Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom"

[Rev. Danny]

Wow, I feel bad for those audiences.   I imagine them sweating out those Big Important Speeches, whispering to each other through gritted teeth and force smiles, "What the hell are we supposed to do with this?  Applaud or something?"

You know what could be awesome? Playing the Married with Children style  "OOOOoooooOOOO"s over it.

[Amusing Pseudonym]

MWC style audience interaction would be an interesting addition all right.   Whistling at the female characters... calling out TO the male characters... ("Yeah! You go, Al !")

[Steve Lilley]

Say what you will about STUDIO 60, but I think it had by far the best version of his "Here we go, bitches" opening speech. I think that's one of the best things he's ever written, and he's probably annoyed he couldn't just use it again in THE NEWSROOM.

I read that it's only in the first season. I also read that they WERE filmed in front of a live audience and Sorkin and Schlamme had a big pain in the ass with staging the show for a live audience.

It does disappear completely after awhile. I didn't know they were in front of a live audience, though. Are you sure? Because it's really, really not shot that way. The stages are clearly built as if they were, because you can get a wide establishing on every set and everything is kind of aimed at the camera, but they still break into singles in almost every scene the way a single camera would.

But it was ABC in the late 90s. You're probably right.

[DerickA]

I love when someone from the audience would shout "Go, Al!". What other TV show had that kind of ambiance with it.

I also have perfected the "Walk into a room, start to speak, pause and wait a long time for pretend applause to die down" action. Theres a lot of faces. A lot of pointing to where you just came from. And a lot of hand gestures.

[Wolfe]

Back in the '90s, I really wanted to be in a MWC studio audience. It was high up on the bucket list. But it was not to be.

[DerickA]

In interviews, the cast said the bleachers were like a Raiders game.

[Brandon]

I didn't know they were in front of a live audience, though. Are you sure? Because it's really, really not shot that way.

I don't think it was. There's a story, I believe, in the behind the scenes documentary on the 10th Anniversary DVD where they were talking about how the network executives were insisting upon a traditional network run-through where they just do the show for the executives, but because it wasn't shot that way they ran the whole show, but with the execs having to run back and forth between locations.

You could maaaaybe have an audience somewhere for the in-studio stuff, but not really anywhere else. I may be completely wrong, though.

Re whoever was talking about Sports Night being Sorkin's weakest pilot: I've watched the pilot of Sports Night and West Wing in the last couple months, and I think Sports Night beats it out by just by a tiiiiny margin. West Wing has a bit more breathing room, and more story beats to get across, but the Sports Night pilot is pretty funny and interesting from moment one. It still doesn't quite look like anything else. Casey's speech at the end, to me, was more about how he was frustrated with athletes being shitty role models because he realized he's been a shitty role model for his kid.

Another thing super cut guy missed: Ex-wives named Lisa.

[DerickA]

I think WEST WING is better. It would go STUDIO 60, WEST WING, NEWSROOM, SPORTS NIGHT. The context in which the characters are filibustering is make or break for me. Having actual stuff be on the line gives it more creedance and comedy people are definitely blow hardish. But I listened to a LOT of sports radio and sports commentary from my elders as a kid and it just didn't click. I think it could, but Sorkin was trying to fit something that didn't into the show.

[Steve Lilley]

There's a story, I believe, in the behind the scenes documentary on the 10th Anniversary DVD where they were talking about how the network executives were insisting upon a traditional network run-through where they just do the show for the executives, but because it wasn't shot that way they ran the whole show, but with the execs having to run back and forth between locations.

That's hilarious. I have that Shout Factory DVD set, but I don't think I've ever gone through the special features.

I know a lot of people hate the rest of the series, but I think the STUDIO 60 pilot is phenomenal. The only thing that I think hurts it is during Judd Hirsch's awesome opening speech, they had to end it with him saying something that he couldn't say on television so the control room could cut away, but obviously he has to be able to say it on television because we're watching a show. So that's the only part that I think doesn't *quite* work right. But the rest is completely sound.

I remember NBC promos from back in the day for it and for THE WEST WING being basically just the opening pre-credits teaser for the pilot and the date the show was premiering.

[Dobbin]

Watch this. It is devastating:
 
http://youtu.be/S78RzZr3IwI

After a certain point, you feel bad for him that people are watching this.

[Steve Lilley]

I feel bad for someone right now, but it isn't Aaron Sorkin

[Brandon]

I know a lot of people hate the rest of the series, but I think the STUDIO 60 pilot is phenomenal. The only thing that I think hurts it is during Judd Hirsch's awesome opening speech, they had to end it with him saying something that he couldn't say on television so the control room could cut away, but obviously he has to be able to say it on television because we're watching a show. So that's the only part that I think doesn't *quite* work right. But the rest is completely sound.

Gah, yeah, you're right, I think. The opening of that is so fucking good, and the pilot makes it seem like it'll be amazing.

Then you get to episode 2.
Then episode 3.
Then your brother is standing in the middle of Afghanistan.

There was so much promise, but he managed to make comedy seem like the least fun thing in the world. I also thought that once he brought Mark McKinney in the "comedy" might have gotten better with him on board. Turns out I was wrong.

I think, all told, about ten of them range from great to pretty good, the rest are pretty painful. That last run of five or so, after they were taken off the air for a few months, wound up being the most solid run of the whole series. He stopped trying to jam West Wing style stories into what was simply the wrong context. If every episode had been closer to the Alison Janney episode the series might have done, if not much better, at least not felt like such a colossal misfire.

[Dalton]

STUDIO 60 was the worst.  I recall some god awful thing where they were in a small town jail with John Goodman as the cartoon character local sheriff.  Just harrible.

[Dobbin]

It really was the worst.

[Steve Lilley]

I was JUST going to bring up the Alison Janney episode. It's also, ironically, the one that the three leads aren't in. But yeah, it's the best.

After an amazing opening, it had a rough patch. But I think he was slowly starting to find the show right around that time, and then they got canceled. So the last four were specifically wrapping everything up. And they're good, but I don't think they're indicative of where he was necessarily going because everyone's arcs are so truncated. Though, to be fair, everyone's arc is also tied up in a relatively satisfied way.

I think if he had just figured it out a little bit earlier, and if the show weren't so damn expensive, it would have gotten renewed. And if it made it over that hurdle to season 2, it would probably still be on today.

STUDIO 60 was the worst.  I recall some god awful thing where they were in a small town jail with John Goodman as the cartoon character local sheriff.  Just harrible.

I mean, you're not wrong. Those early episodes have a lot of pretty bad things in them. There's Goodman's character, "YOUR LITTLE BROTHER IS IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN," the "We need a black writer" episode. So on and so forth.

It really did get better after that, though.