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captainsblogThe reaction of General Internet Chatter to this week's season finale of The Newsroom can be summed up in two words:
"Incredibly disappointing," said the Daily Beast.
Australia's The Age checks in with "reeks a little of desperation."
If you're fixing to not be spoiled, you'd better not click either of those links,....
because they reveal that the finale wasn't about The Story (any of them, and there were many), but was all about The Love. Will finally ended two full seasons of plain-on-their-faces, mutually unrequited love by proposing to Mac and having it accepted. Sloan figured out that Don loves her- though not in a marryin' way for now. Jim clearly loves a bunch of somebodies, and wove those loves together to help out Mac in a trivial way and help out Maggie's mental health in a major way.
The online resistance, especially to Sorkin's choice of soundtracking this ending with a "soft rock version of 'Let My Love Open the Door,'" is all about this focus on romance at the expense of hard news.
As Pete Townshend said himself more than once: Bollocks.
I loved it, and I also understood it.
For two seasons, pent-up office emotion (including, but by no means limited to office romance) has been all over this series. Will and Mac have been doing the Tracy-Hepburn dance every week for over 20 episodes. The interpersonal dynamics have crisscrossed the newsroom among 300 other permutations of major characters. This ending paves the way to, well, ending a lot of the pent-up part.
Remember Moonlighting? For years, David and Maddie played at the Consummation Game, reaching the point where Us magazine (by then among the trashiest of the tab mags, forgetting its founding by The New York Times Company) came out wit a cover saying "Do it, Already!" And finally, they did- in an episode which they tried to title "The Big Bang" but were forced by the censors to change to "I am Curious...Maddie." Some think the show headed downhill after that, but given the stars' outgrowing the box, it was likely not to last, anyway. It removed the elephant from the room, though, and let the writers move on to stories that mattered more.
I am hopeful that Sorkin will do the same now that MacMacMc is now, officially, what she's always been- and that the tension can move back to the stories on the air rather than the whispers in the control room.
"Incredibly disappointing," said the Daily Beast.
Australia's The Age checks in with "reeks a little of desperation."
If you're fixing to not be spoiled, you'd better not click either of those links,....
because they reveal that the finale wasn't about The Story (any of them, and there were many), but was all about The Love. Will finally ended two full seasons of plain-on-their-faces, mutually unrequited love by proposing to Mac and having it accepted. Sloan figured out that Don loves her- though not in a marryin' way for now. Jim clearly loves a bunch of somebodies, and wove those loves together to help out Mac in a trivial way and help out Maggie's mental health in a major way.
The online resistance, especially to Sorkin's choice of soundtracking this ending with a "soft rock version of 'Let My Love Open the Door,'" is all about this focus on romance at the expense of hard news.
As Pete Townshend said himself more than once: Bollocks.
I loved it, and I also understood it.
For two seasons, pent-up office emotion (including, but by no means limited to office romance) has been all over this series. Will and Mac have been doing the Tracy-Hepburn dance every week for over 20 episodes. The interpersonal dynamics have crisscrossed the newsroom among 300 other permutations of major characters. This ending paves the way to, well, ending a lot of the pent-up part.
Remember Moonlighting? For years, David and Maddie played at the Consummation Game, reaching the point where Us magazine (by then among the trashiest of the tab mags, forgetting its founding by The New York Times Company) came out wit a cover saying "Do it, Already!" And finally, they did- in an episode which they tried to title "The Big Bang" but were forced by the censors to change to "I am Curious...Maddie." Some think the show headed downhill after that, but given the stars' outgrowing the box, it was likely not to last, anyway. It removed the elephant from the room, though, and let the writers move on to stories that mattered more.
I am hopeful that Sorkin will do the same now that MacMacMc is now, officially, what she's always been- and that the tension can move back to the stories on the air rather than the whispers in the control room.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 12:56 pm (UTC)The story is always about the characters. Even the news is.