Trailer for The Newsroom: S3

My favorite example of this is right at the end of "All Good Things". Picard looks around the table, teary-eyed: This is the best crew he ever served with, and he is proud of every one of them. He should have joined them a long time ago; he knows now that he was always welcome. That feeling of belonging is -

Suddenly, he stops short. "Wait a minute." he says. "If we are all here... who is flying my ship?"

Fade to black.

It's actually a theme in real life newsrooms. The majority of my close friends are people I've worked with and they outnumber my non-teevee friends by a pretty wide margin (though my close non-teevee friendships go back longer than I've been in the business). Due to the nature of the job many, many people have most of their friendships at work because it's easier to relate to people who do the same thing you do. When I talk to my non-teevee friends about my job, they either think it's "Really Cool!" or their eyes glaze over.

It's a cheesy plot device, though. IRL, sometimes not all your "besties" can get the same day off. Somebody's got to put on the show.

During the wedding ceremony, I was expecting to see the control room crew in the pews.

Wow. The info description on my cable provider for the finale contains a big potential spoiler, something that could even happen in tonight's episode.

Makes sense structurally - crisis and resolution this week leaves time for the denouement and picking up the pieces (and no doubt jerking the heartstrings) in the finale.

Do Not Want to know until I watch it.

I hope my guess is wrong, but I bet it isn't.

As @shootER said, I think there is a "Truth in Television" aspect to this. Assuming a 40-hour work week, you're going to spend almost as much time with your coworkers as with your family, and that's assuming everyone in the family has a similar schedule and spends most of their off-hours together. It makes sense that a lot of coworkers form pretty strong bonds. Work would get pretty boring if they didn't.

Where it gets less realistic is when ensemble shows fall into the rut of "these six or seven people are best friends with each other and basically no one else." Famously parodied in "Friends" when there's a knock at the door and the six main characters look around the room and count who's there, looking perplexed at the idea that anyone else would visit.

It makes a little more sense in "Star Trek" type situations, where the main characters are isolated from others by distance, or in "The West Wing" where their jobs demand 14-hour days and constant devotion, and the only character who starts out married ends up divorced a few episodes into Season 1 because of how much time his job demands.

^I did have that experience with a strawhat company in my ill-spent youth, and I'm still friends with many of those people today, 30+ years later.

Yep.

That one had some major structural issues, though.

Some of Sorkin's weakest dialogue is written when he tries to be impartial to another side, then just knocks it down anyway. The rape victim got that treatment this time, much like the pro-lifers got shorthanded back in the first season when McAvoy, pro-lifer and core-valued Republican, got off the hook of having to argue against Sorkin's worldview by virtue of stupid pro-lifers throwing a rock through a window. In this case, rather than discussing the problem with false allegations directly, he had Don forget his best arguments, by virtue of the poor girl having gone through too much already, thus robbing the victim from a chance to answer those arguments. Very weak.

Clearly, he knows more about debating your working class alcoholic father in your own head; those scenes were excellent, and might have said more about class than Sorkin even knew himself.

As for removing your best actor and most interesting character, at least Sorkin has the good judgement to do so in the penultimate episode, rather than dropping him down a cliff in the mines of Moria during part I.

Clearly, he knows more about debating your working class alcoholic father in your own head; those scenes were excellent, and might have said more about class than Sorkin even knew himself.

As for removing your best actor and most interesting character, at least Sorkin has the good judgement to do so in the penultimate episode, rather than dropping him down a cliff in the mines of Moria during part I.

Whoa! You just Godzilla ALL over huh?

Someone explain to me how I've become @Patty's focus of attention here?

You're not, I was just goofing on you. What, you don't like Godzilla?

Ok, I fell for it. Game to you, but as far as comparisons go, Godzilla wouldn't be my favorite role model.

Sorry.... But I love him! How can you not!?

I've always been more partial to butterflies, myself.

But now I see a Sorkinesque Godzilla parody in our future, and it isn't pretty.

I don't know why, but other than some of the zoom-happy shots, the cinematography in this episode reminded me a a lot of The West Wing. Some scenes really had that "look" compared to others.

And they did it with Jim and Maggie.

And as much as I enjoyed Sloan's takedown of the web geek, she's a terrible news anchor. That clipped delivery she adopts when she's in front of a camera is terrible.


I still don't understand why tv and movie productions can't seem to hire consultants to teach actors playing news cameramen/women how to properly use their gear. Most productions get it wrong and this show is no exception. All the photographers looking for Snowden in the airport in last night's episode had their tripod attachment plates attached to the camera instead of the tripod, which makes no sense at all. Most tripod shipping containers require you to remove the plate so the tripod will fit in the container, but you just put the plate in the case separately, not on the camera (which is a carry-on item due to its value and fragility). With the plate on the camera, you can't shoulder mount the rig (at least not easily, because it covers the shoulder pad) and no one who'd spent more than ten minutes using a camera would ever do that IRL.

Another thing...is security at Moscow airports really that nonexistent?

No. It's non-effective, but it's very much present, you just have to keep paying them off (no matter whether there's any reason for security concerns or not). I am guessing that in Snowden's case, even when he didn't show up himself, they'd have some more effective and definitely even more visible security going on, though.

I was just wondering how Maggie and Jim were able to swap tickets with the honeymoon couple without someone swooping down on them in the waiting area.

The Maggie/Jim thing was bound to happen, I suppose, and frankly they deserve each other. Professor Ethics would have called Maggie on her lack of same, so he was clearly just a placeholder.

And speaking of ethics, morality, guilt - how ever you define it - there'll be plenty to go around in the final episode because of Charlie. Sorkin again borrowing from himself (Josh's guilt when his father dies while he's on the campaign trail with Bartlet). I just hope there's more to the final episode than weepy funeral scenes. At the very least, Pruitt needs to be dropped down a manhole (Enter Leona, resplendant?).

One thing I did not see coming was the identity of Will's cellmate. Had to rewind to his first "entrance" to figure out how Sorkin was able to pull that off without doing a Ghost of Christmas Past number. Clever bastard...

Yeah. Story-wise, this works, as they'll just bribe their way out of it, but scene-wise, we should have seen it.

This episode is getting savaged by the critics. I can't say I disagree with much of the criticism, especially considering it's the penultimate episode. The more I think about it, the sloppier it seems, which is a shame.

Biggest complaint here? "Oh, the informant killed herself, so Will can go home now." Deus ex machina should be done rarely and subtly. This was lead-footed. And we'll probably end up with a bunch of hand-wringing from Mack added to her guilt about Charlie.

And Pruitt is a grotesque. This isn't The Office.

Judging from some stuff I've read (including the link I put on your Facebook wall), we haven't seen the last of Charlie Skinner.

I just hope it's in the form of flashbacks and not a Mrs. Landingham-like "vision".

^It's a great interview. You should post it here as well.

I've been a fan of Waterston's since The Killing Fields. He's a stage-trained, thinking actor, and that interview shows a glimpse of the thought process.

Postmortem:The Newsroom Star Breaks Down That Shocking Death

So, thoughts on how it ends?

I don't know.

I could see Will, Mac, and the main staffers all quitting after the funeral because they don't want to work for the new owner and his philosophy. I could see Leona and Reese somehow getting the network back, but I'm not sure how they'd do it.

Knowing Sorkin I expect a hopeful ending, though, not a realistic one.

Al Gore...something something...Al Jazeera?

Yeah, I'm pretty much counting on a hopeful ending, too. Then again, a realistic one would fit the cautionary tale he's been telling all along. "See, America? Reporting the news has turned into becoming the news. Is this what you want?" Spitting in the ocean, but a valiant effort.