Informal critical thoughts on The Newsroom pilot.

Yes, there is comic value in this 7-minute super-cut of oft-repeated phrases in the work of Aaron Sorkin.  But it also highlights just how damn entertaining his shows are and how much credit should go to the various actors of The West Wing, Sports Night, and the disappointing but not awful Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip.  And come what may, The Newsroom is 'okay Sorkin'.  It's not great, but it is relentlessly entertaining.    On just viewing the pilot, I wish the supporting cast didn't seem so heavily made up (thus far) of somewhat similar-looking young white men.  And the undercurrent of Sorkin's passive-aggressive sexism rears its ugly head in several unnecessary ways, be it Jeff Daniel's opening speech opining about the good old days when 'Men were men!' or an entire first half where most of the female characters almost exclusively talk about relationship issues.  And while the show once again taps into the excitement of seeing professionals excelling and putting quality of work over other concerns, it reminds us again that Sorkin's world is a fantasy, a utopia, which makes it hard to watch in times such as these.

A situation oddly similar to the current Community debacle.

After this weekend, with show creator Dan Harmon fired from Community by Sony Television and with much of writing staff exiting, one wonders why NBC bothered to renew the show at all.  The abbreviated 13-episode renewal was clearly meant to be a sort of 'we'll give you time to wrap up' olive branch extended towards 30 Rock and Fringe, but the last episode of this season served as such a fitting series finale that the show as we know it could arguably be done.  And that's a good thing in light of this news.  Come what may, the things that made Community special generally came from the mind of Mr. Harmon and at least some of the departing writers, of course aided by what appears to be a fully-returning cast.  So if the fourth and presumably final season of Community, without the behind-the-scenes people who made it worthwhile, ends up being lackluster and/or a shell of its former self, then we should be grateful that the Greendale gang saw fit to so explicitly tie up the show several days ago.  Point being, if the fourth season of Community is terrible, we can just pretend it never happened, or at least that it existed in some alternate timeline ("darkest timeline" perhaps?).  If this all seems familiar, it's because the pattern followed by Community was also set forth in the late 1990s by, of all things, an afternoon animated action drama.  Whatever Dan Harmon is feeling right now, I'm sure Greg Weisman is quite sympathetic.