‘The Newsroom’ season 3: Aaron Sorkin … apologizes?
Is this what happens when you berate one of the most brilliant minds in entertainment? If so, then we would like to start lambasting anyone that was cruel to Aaron Sorkin over his first two seasons of “The Newsroom.” Despite the fact that the show has received Golden Globe nominations and Jeff Daniels even won an Emmy for it last year, he is still not happy with it and possibly the response to it. This is something that we even saw hints of when he re-shot the first two episodes of last season, which is the reason why the order was eventually bumped down to just nine episodes.
The headline today for Sorkin comes via the Tribeca Film Festival Monday, where he apologized to the audience over some of what he felt were the show’s failures … in particular the criticism that he was holding journalism up to a standard on this show, and was therefore using it to mock or educate those in the media to do their jobs better. Take a look, per Buzzfeed, at the full quote below:
“I’m going to let you all stand in for everyone in the world, if you don’t mind. I think you and I got off on the wrong foot with The Newsroom and I apologize and I’d like to start over … think that there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. I did not set the show in the recent past in order to show the pros how it should have been done. That was and remains the furthest thing from my mind. I set the show in the recent past because I didn’t want to make up fake news. It was going to be weird if the world that these people were living in did not in any way resemble the world that you were living in… Also, I wanted the option of having a terrific dynamic that you can get when the audience knows more than the characters do… So, I wasn’t trying to and I’m not capable of teaching a professional journalist a lesson. That wasn’t my intent and it’s never my intent to teach you a lesson or try to persuade you or anything.”
We suppose that the criticism was all a matter of interpretation, and may came out of the media’s own apparent sense of insecurity. From a personal standpoint, we viewed the show in some ways as idealism, but ultimately had no problem with that. Think of all the shows out there right now that feature anti-heroes, or people doing bad things, killing others, or cheating left and right. “The Newsroom” was different, and therefore interesting. While there were imperfections (Mackenzie and Will’s past), the show makes an effort to show that most of the characters are inherently good and what the best for themselves and for ACN. It’s just that some of the things that they do from time to time are wrong. (Even Jerry Dantana thought in his mind he was doing the right thing with Operation Genoa, even if he wasn’t.)
Olivia Munn recently confirmed that the final season of “The Newsroom” will be only six episodes, and that will be Sorkin’s opportunity to right whatever wrongs he feels like he has committed. Personally, though, we’d be thrilled if the show was more of the same.
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Photo: HBO