why can't people watch scripted television shows for entertainment? I mean, you probably know going in that it is going to have a slant to it, and even if it doesn't most of you will make up a slant in your own mind. This is for entertainment idiots, it isn't a real journalistic news show. Oh and by the way, Bill O'Reilly, and Rachel Maddow, those idiots have a slant to their shows if you haven't noticed, but depending on which party you vote for, you only believe one of the 2 to be evil. Use your heads kids, and stop defining yourself by which party you are affiliated with. /rant


It is a great show by the way, regardless of the slant.

GREAT show...

That is all

The bashing of the right is stale but man that was a great damn episode. Last ten to fifteen minutes was just awesome.

maybe i'm in the minority but i feel like the show has been steadily improving with each episode. this one finally (IMO) got the right balance of interpersonal drama, corporate shenanigans, and political stuff. the tension between jim and maggie is actually more entertaining and less cliche than i thought it would be

Easily my favorite episode of the 4. I get that using "hindsight to make these guys look soooo smart" is cheap or whatever, but I don't really care. It's still executed well-the Giffords sequence was awesome.

The Sorkin patented banter is finally starting to gel. Really liked the Will/Olivia Munn scenes this week. And across the board, it's starting to take on his typical signature.

As a Christian guy who had no problem getting around the Christian bashing in Studio 60, the conservative in me is finding it even easier to not care about the conservative bashing.

Still doesn't feel at all like an HBO show. It's almost like Sorkin himself didn't even put the bombs in the script, but HBO went back and added them in just to remind us we were watching HBO.

Legit tonight... wow , easily my new favorite show on tv

I said the same thing...it's getting better, or I'm just getting used to it.

The first episode really kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but the series has really gotten into the "story" behind the news, what goes on to make it all happen. Yes, they take shots a conservatives, but they've started focusing a lot more on the workings of the newsroom.

Hopefully it stays on that course!

thank god for HBO go, didn't get to see the episode tonight, but I'm glad it disappoint, will watch when I get a chance

i still feel that the opening scene of the first episode is one of the greatest TV scenes in recent memory. i feel like by episode 4, the whole hour of show is starting to feel as powerful as that monologue (e.g. them not announcing the senator was dead). hopefully it can keep that feeling going into the rest of the season cause after tonight it's now one of the few shows i look forward to watching live every week

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Truth

great episode tonight

wasn't really feeling it the first 15 minutes or so, but the last 15 were absolutely fantastic

[This message has been edited by Kampfers (edited 7/15/2012 11:50p).]

Watched it again. Tell me I'm not the only one that was pumped by the convo that happened after they called her still being alive and then threw it to the on the ground reporter.

Bigfoot is real

So are mermaids according to discovery channel.

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Tell me I'm not the only one that was pumped by the convo that happened after they called her still being alive and then threw it to the on the ground reporter.

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You're not. That was awesome.

This episode was awesome! The dialogue is really starting to find its groove, and should only get better as this show moves along.

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So are mermaids according to discovery channel.

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holy f-balls my wife watched this garbage for hours last night! Kept coming in the room during the Breaking Bad premiere to tell me about it. *Face Palm*

Best one so far. And I really loved will's take on real housewifes et al. Its showing hes not all about bashing politicians. He has other concerns about our country that go beyond politics

"I'm a registered Republican"

Every date scene was classic. I enjoy the personal storyline more than the news aspect. He tried so hard to hold his tongue but just couldn't. "I'd find it more impressive if you said you were a heroin dealer"
Speaking of news aspect, why was the teleprompter guy, it was sooo dramatic when he typed 2011 on the senator for her death. I just felt that whole breaking story was over the top dramatic. But I loved Will's fist pumped response when they found out she was not dead.

And to add to Btron's question, why was he even more dramatic when he took her death date off of the graphic? Was he afraid he was accidentally going to press a button that would put the graphic on the air?

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Coldplay’s “Fix You” is four minutes and 55 seconds long. It played for the last six minutes and 45 seconds of this episode.

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It still worked beautifully!

I got around to watching the latest episode last night, and it was good. The first 15 and last 15 minutes of the show were definitely best.

I thought the whole situation of the channel being concerned about McAvoy's image was true to real life. The talent is the face of the franchise, so to speak. And, station's have to protect the brand. I'm surprised they didn't issue a statement as soon as the first couple articles came out. Reporters on the McAvoy story should have called ACN for comment.

I really liked the stand Charlie, Will and Mac took for journalism at the end of the show. A lot of the other channels had said Giffords was dead without double-checking their facts or attributing the source of the report. The VP guy who was telling them to call it had no business in doing that. But, he was correct was saying, "Every time you are not current, viewers change the channel." The whole ordeal just goes to show how one bad report (the NPR one) set the trend for the other channels. It's a balancing act, but it is better to be correct than first.

There were a couple idiotic things in the episode. First off, stations don't seem to have any kinds of parties anymore, especially at work involving alcohol. That was a little ridiculous. Also, areas with access to cameras have so many security measures to get through, especially on that level, that some random folks like the gossip reporter, won't even be allowed inside without a direct escort. Thirdly, the whole reporting on the Gabby Giffords thing, it was stupid for the people working the phones to ask, "Do they have a name on the shooter yet?" An hour or two into the investigation, police do not ever seem to release that information. That's WAY too quick. Law enforcement really needs to check and re-check on their information before they release it.

As far as the fist-pump goes, I don't think it was as much of a fist pump that they were happy Giffords was still alive. It was more of a fist pump of they were right to hold off on reporting what every other outlet was reporting.

Also, I have to correct what another poster said earlier about the "teleprompter guy," tearing up over the Giffords graphic. That wasn't the teleprompter guy, he was the chyron or graphics guy. He also would not be the one directly taking it to air. The director would do that. I thought it was silly to have the gfx guy tear up over it. Also, for a gfx like that, you'd probably have to special order it, and would not build it on the fly like that. So there's a little extra tv knowledge for y'all.

The whole part of Mac tearing up at the end because of the emotional news story is a little much. Speaking from experience, when stuff like that happens, you don't really think about and process the story that quickly. You kind of compartmentalize your feelings like a first responder, and deal with them later. I was working in TV during the Bonfire Collapse in '99, and I worked for several hours of continuing coverage of it. I worked with other Aggies who also knew how horrific and sad that event was. But, on that day, we had a job to do, and focused on that. We all didn't get a chance to really analyze how we felt until days later. So, the instant tears while it the control room -- I don't buy it.

Overall though, I'm really digging the show and the interactions between members of the crew. The story-pitch meetings are pretty-close to spot on.

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Also, areas with access to cameras have so many security measures to get through, especially on that level, that some random folks like the gossip reporter, won't even be allowed inside without a direct escort.

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When they realized that the parent company was trying to create a context to fire Will, I assumed that the parent company had specifically invited her.

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The whole part of Mac tearing up at the end because of the emotional news story is a little much

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I didn't think the story made her tear up at all. I thought it was her interaction with Will that brought on that emotion.

^ Interesting stuff.

I've been enjoying the show since the first one, mostly because of the dialogue and because I was hooked from that great first scene of the series, but Sunday's episode was definitely my favorite so far. Definitely a show I look forward to every week now.

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I didn't think the story made her tear up at all. I thought it was her interaction with Will that brought on that emotion.

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This.

I thought it was a nice touch that they were wheeling in the anchor desk while the "gossip show" host was still talking.

The reporters knew that when the DWH well exploded it was appropriate for them to jump to wildly speculative conclusions based on a small amount of information from unnamed sources.

They also knew that when the Giffords story broke they should use caution and not jump to conclusions even though other respected news outlets were reporting that she had been killed.

These guys are really damn smart.

It’s also amazing how introspective Will McAvoy is regarding the flaws of conservatives. If he weren’t a republican, it would be different, it would just be your standard political bickering. But since he’s actually a republican, all of his criticisms come from the heart have a lot more credibility. And you can’t really question his motives either because he IS a republican you know….

If only every republican in the world were just like him.

Weird. Critics thought the fourth one was the worst of the bunch but I like many here think the opposite.

jschroeder, if I didn't know better I'd say you were being sarcastic!

Watched it tonight and liked them showing the pressure that can exist to not get left behind on a big story, fact-check be damned.

It doesn't happen quite as often in print, since we just do one product a day and nobody's "changing the channel" on us, but I have witnessed editors try to pressure reporters into publishing a story before all the facts had been verified / before all sides of the story had been given a chance to comment because they wanted to be the first to break something and knew other outlets were also pursuing the story.

I want to see these guys getting more of their story ideas from newspapers. At the local level, at least, we're usually the originators of most of the stories and then the TV stations read the paper and go off and running with them.

Quick question for this thread: At what point can we just discuss this show without having to do this:

"Well I liked what they did last night, but in the real world of print/journalism/television/etc it would have happened like this....."


I get we have some people in industry that like the show but I think this is the only TV show thread where this is occurring.

I hope we never get to that point. I like the commentary from guys that do this.

LOVED the Giffords part. Was probably one of the best sequences of the show thus far. I remember listening to NPR that day (ex was a big fan) when they announced she had died. Glad she made it.

Also, I read she and the husband went to the Coldplay concert in Houston a couple of weeks ago, and Chris Martin dedicated that song to them. Funny timing.

Aggie Journalist-

I'm glad that newspapers also see the pressure. It can be crazy, especially in the world of internet where everyone is trying to break the story first. But, you know as well as I do, it is more important to be correct than it is to be first.

I will agree with you that newspapers can set the pace for local media, but with a caveat -- it happens in smaller media markets. In larger ones, it seems to be a constant give-and-take with all the outlets -- tv, newspaper and radio. Sometimes, your outlet gets beat on a story. Sometimes, you get a leg up on the competition. A lot of times, the good stories you get come from tips from loyal viewers or readers and you have to do some digging.

Newspaper reporters tend to have more time to really dig on a story compared to tv and radio. They're also not limited to time to deliver the story -- only the space. There are several times we've talked in editorial meetings and said, "That's a newspaper story," because it may be visually boring or really tough to explain in a minute 30.

And to the poster who doesn't appreciate the break down of what's going on, I'm not saying it as a way to take away from the enjoyment of the show. They're obviously taking some liberties for the sake of drama. I'm just pointing it out because I'm really anal about it all since I produce a show five nights a week.