Everything Nice I Can Say About "The Newsroom"

It isn't often that the perennial parental advice, "If you can't say something nice, you shouldn't say it at all" is observed when discussing television. A cottage industry of bloggers and Twitter personalities has risen up around snarking on series that fall short of our gold standard. Few shows have taken the brunt of critical backlash as mercilessly over the last few years as The Newsroom.

Much of the criticism has been well deserved. Aaron Sorkin's singular voice has moved from charming to indulgent since the days of The West Wing. With age, his ability to write the young and the female has grown progressively more out of touch while the country has grown more progressive. His tendency toward the grandiose, while understandable in a White House drama, feels odd and self-important in the Newsroom. Even the few staunch defenders of the show have trouble arguing that Will McAvoy's "mission to civilize" isn't (at least partially) Sorkin's thinly veiled attempt to snipe at everything he finds wrong with society.

While Sorkin believed he was writing this:

Soon, we won't have Aaron Sorkin and his surrogate to bat around anymore. No longer will we be able to make fun of the show that never seemed to realize that hindsight is 20/20. HBO has given a final six-episode mercy killing to the series that has launched a thousand hilarious recaps. Before we send The Newsroom and its mission to civilize off to Valhalla on a burning pyre of scathing Twitter takedowns, let's prepare for the third and final season, which airs tonight, in as civilized as way as possible. Why? Because, damn it, that's how Will McAvoy would have wanted it. Here is Everything Nice I Can Say About The Newsroom.

Brenden Gallagher is a contributing writer. He tweets here.

Detractors of Sorkin like to talk about his dialog like it exists in a vacuum. "Sure, he writes great dialog, but ..." begin so many anti-Sorkin rants. Let's be real: there is no such thing as great dialog without other aspects supporting it. Though with each passing year, Sorkin shows add more strawmen to their roster of flat characters, the flow of his shows is impressive. Yes, The Newsroom lacks the walk-and-talk momentum that Tommy Schlamme lent to the West Wing house style, but the chaotic choreography of The Newsroom does have its charms.

There is something lovely about watching plots large and small converge during ACN broadcasts as the characters race around the newsroom trying to sort out all of their problems and pull off the night's broadcast. Though some of the issues—like Mackenzie worrying more about editing her Wikipedia page than being fired—are laughable out of context, in the flow of the show, each character's challenges, hang-ups, and neuroses add a piece to the fifth act Rube Goldberg machine that ends each episode. Even some of the most smarmy, grating episodes of the series have been bailed out by carefully crafted climaxes.

I don't know if you've heard, but The Newsroom has a woman problem.

We have historical records that tell us that Sorkin has met, spoken to, and even been intimate with females before, but the dialogue in The Newsroom is enough to make you doubt it. It is amazing just how many ways Sorkin manages to write women poorly. Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn) is the sexy nerd straight out of a GamerGater's wet dream (she's smart, hot, socially awkward, and cares about ethics in journalism). Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill) began as a hopelessly gaffe-prone youth who has developed into an emotionally scarred wreck who (gasp) cut her own hair after a traumatizing experience that left her emotional paralyzed. MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) is the self-possessed career woman who has inexplicably dedicated herself to winning back a guy who, yes, she cheated on, but has spent the ensuing years clinging desperately to a pathetic grudge against her.

Somehow, all three of these women turn in great performances.

Munn does solid work despite her material, owning her nerd-goddess role with gusto. Pill and Mortimer take things a step further. They play their roles as though they are in a constant debate with Sorkin's plot lines. They work episode in and episode out to ground their characters with thoughtful humanity despite their illogical behavior. The truthful moments they dig out of their characters reveal just how wooden Sorkin has written them, and demand better. We often talk about actors who rise to the level of their material. Just as often, we discuss performers who sink with the ship of their CBS multi-cam or overwrought AMC also-ran. Rarely do we get to see actors get better because of bad writing.

And whether or not you think The Newsroom works, I defy you to claim that these two characters are well written. Here's hoping that Pill and Mortimer find more comfortable landing spots for their next roles.

Sorkin works best in one of two modes. There is the kind of stories he is best known for, tales of important men trying to change the world. Moneyball, The Social Network, and Josiah Bartlett's best mic-dropping moments on The West Wing belong firmly in this camp of Sorkin's best. Sadly, Studio 60 and The Newsroom have taught us how grating Sorkin can be when he thinks his characters are more important than they actually are. There is another way Sorkin stories resonate though, and that is when he has characters fight tooth and nail for things that matter only to themselves. It's what made Sports Night sing, and helped The West Wing steer clear of puffed up self-importance.

In The Newsroom, Neal Sanpat (Dev Patel) fills this role admirably. Whether he is arguing for a piece on Bigfoot, attempting to un-forge a book jacket signature, or haggle with Wikipedia editors, Patel's character adds much needed comic relief to the series with sweet neurotic earnestness. Sometimes Sanpat is used as a device to dismiss things that are actually important (just not that important to Sorkin) like Anonymous, the Deep Web, and Occupy Wall Street, but when Neal's plots stick to the dogged pursuit of the ridiculous, Patel's mix of naiveté and determination provides a nice breather from the sheer weight of Sorkin's great men syndrome.

Credit must be given where credit's due. Vulture's Margaret Lyons first clued me in to Aaron Sorkin's passion for Dad Rock. Ever since, when I've been forced assigned to watch The Newsroom (our editors found out I have both a Dixie Chicks and Fleetwood Mac CD in my car and decided I was a natural fit), I've made a point to look past the self-important monologues and deep into the soundtrack.

I'm pretty sure my dad's vinyl collection should have gotten a co-writing credit on season 2 of The Newsroom. In those episodes packed with Van Morrison and Willie Nelson, I was transported, if only for the briefest moment, to my parents' deck, sipping pinot grigio from the box, wearing my comfiest sweatpants and loafers.

There are far worse places to be.

While Sorkin may be notorious for his complete lack of self-awareness, Jeff Daniels' performance as Will McAvoy has evolved with a nuanced touch. Though Daniels' performance was rewarded with an Emmy (calm down guys, Cranston won this year, it's okay), critics and audiences found the character smug and condescending because, well, that's how he was written. Throughout season two though, Daniels relied on his comic chops (the man did co-anchor Dumb and Dumber after all) to make the character more bearable.

Often in season two, McAvoy's grandstanding was played as bluster rather than enlightened speechifying. Rather than inspiring, his words fell flat, as Daniels played them for red-faced laughs rather than thoughtful admiration. It may be hard to believe for those who left The Newsroom behind in the middle of season one, but I actually laughed out loud on several occasions while watching this last season.

One of my favorite McAvoy moments of season two came when he was raging about not being able to find a leak in the office. He blustered through the newsroom, blowing his lid as everyone else tried to do their work and let the old man finish his rambling. "I know some of you have special relationships with your barista," McAvoy howled, "I don't understand that part of the world. I'm going to own somebody here. There's going to be a heartache tonight." There's physical comedy, that beautifully out of touch stodginess, and it all ends with a dad rock reference.

This is how I would like to remember Will McAvoy. The character is truly at his best as an blustering, confused, buffoon who wants to save the world.

The thing I will miss most about The Newsroom is Sorkin's complete lack of understanding of how the Internet works. Some of my favorite Sorkin web moments of Season 2:

- A Sex and the City fan fiction writer is tracked down with the help of a Foursquare check-in.

- Sloan Sabbith tries to use a retweet as a bribe.

- Will McAvoy, a public intellectual, googles "Will McAvoy hate" for the first time in late 2011.

- The line, "How many followers does she have? And retweets?" is uttered.

- Someone says, "It was picked up by BuzzFeed." without a hint of irony.

Watching The Newsroom this last couple years have been like getting the humor of my parents trying to use a smartphone without the pain of having to fix it for them. Sorkin is alternately dismissive and in awe of the Internet, and watching him wrestle the web until he's red in the face has been one of the great pleasures of The Newsroom. The Internet is Sorkin's white whale, and we get to watch the battle play out in sweet sweet GIFs.

Parody accounts usually spend their time stealing "bae" jokes from Tumblr or retweeting randos hawking weight loss pills into your timeline. Throughout the run of The Newsroom, @WillMcAvoyACN has been a bright spot on the bleak parody account landscape. The handle, run by an anonymous 30 year-old copywriter, has fit in seamlessly with the reporters from major outlets in many of our feeds, and while at first it attempted to parrot the voice of McAvoy, it's ultimately improved upon it. The account strikes the perfect balance between humor, insight, and outrage without being even 10 percent as pleased with itself as McAvoy the HBO character.

With The Newsroom coming to an end, this parody Twitter account is poised to outlast the series in terms of social relevance. If you want perfect microcosm of pop culture in 2014, you could start right there.

I know all the words to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I was one of only approximately 48 million high school seniors to dawn the beard and talis of Tevye in Fiddler On the Roof. So yes, I like musicals, but Aaron Sorkin? Aaron Sorkin fucking loves musicals.

There are as many musical theater references peppered throughout The Newsroom as there are moral ambiguities peppered throughout Into the Woods. Many times, they are completely out of context and amazingly unnecessary. Here's one from last season:

McAvoy: "There are eight Broadway musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In five minutes I need you to name them, the composer, lyricist, librettist, and source material, if any."

[Intern rushes off to Wikipedia.]

Skinner: "You make the interns learn musical theater history."

McAvoy: "You're welcome, America."

Gregory Jacob-Roseman, who likes musical theater more than me, but less than Sorkin, put together a rundown of some Sorkin's musical theater references. Though this was a valiant effort, I suspect that historians will be finding new musical theater references in The Newsroom long after ACN goes dark and Will McAvoy rides smugly off into the sunset.

Sam Waterston's Charlie Skinner is among the most rundown, hangdog performances ever to come to the small screen. It's shocking that he hasn't broken down and uttered one Glover-esque, "I'm getting to old for this shit!" after 20-plus episodes of The Newsroom. Skinner is tired of clueless oversight, he is tired of the mistakes of green journalists, he is tired of Will's ego, he is tired of Sloan's ego, he is tired of everyone else's ego, and he is just generally tired. Hell, he is probably tired of the limited bow tie selection at Bergdorf Goodman. Even though he plays this one note over and over again, Waterston's mastery of his craft infuses each scene with an infectious energy no matter how familiar they seem.

Of course, it shouldn't be hard for a man who was once Hamlet for Joe Papp to find something truthful playing "sick of all the bullshit" after years of Law & Order and The Newsroom.

Yes, Sorkin's belief that all we need is a few great men to save society is pretty obnoxious, but his optimism is welcome on this otherwise bleak television drama landscape. True Detective, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones—it's enough to make you pine for the cheery days of The Sopranos and The Wire. Sorkin's season endings are nothing if not pat, uniting couples as suddenly and vigorously as you might see in a Shakespeare comedy. But, there are few shows as hopeful as The Newsroom.

Despite his curmudgeonly tendencies, Sorkin really does believe that life can get better. He believes that sensible Republicans can take back a party hijacked by Tea Partiers. He believes that the right news outfit dedicated to real reporting can open people's eyes. He believes that love can make all of us defensive intellectual blowhards let our guard down long enough to tell each other how we feel and live happily ever after.

As a young man, it is annoying to watch an old man shake his fist and tell the Internet to get off of his lawn. But, if make it to old age with as much hope left in humanity as Sorkin has left despite watching the G.O.P continue to win midterm elections, that will be something of a victory.

Of course, I also hope I never call anyone "Internet Girl" either, but remember, we're here to highlight the positives.