‘The Newsroom’ series finale review: A pregnancy, many flashbacks, and saying goodbye

“The Newsroom” is over, and we are sure that three-quarters of the internet tonight is going to opt to be just like they typically are with the show, but a million times worse. It’s almost like some sites that the show openly mocks want to revolt back be calling Aaron Sorkin a pretentious egomaniac who hates everything that has ever been on the internet

The reason that we feel like the series finale of the show was not what it could have been is not because the show is preachy, too talky, or focuses on trying to tell the news the right way. Instead, it relied a little too heavily on something that it didn’t need to do: Give us frequent flashbacks to before Mackenzie McHale was appointed the head of “News Night.” Ultimately, this was not information that we really needed, and we assumed much of this without really being shown it. The most maddening part of it was the mass conspiracy behind the college girl who asked that infamous question.

Aside from this, the rest of the episode was at least pretty solid. The funeral for Charlie contained some powerful moments, and through Mackenzie’s pregnancy, we learned that Will had a reason to really get his life on track.

Also, there were many happy endings for a variety of different issues. Mackenzie was named ACN News Director in the wake of Charlie’s death, and Jim was eventually given the “New Night” promotion. Don wants to stay close to Sloan, and Jim and Maggie are going to make a long-distance relationship work.

Basically, if the entire finale for this show was as good as the last twenty minutes, we’d say that this was something excellent. Instead, we feel like we had a whole lot of filler for a final season that was only six episodes. We were just hoping for so much more of an emotional gut-punch than a refresher of how these characters first got here.

With that being said, we still feel like this show is far better than many gave it credit for, and many of the poor reviews may come from our own industry being somewhat afraid of the mirror. Grade: B-.