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July 3, 2012 5:34 PM
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Aaron Sorkin's Female Trouble: The Women of 'The Newsroom'
"The Newsroom" version of this dynamic is between newly energized cable news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and his former love and supposed ace executive producer MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), and it's even more off balance than the relationship between exes Matt and Harriet on "Studio 60," colored as it was by its parallels to a certain real-life TV writer and a performer he used to date. Mac, we learn in the first episode, is the one who shook Will out of his complacent stupor by offering him inspirational prompts on notebook paper from the audience of a live talk (he thinks he imagined her there). She broke his heart by cheating on him, and he's still obviously in love with her, and so he punishes her for coming back by arranging her contract so that he has the option of firing her at the end of every week and, in next week's episode, having his dates meet him at the office where she can see.
As we've moved from "Sports Night" up through to "The Newsroom," the men in these relationships have tended more and more toward being right all the time, while increasingly the women should have known better -- either than to have once walked away or to be waiting for something to happen instead of making a move. Mac has been so far the worst off of the bunch, alternating between being Will's conscience and his emotional punching bag, between providing him inspirational speeches ("Be the moral center of this show, be the integrity!" she urges toward the end of this past Sunday's "News Night 2.0") and humiliating both of them by accidentally emailing the entire company the reason they broke up. Mac's ditziness gets amplified in the character of assistant-turned-associate producer Maggie (Alison Pill), in whom Mac tellingly sees a younger version of herself and who, in the same episode, also ends having a sexual misadventure aired to her coworkers. That's not an issue -- the issue is that it comes out after Maggie neglects to reveal her past relationship with someone with whom she's been assigned to do a pre-interview in preparation for air, itself a serious professional mishap even before she messes it up and costs the show an exclusive.
We're only two episodes into "The Newsroom," and it's got enough raw potential to be something much better -- Mortimer and Pill are proven gifted actresses, and Munn's shown significant comedic spark on screen before in otherwise unremarkable dreck like "I Don't Know How She Does It." They deserve deeper roles than this -- especially in a series that starts off with Will lecturing a college girl and seems to have never quite escaped that vein. I still enjoy Sorkin's dialogue, even the extra-sanctimonious variety seen too often in this series, and his faith in work as a haven remains moving even as the depictions of the relationships on which that work is built have curdled. This doesn't need to be and shouldn't be a show about great men and the women who appreciate them -- for the benefit of the people watching and for those on screen, we could all use something richer.
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10 Comments
anne adams | February 3, 2013 5:21 AM
the newsroom is the greatest show I hav ever seen !!!!!!!
JulieM | July 23, 2012 6:27 PM
My 20-year-old son and I love this show. We have great conversations about the characters and the writing. He became a fan after watching West Wing - his and my favorite tv show of all time. Be critical all you want. That is your job. But there are a bunch of us who are just enjoying the hour we get to spend with The Newsroom.
kayo | July 23, 2012 11:29 AM
Even up the score. I want to see one of the male characters in the newsroom freaked out and breathing into a crumpled paper bag. More breathless, harried, needy, klutzy, adorable babymen, please!
blaine101 | July 22, 2012 1:30 PM
I can't stomach Sorkin's work anymore - it was clear all the way back to A Few Good Men that he can't write smart women. They're no more than adorable (but stupid) pets to him. And now he's fired all his writing staff except for his lackey ex-girlfriend. He's had his day, his day is gone, and now his last name has become a cliche for hacks who rest on their laurels. Get your walker, Mr. Sorkin, and toddle off to retirement.
RT | July 5, 2012 11:12 PM
Hmmmm, I wonder?
Where are the real examples of strong women actually existing, as the present writer believes, to have been misrepresented in "The Newsroom," by Mr. Aaron Sorkin? I've veiwed one episode, 2.0, which to me portrayed a few simple but sensitive gender/work realities. Life ain't always pretty ladies and fiction cannot and should not recreate reality. Reverse chauvinism is telling the "Rest of the story" here.
Tom | July 5, 2012 8:30 AM
This article is such a load of bullshit. Sorkin is one of the few males writers who can write strong, independent women. You guys are really nit-picking here.
Warren | July 4, 2012 4:58 PM
He should just "think of a man, then take away reason and accountability"
HarveyCo | July 4, 2012 12:49 PM
As a viewer who loved (conditionally) "Sports Night" and "West Wing," and loathed "Studio 60" more and more with each successive episode, I find that "The Newsroom" goes down much much easier if I view it through the shoebox pin-hole Louis CK described on Bill Simmons' podcast last week.
Basically he said he reveres the great writing Sorkin has done, but basks with equal pleasure in bad Sorkin writing: "I anticipated with more glee watching that show [Studio 60] than any show I ever liked."
Watching "The Newsroom" with that filter helps me ease through the very apt gender issues you described, as well troubling viewer questions like, "Are they really having that argument that loudly around that many employees?" and "Is she really sitting at the bar that visibly drunk, and is he really going to skulk right up and re-start their earlier discussions?" I'm now free to ignore questions that make me wonder if the creator has ever existed in an actual workplace, where reporters might shout, "Hey, I'm doing a phoner, can you please stop shouting about an old college hook-up?"
Divorcing myself from any expectation of reality really allows me to enjoy the nuances of the dialogue.