The Newsroom [HBO - Spoilers]

Penn

Probably could have been better, and almost all of the flashbacks to how the team came together was really unnecessary as we knew it all from the very first episode anyway. But, as a way to end the series, could have been a much worse episode too. Only bit that really annoyed me was the singsong (amazing how they all knew the lyrics and how to play the song, especially Jim who just jumped right in at the middle).

Definitely enjoyed the series as a whole, and will rewatch it further down the line.

FloatingVoter

It was a wrap-up for the fans - who remembers what happened in the last ever episode of Friends / Cheers / MASH ? Sure, we all remember the cast getting together and pretending to like each other but as for a plotline to the final episode - nothing.
And The Newsroom was no Friends / Cheers / MASH. It was a failed experiment that had its moments. Jon Stewart delivers the real deal nightly on the Daily Show. With laughs in.

dogsears

KevIRL wrote: »

Terrible finale. Desperate self indulgeant stuff

Cool.

On another note - Joanna Gleason FTW! Liked seeing her. That was definitely for the West Wing fans.

errlloyd

My favorite scene was Neil coming back. Just the disdain he has for the new guy. The garage scene was nice too. Sadly it feels like a show cut short, I enjoyed it, I'd have watched another 3 seasons.

FlyingIrishMan

I thought it was a fine finale, not amazing, not bad. A little self indulgent, and the sing song seemed out of place, but everything else was fine. I liked the last minute of it where it just showed them doing the news the way they wanted to do it without any drama. They didn't pay enough attention to Neil coming back, his return scene was a good one, I liked the comment about why they would do it on overrated movies rather than underrated.
They didn't pay enough attention to Neil in the finale, he was pivotal to the plot of this season and his return was brushed under the rug with 20 seconds of screen time.

Penn wrote: »

Only bit that really annoyed me was the singsong (amazing how they all knew the lyrics and how to play the song, especially Jim who just jumped right in at the middle).

Pretty sure I heard Jim play a riff of the song in the earlier scene where he had the guitar, and we knew the kid knew it because Charlie said it, so really Will is the only one who we weren't told knew it beforehand, and it's not too hard to suspend the belief that he'd know a popular enough country song :P

squonk

Crappy end to a mediocre show. I was quite disappointed. The current season started off really well and led me to hope that they were finally getting it together to put out the show that everybody wanted to see all along. Then it lost it's way.... again. Last week was fairly meh and this finalé was schmaltzy and a real joke.

They've only had 3 short seasons so I think most of us are capable of remembering back to when most of the team came on board. If the show had ran for 10+ long seasons then a touch like that would have been very nice and a great payback for fans. In this scenario it was just filler.

The Johnny Cash scene was daft but it was a bit of fun. It really felt hokey though where everyone who showed up first just happened to be able to contribute, even the guy tapping on the wooden box. At least it saved us from more contrived dialogue so that, in itself, wasn't a bad thing.

Neil's scene was the standout for me. His comment about being ridiculed at first was good. He went out of his way to have himself ridiculed in fairness but that was down to poor writing.

So, finally, life goes on. Things have changed but things are still the same. I'm glad this show is now finally gone. It's a show that never really lived up to expectations. It's also a show that divided rather than united viewers. Personally I think it's good riddance and hopefully it'll cause Sorkin to pause for thought if he's given a show in the future.

Hyzepher

What was the point to Charlie's death or the ACN takeover? Even the whole leaked documents story was tame.

They had the opportunity to pick one main plot for the final season and finally show the purpose of the show but instead tried to be clever and artificially evoke some emotion out of the viewer that frankly wasn't there.

Peace

Christ that was an terrible ending to a show i really enjoyed.

They all seemed to have a good laugh about Charlie dying. The scene in the back of the limo was as if they were trying to make a friends death into a moment for witty banter dialogue.

The scene where everyone gathers around for a sign along was as someone else pointed out self indulgent tripe.

And then handing everyone career promotions, some of which were completely undeserved (that tool taking over as EP - seriously?), was a stupid way of trying to wrap up with giving everyone a happy feeling.

I really liked this show. I can't believe they'd go out with such a whimper.

My problem with the newsroom for me was that there wasn't enough episodes in it to really actually care about the characters.
All the flashbacks on the final episode, to be honest meant nothing to me as I just hadn't grown attached to any characters.
A few cringe moments last night too. Like did anyone care if jim n Maggie broke up or not?
Thought Will singing was bad enough and then jim joined in!!!

The Black Oil

It was alright. Still prone to Sorkin lecture syndrome. Origins story is standard for him.

Still, there were a few zingers in there such as Will's 'shall we go bury him, or have you already done that?'

Kirby

As finale's go, I thought that was quite a good one. The sing song was very self indulgent and out of place. Not a little, a lot. But I enjoyed everything else and saw it as a fitting way to end the show.

I'm clearly in the minority so. I liked it.

ixoy

Agreeing with those who said it was mediocre, you got to laugh at how righteous they got about Truitt not treating women employees equally and then watch how the same people go and promote their friends and lovers instead of actually giving everyone a fair chance.

FlyingIrishMan

ixoy wrote: »

Agreeing with those who said it was mediocre, you got to laugh at how righteous they got about Truitt not treating women employees equally and then watch how the same people go and promote their friends and lovers instead of actually giving everyone a fair chance.

It was Truitt who promoted her though, not any of her friends or Will. The whole point of the women equality spiel to Truitt was to sort of guilt him into promoting Mackenzie, who deserved it.

ixoy

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

It was Truitt who promoted her though, not any of her friends or Will. The whole point of the women equality spiel to Truitt was to sort of guilt him into promoting Mackenzie, who deserved it.

I'm not talking about that promotion. I'm talking about Mackenzie immediately promoting her friend Jim (after asking her pal Don) and then Jim, in turn, immediately looking to promote the woman he sleeps with. This is the sort of things employee equality trials love.

Hyzepher

The finale made me go back and rewatch the pilot - still think Will's speech at the college was great

ixoy

Hyzepher wrote: »

The finale made me go back and rewatch the pilot - still think Will's speech at the college was great

If only Sorkin was able to keep capturing those sort of moments. He could do an excellent rant as well as some interesting debates.

One other thing - thought Jeff Daniels was excellent in this episode. Fitting that his final performance here was one of his best.

Penn

ixoy wrote: »

I'm not talking about that promotion. I'm talking about Mackenzie immediately promoting her friend Jim (after asking her pal Don) and then Jim, in turn, immediately looking to promote the woman he sleeps with. This is the sort of things employee equality trials love.

Jim trying to promote Maggie, fair enough. But Mackenzie trying to promote Don (who had that job before her) and then promoting Jim (who was the Senior producer under her) both make perfect sense.

WeHaveToGoBack

Contrary to what most people here seem to think, I thought it was an excellent episode, and a great end to the series.

One of my favourite shows of the past few years; such a shame to see it end.

leggo

I dunno, are people down on Jeff Daniels too? I thought he always put forth a great effort with whatever he was given consistently during the show's run. He really owned the Will character. Maybe it was all because they were drinking the Sorkin Kool Aid, but I thought you could say the same about most actors in the show. They seemed committed to the project.

DoYouEvenLift

Finally got to catch up with the final season. Sad that it's finished now and that it only had 6 episodes. It was a good season but not as good as the first two. Was kind of cool seeing how up-to-date Sorkin seems to be with social media and the state of news reporting nowadays, especially the references to how much work some sites like 4chan put into trying to help with finding the Boston bomber. Charlie's death was unexpected and badly done though, he was probably my favourite character and it seems like it wasn't done well. Definitely agree with the post about the sing song being out of place, you just have to laugh about it though.


Also, once again, struggled to keep track of what's going on when Sloan/Olivia Munn was on screen because of how fuking hot she is. Plus those fappening pics and what she said on them kept playing over in my head.