"The first rule of being a female journalist," political reporter Susan Berg (Carla Gugino) tells a younger female colleague in the third episode of USA's miniseries Political Animals, "[is] if you s--- where you eat, don't cry about it. ... You want to be taken seriously? Take yourself seriously."
This single line of dialogue makes it clear that there's a much-needed crossover episode hidden in the summer TV lineup. Could Susan please take a temporary consulting gig in New York and talk some professional sense into the women of The Newsroom?
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Aaron Sorkin quashed rumors of behind-the-scenes turmoil on The Newsroom during a heated panel at the Television Critics Association's fall preview sessions Wednesday.
"I want to be as clear as I possibly can about this. The writing staff was not fired," Sorkin said. "Just seeing that in print is scaring the hell out of the writing staff. They're acting very strange. They're coming to work early. They're acting polite to me. I want the old...
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There aren't enough words. Except in the world of Aaron Sorkin, where there are always enough, maybe too many, as the Emmy- and Oscar-winning maestro of the hyper-verbal aria (The West Wing, Sports Night, The Social Network) aims his sights back on TV with the exhilarating, exasperating and often sensationally entertaining The Newsroom. (It premieres Sunday at 10/9c following summer hit True Blood.)
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Jeff Daniels storms out of the glass-walled conference room for the fifth time in 25 minutes. Apparently, Nancy Grace can do that to a man. Take after take, her Southern-fried commentary on the Casey Anthony murder case has been blaring on multiple television monitors around the set of a TV newsroom, and her "Oh, God, will you look at that" attitude is more than Daniels' character, Will McAvoy, can bear.
McAvoy is a veteran anchorman unraveling before our eyes on The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama about...
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In an early scene of HBO's new Aaron Sorkin drama The Newsroom, a college student asks the show's hero, Will McAvoy, why the U.S. is the best country in the world.
Summer Preview: Check out more must-watch new shows
It's a vapid question, to be sure, but Will's mean-spirited answer — he says simply that it isn't, and then rattles off a withering, Sorkinian litany of statistics about literacy, life expectancy and infant mortality that prove his point — is both electrifying and kind of depressing.
Will (Jeff Daniels, in his first TV series role) is a moderate Republican cable news anchor whose show, "News Night," has succeeded in the ratings because Will has played it safe, journalistically speaking. (One critic calls him the "Jay Leno of news anchors.") When we first meet him, he's in a rut, and his staff, none too impressed with his very public tantrum, has decided to seek other employment....
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