaron Sorkin's Least Inspired Work: Moneyball Is Not Buried Below Fifty Feet Of Shit, But It's Not Exceptional, Either.

The Good: Most of the acting, Much of the mood is surprisingly engaging
The Bad: Exceptionally light on character, Moments when Brad Pitt slips out of character, Mood is oppressive.
The Basics: Moneyball tells a surprisingly engaging baseball story without delving enough into the protagonist to make one truly care about the outcome.


One of the interesting things about going to a number of screenings is that frequently, I'll see a movie that is still listed as "Not Rated" when I receive my tickets, but is rated by the time I see it. So, tonight when I saw Moneyball, I decided to guess what it would be rated. The moment the second "fuck" was used, I jotted it off as an unfortunate "R" and kept watching. I was surprised, then, after the closing credits when the blue banner came up saying it had been rated "PG-13." Kudos either to the MPAA for relenting on their ridiculous standards or director Bennett Miller for getting it past them! The only other real surprise of the night for me was that I actually knew something baseball-related. Given how this is all baseball history, I need no spoiler alert, but for those who need such things, there it is: I was excited when very late in the film Billy Bean traveled to Boston and I knew that his principles were applied there to lead to victory. This I know not from having any enjoyment of baseball, but rather from my love of Lost (reviewed here!).

If it seems like my review is getting off to a forced start, that's not an illusion. I'm not sure what to say about Moneyball. I know I was bored by it. I know that I was shocked when the end credits began and Aaron Sorkin's name came up as a cowriter of the film. I was less shocked that Sorkin was involved given the general intelligence of the dialogue, but I was surprised because Sorkin's best works have vibrant characters I come to care about, like The Social Network (reviewed here!). I know there were moments that I cared more than I expected to, but that ultimately, the movie left me feeling nothing whatsoever and that's pretty much the death knell of any movie.

Moneyball is a sports movie and for those of us not into sports, even Sorkin cannot save it. For those into baseball, I suppose the frequent name dropping and the come from behind story will be a triumph that energizes the base. But for me, it was slow-moving, with clever moments buried beneath long stretches of events I did not care about leading to a pretty obvious ultimate resolution.

In October, 2001, the Oakland A's get to the play-offs and are knocked out by the Yankees, whose budget was almost three times that of the A's. Billy Beane, the general manager of the A's, tries to get more funding for the team, but is told that will not be happening, despite the A's needing to restock their team as their three best players depart. While at a meeting with the staff of the Cleveland Indians, Beane encounters Peter Brand, a Yale graduate who is working his first job for Cleveland in player analysis. Peter's theory on baseball is based on statistical models and his theory - which immediately captivates Beane - is to recruit based on hard numbers of runs that the team needs to get over the course of the season.

Billy hired Peter and they begin to put the theory to the test, recruiting inexpensively a team of apparent misfits: older players, players who do not physically match the "ideal" and the like. When the head coach, Art Howe, resists the team that Beane has assembled, the first several games of the season go disastrously. In an effort to make it work, Beane fires the players Howe relies upon, forcing him to play the players Beane wants in the positions he wants them in, leading to the longest winning streak in the American League.

Smattered throughout the film are snippets of Beane's career as a baseball player. This is the opportunity for Moneyball to make a real compelling character study, but it falls flat. Beane is portrayed as a wunderkind at baseball who turns down a full scholarship at Stanford for a baseball career that he chokes at. It is only in the final act that his superstitious nature is revealed and by that point, I had stopped caring about the character. That is not entirely true. From the opening frames of the film when Beane is listening to a game, his wedding ring is evident. His estranged or ex-wife is still wearing her ring (noticeably her boyfriend is not wearing a ring), so why these two people are separated or divorced but still have their rings fascinated me . . . and went completely by without being explored.

There are moments when the film is smart, though. In the crude conversations among the scouts, the evaluation of one player's self confidence is characterized as low by the idea that the woman he is with is a six at best. And Moneyball fortunately does not make explicit that Beane is not looking for a sycophant. Instead, he makes Peter tell him that he would not have been a first round draft pick in his models (ninth round and paid very little) and only then does he hire him. That's clever and says what it needs to without saying "That's what I needed to hear."

So, the movie comes down to acting. Unsurprising as Oscar Pandering Season begins is that the acting is phenomenal. Philip Seymour Hoffman is virtually unrecognizable as Art Howe and his supporting role is utterly understated. Shining far brighter is the dramatic presence of Jonah Hill. Sure, Hill seems to have leapt into Seth Rogan's niche of being in everything and being a comedic genius, but he also seems to be jumping over into drama quicker than Rogan did. And in Moneyball he plays Peter as serious, efficient and calculating, exactly what one would expect of a Yale economist.

Then there is Brad Pitt. Pitt is mostly-dour as Billy Beane and it works. For the bulk of the film, Pitt is engaged in a character struggle to overcome the long odds and prove that the faith people had in Beane was not misplaced. And Pitt embodies that by seldom smiling and speaking quietly and with force and conviction. But arguably the most extreme role Pitt ever had that truly showcased his talents and range was as Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys. That's the one I always watch out for and, sad to say, there were two moments where Pitt bugs out his eyes as Beans and hints at the mad genius qualities that made Goines so memorable. So, while most of the role Pitt makes work, he does not stay exclusively in character to truly allow us to lose ourselves in his performance.

Which leaves us with a pretty unremarkable film that plays as a struggle of two men against an institution that does not completely understand the science of itself. The victories are hard-fought and often Pyrrhic and the real shame of the film is that Billy Beane seems to take the credit for what Peter Brand actually postulates and executes. Beane is the face of Brand's idea and the result is a film that left me with a "ho-hum" feeling. For a movie with two surprises within and two without (Sorkin cowriting and the fact that there is a soundtrack available when it is noticeably lacking from the vast majority of the film) I suppose that is to be expected, but it does not make it welcome.

For other works with Jonah Hill please visit my reviews of:
Megamind
How To Train Your Dragon
Cyrus
The Invention Of Lying
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip: If You Want To Stay On The Air, Stop Hiring Kari Matchett (It's As Good A Theory As Any!)!

The Good: Wonderfully defined characters, Great acting, Wonderful writing, Interesting story, Mood
The Bad: Somewhat dated, Poor DVD extras
The Basics: With a lone disappointing DVD extra, the boxed set for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is essential for the greatness of the series inside rather than its use of the medium.


With the failure of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip on television and it's rather quick appearance on DVD, I have only been able to make two guesses as to why the show sank the way it did. My first is the use of actress Kari Matchett. Kari Matchett is a decent actress, but when she turns up on a series, it sinks. The wonderful show Wonderfalls (click here for that review!) was axed after only three episodes aired and she was a recurring guest star on the show. Her last major series, Invasion (click here for my review of that series!) went down in flames after a season and by the time her five episode stint on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip came up, the show was in serious trouble. Yes, I'm pitching that actress Kari Matchett is cursed and here presence on this series was just enough to sink this ship. My only other explanation for the demise of this series is that writer-executive producer Aaron Sorkin suffers from "Star Trek Movie Syndrome." "Star Trek Movie Syndrome" is the perceived notion that Star Trek films with even numbers will be successful (Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, First Contact) while odd number Trek films will generally stink out at the box office or with the fans (The Motion Picture, The Final Frontier). There are no other good explanations for why this series is not still making brand new episodes to entertain us with week after week. After all, Sorkin made significant headway with The West Wing while his prior show, Sports Night failed to get its audience.

And so, we find ourselves with Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip - The Complete Series on DVD. I'm going to start with my big gripe with this set. There is only one bonus feature and that is a commentary track on the first episode. Bang, that's it, everything else is just what aired. The commentary track features Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme talking about the series and the shooting of the pilot, but it's not enough. Fans who are shelling out for this boxed set want more! The only conceivable reason to include so little in this set is if by fans buying the set en masse there was a chance to bring the series back and thus production of the boxed set was rushed. Alas, every source I've found says that's not going to happen and there's virtually no chance of reviving the show as a straight-to-DVD series because the production (CAST!) cost was so high for the primary series run it would be virtually impossible to get everyone back for a DVD budget. So those looking for great DVD bonuses, this boxed set is a serious let down. That said, the series it contains is truly great.

Matt Albie, the great writer of the Friday night sketch comedy show Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is lured back to the show five years after he was fired from it. Accompanying him is now-executive producer Danny Tripp, a recovering drug addict who left at the same time Albie did. Mixing in with the production of the show come the business elements, the network brass in the form of NBS Chairman Jack Rudolph and network president Jordan McDeere. While Matt and Danny negotiate their sketches and personal lives between the network officials and the performers on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, they find that executive producing the show is causing serious fractures in both.

While the return of Matt and Danny to the series revives the sketch comedy show's ratings, Matt struggles to keep funny while breaking up with the lead on the show, Harriet Hayes. Matt is antagonized by cast member Simon Stiles to bring more black performers or writers onto the show and is generally well-liked by the other big star of the show, Tom Jeter. While Matt tends to focus on the comedy and the performers, Danny focuses on getting clearances from the network and getting the attention of Jordan McDeere.

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip certainly sounds lame when looked at from a plot point of view. The show is, quite simply, about the behind-the-scenes antics of the production staff and performers on a Saturday Night Live type show. Unlike Saturday Night Live (well, actually, quite like the current incarnation of the sketch comedy series), Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (the real one, not the comedy show by the same name occasionally glimpsed on the series) is not funny. It's a drama and while there are certainly comedic element, this is not a comedy. It is often funny the way The West Wing's early seasons were funny, through snappy dialogue and wordplay. But beyond that, the situations are often dark and moody.

As a result, the show may alienate some viewers with its occasionally oppressive tone. In the course of the twenty-two episodes, Matt and Danny's politically motivated firing is regularly mentioned, Matt and Harriet break up and he torments himself over it, Matt ends up on drugs, Danny is constantly rejected by Jordan and Jack comes under siege for airing unedited footage of the War In Iraq. As well, Tom's brother is captured by terrorists, the writing staff leaves en masse and Simon creates a public relations nightmare. Bad things happen to the characters of Studio 60. . . but they certainly are compelling to watch. Here is who the principle characters are:

Matt Albie - Returning to the show as head writer and executive producer, Matt is trying to make political statements constantly. This puts him frequently in hot water with the Network and he relies on his friendship with Danny to keep him out of trouble. He has an on-again, off-again relationship with Harriet, though he clearly pines for her. It does not take long before many of the people around him realize that most of his writing greatness came from trying to impress her,

Danny Tripp - A recovering drug addict, he returns to Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip as an executive producer and is now forced to negotiate most of the series with network executives Jack Rudolph and Jordan McDeere. He is instantly drawn to Jordan and while he keeps his friendship with Matt a priority, he begins to pursue her with a single-minded devotion, especially after he learns she is pregnant,

Jordan McDeere - Newly minted NBS president, her first act is to replace Studio 60's executive producer when he has an on-air meltdown. She is awkward with most people and does not have a lot of friends, which makes it difficult for her in social situations, but a shark in negotiations. Reporting only to Jack and his superiors, she is surprised to find she is pregnant after she is dumped by a jerk, but decides to have the baby, which leads Danny to begin pursuing her,

Harriet Hayes - Arguably the love of Matt's life, she previously broke his heart by dating another one of the writers, who is intent on luring her back now that she and Matt are broken up again. She is a devout Christian and a conservative, which leads to many clashes between her and Matt,

Tom Jeter - The somewhat nerdy but very popular cast member on Studio 60, he has a brother serving in Afghanistan and while he does many antiwar sketches, he tries never to insult the soldiers. He falls for one of the few writers to stick around after the two main writers leave and his life is complicated when a big fan wants a date and his brother is captured overseas,

Simon Stiles - The most outspoken of the big three performers, he never shies away from a fight or controversy. He becomes disgusted with how white the writer's room is and scouts with Matt to a local comedy club where they find Darius, who Simon antagonizes for more edgy work once he is hired,

Cal - The director for the show, he has problems like losing animals brought to the set,

and Jack Rudolph - Chairman of NBS, he is upset when Jordan brings back Matt and Danny, but pleased when the show is a success. Desperate to get the Network's ratings higher and more cash flowing in, he is suddenly under siege when a news segment featuring unedited footage from Iraq includes a soldier swearing in the wake of a surprise bombing and the massive fine the FCC leverages against the network for that.

It is worth noting that Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip exists in an alternate real world that more closely resembles our world. To rephrase: this is a fictional present day with all other things being equal. Thus, The West Wing is referenced as a television show in the series and this series does not occur in the same universe as The West Wing. The reason this is relevant is that it leads to one of the strengths and weaknesses of the series. Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip is deeply critical of the handling of the War In Iraq and the Bush Administration. Brief segments of the comedy on the fictional sketch show illustrate a contempt for the way the so-called conservatives have seized control of the government. This series is a wonderful example of the importance of free speech and the consequences of it.

Unfortunately, it also makes the series a bit dated. Pick it up now! It's relevant, it's witty and it's sharp and timely. While it will remain witty in perpetuity, the other factors of the series will not persist.

What will is that the very well-developed characters are portrayed by an amazing cast and the guest cast on this series is equally impressive. Cameos featuring musical guests Sting, Corrine Bailey Rae, Natalie Cole, Sheryl Crow, and Macy Gray lend the feeling that the show the series is about is very real. There are also cameos by guest hosts for the sketch comedy show that include Felicity Huffman, Rob Reiner, Lauren Graham, Howie Mandel, Masi Oka, Jason Alexander and Allison Janney which is a pretty impressive line-up for a show that was almost always on the verge of cancellation!

But the main cast is what sells the show and they are, one and all, truly fantastic. Nate Corddry and Sarah Paulson impress me right off the bat in roles that give me a baseline for their future performances (this was the first thing I had seen either of them in). D.L. Hugley and Matthew Perry (Simon and Matt) illustrate they can break through their typecasting from previous successful comedies. Steven Weber plays serious like I've never seen him before! Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield (Danny and Cal) play dramatically different roles than they had on The West Wing. And Amanda Peet is so good as the professional and awkward Jordan McDeere that I'm finally ready to forgive her for The Whole Ten Yards. That's saying a lot! The truth is, Aaron Sorkin and the other executive producers of the series did some brilliant casting and created a wonderful outlet for some remarkably talented performers!

Sadly, this set is all we have until Sorkin decides to write again. Just so long as he doesn't use Kari Matchett, he ought to have another legitimate, popular hit, which despite the quality of this series, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip never was.

For other works by Aaron Sorkin, please check out my reviews of:
Sports Night
The West Wing
Charlie Wilson's War
The Social Network

8/10

For other television series reviews, please visit my index page! There you will find organized lists of all I have reviewed, updated daily!

© 2010, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Return To Form (And Perfection) For The Bartlet Administration With The West Wing - The Complete Fourth Season!

The Good: Exceptional acting, plots and characters
The Bad: None, it's back in fine form! (Some more DVD extras would have been nice)
The Basics: Coming out of the slight rut of season three, season four returns the Bartlet Administration to an uncluttered story of great politics and characters.


It seems lately the show I keep crowing about to all of my friends and family is The West Wing. Not since I was blown away by Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Sports Night have I spent so much time recommending a television show to others. The West Wing is completely worth it and if by the time the fourth season came around, you weren't watching it, the DVD presentation of The West Wing - The Complete Fourth Season offers possibly the final time in the series where it is easy to leap into the story and not be lost or feel like one is picking the story up too late.

President Jed Bartlet continues his campaign for re-election while his staff works toward the same goal. Bartlet, under stress for the assassination he commissioned at the end of the prior season, is given a huge boost in his confidence as Josh and Toby encourage a return to idealism about making college more affordable. The president storms to an easy and decisive victory over Ritchie, which almost immediately forms a conundrum for Sam, who finds himself leaving the Administration on a mission of political suicide. As the season progresses, the second term becomes about a quest to end a genocide in the African nation of Equatorial Kundu and the agenda of the Administration that comes to a crashing halt with the events of the season finale.

The fourth season of The West Wing is cleverly engaging, balancing well the political and the personal lives and events of the main characters with the political topics being explored by the series. On the plot front, the story brilliantly exposes the consequences of prior actions without ever being so insular as to prevent new viewers from understanding what is going on. But like all great television - especially the serialized type - this season focuses on characters. Here is how the fourth season finds the principle characters:

Donna Moss - After being stranded in Indiana, Donna discovers she voted for the wrong person for President and ends up swapping votes with a potential new beau,

Sam Seaborn - After masterminding much of the President's re-election victory, Sam finds himself in an awkward position when a promise to the widow of a dead candidate comes back to haunt him when the dead candidate unexpectedly wins the California 47th Congressional seat. Sam leaves to run in what is ultimately a fool's errand,

Leo McGarry - Holding together the staff becomes difficult as Leo works to conceal the hand he played in having the Qumar Defense Minister killed,

Abbey Bartlet - Supports Jed, even as she realizes his health is continuing to fail,

Will Bailey - Having successfully engineered a victory for a dead candidate, Sam puts Will up for his old job and he and Toby begin a partnership,

Charlie Young - Continues to assist the President but finds his attention wandering quite a bit toward Zoey,

Josh Lyman - Surviving being stranded in Indiana, Josh continues to engineer the President's re-election strategy, finds himself aiding Donna in getting her a relationship, and learns one of his old heroes is anything but,

Toby - Engineers a strategy for the President to support working families and their desire to send children to college. He then finds himself pursuing his ex-wife, who is now pregnant with twins . . . of his,

C.J. Cregg - Still reeling from the death threats on her life at the climax of the prior season, C.J. finds herself surprised when Danny Concannon returns with theories about the death of the Qumari Defense Minister and her father dying from Alzheimer's,

and President Josiah Bartlet - Wins re-election while combating his M.S. and soon finds himself policing the world when genocide in Kundu trumps his domestic agenda. All of that comes to a powerful head when Zoey graduates from college and a domestic incident occurs that changes everything.

What's great about The West Wing - especially in the fourth season - is how principled the characters are. Following the uncharacteristic desperate measures Bartlet takes in the climax of the third season, the episodes take on a renewed tone of moralism with the fights the Administration takes on truly being the good fights needed to benefit the majority of Americans. The strength of watching this season is compromised by the reality we live in. Indeed, nothing is likely to disappoint viewers of this boxed set more than turning their television sets off; being wrenched back from a reality where the United States combats genocide and deals thoughtfully with its citizenry to . . . well, what we have now, can be devastating to one's health.

In truth, though, that is the power of the best forms of entertainment and The West Wing certainly qualifies as both entertaining and enlightening. Episodes like "Swiss Diplomacy" remind the viewer of the potentials of the world while creating an entertaining environment to debate the merits of humanitarian aid to nations hostile to the United States. Even the struggles that come up between Abbey Bartlet and her aides (most notably, Josh's ex-girlfriend from season three Amy) remind the viewer of the differences between having an activist First Lady and the prior individual to occupy the post.

As with the previous seasons, the acting in this set is phenomenal. Alison Janney stands out this season for her work in such episodes as "The Long Goodbye." She continually sells C.J. as a vital, resourceful character who dominates almost every scene she is in over the hours of this season.

But that's the joy of entertainment; it whisks us away from the world we have into one we might like to have and The West Wing - The Complete Fourth Season does that quite wonderfully. The DVD boxed set is a little light on extras, but the commentary tracks are decent as are the few featurettes. Unlike a lot of effects-intense series' there is little bonus material to feature and the producers of the boxed set give a good attempt to make the set a value.

Anyone who likes great drama will find something love in this set, especially as the series progressed toward the season finale. It's clever, the dialogue is fast-paced and smart and the transfers look good on DVD. This is truly a must-own series, with this season being a great investment for anyone who wants to watch stories that will inform, entertain and effect the viewer.

For other seasons works by Aaron Sorkin, please check out my reviews of:
Sports Night
The West Wing - The Complete Series
Charlie Wilson's War
The Social Network

10/10

For other television program reviews please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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