DVR Overflow

How HBO Made It Look Like Critics Liked ‘The Newsroom’ (Forbes)

It’s been a long time since HBO has had a series so critically villified as The Newsroom. Though Aaron Sorkin’s show sits in the ‘comfortably mediocre’ range on rating aggregators like Metacritic, many critics have savaged the show. Yet you wouldn’t know it from the two-page ad HBO ran for the show recently, full of laudatory phrases from TV criticism’s elite. But there’s a catch:

Time’s James Poniewozik, summarizing his views on “The Newsroom” for non-subscribers, flatly declared, “I was not a fan.” Yet the ad makes it sound like he was, burbling, “The pacing is electric…captures the excitement.” 

Salon’s Willa Paskin is quoted in the ad calling “The Newsroom” “captivating, riveting, rousing.” Here’s what she actually wrote: “The results are a captivating, riveting, rousing, condescending, smug, infuriating mixture, a potent potion that advertises itself as intelligence-enhancing but is actually just crazy-making.”

As the article accurately points out, movie studios have been practicing this kind of marketing deception for years — Sony went so far as to invent a completely fake critic to plant positive reviews for A Knight’s Tale. But HBO’s shows are usually so well-received that they wouldn’t need to stoop to these lows.

Hopefully the show will stick around for a few more seasons so Jeff Daniels can address the scandal himself in The Newsroom’s trademark “ripped from the headlines from two years ago” style. 

THE EMMY NOMINATIONS ARE IN!

As usual there’s a lot to like, a lot to be upset about (NO NOMINATIONS FOR COMMUNITY AGAIN?!?!?!) and a lot I don’t care about, like whether The Amazing Race wins its 478th Best Reality Show award.

Here’s a quick rundown of the categories I care about, with a little commentary for each.

Best Drama

Should Win: I’d be happy with almost any of the shows picked, but I’d lean towards Mad Men. The argument could also be made for Breaking Bad.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Of these shows, Boardwalk Empire deserves it the least, but I’m not complaining.

Was Robbed: FX’s Justified had a hell of a year, and probably deserved a nod.

Best Comedy

Should Win: Of the shows nominated, I’ve got to go with Girls. I would have argued for Louie, Parks and Recreation or Community, but every one of them was inexplicably snubbed.

Shouldn’t Be Here: The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, and Curb Your Enthusiasm should have tapped out for the aforementioned three shows.

Was Robbed: Glee. (JK JK, Glee not being nominated for anything was the highlight of the nominations for me).

Best Actress, Drama

Should Win: Claire Danes for Homeland, or perhaps Elisabeth Moss for Mad Men.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Kathy Bates and Glenn Close. Legends, yes. Worthy this year? Not even close. 

Was Robbed: Jessica Pare had enough screentime on Mad Men to warrant a lead actress nod, and she arguably had the meatier role than Moss this season.

Best Actor, Drama

Should Win: Another solid crop, but I’d go with Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad with a slight edge over Jon Hamm and Damian Lewis of Mad Men and Homeland, respectively.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Michael C. Hall. Dexter was nearly unwatchable this season, and while Hall always finds a way to keep the show entertaining, his time has passed.

Was Robbed: Timothy Olyphant and Kelsey Grammer for Justified and Boss.

Best Actor, Comedy

Should Win: Louis CK.

Shouldn’t Be Here: The rest of the category. Specifically Jon Cryer and Don Cheadle, whose House of Lies was one of the worst comedies not on CBS or TBS last year.

Was Robbed: No one deserves it but CK, sorry.

Best Actress, Comedy

Should Win: Lena Dunham. Poehler would also be an acceptable choice, but Dunham redefined comedy for women in 2012.

Shouldn’t Be Here: Melissa McCarthy. She’s hilarious, no doubt, but Mike & Molly is not, and neither is her performance.

Was Robbed: Laura Dern was outstanding on Enlightened, but too few people saw her performance for it to be nominated.

Best Supporting Actress, Drama

Should Win: Anna Gunn or Christina Hendricks

Shouldn’t Be Here: Christine Baranski

Was Robbed: Kelly McDonald was great on Boardwalk Empire once again.

Best Supporting Actor, Drama

Should Win: Do I have to choose? Gun to my head, I’ll go with Aaron Paul, but Giancarlo Esposito or Jared Harris would do in a pinch.

Shouldn’t Be Here: No one. This category was too good for screw-ups.

Was Robbed: At least a dozen guys. A few to highlight include John Slattery and Vincent Karthieser on Mad Men, Michael Pitt on Boardwalk Empire and Dean Norris on Breaking Bad, but the list goes on an on.

Best Supporting Actor, Comedy

Should Win: Ty Burrell, as the lone remaining standout on the suddenly pedestrian Modern Family.

Shouldn’t Be Here: The rest of the Modern Family cast. With so many deserving candidates, how can Emmy voters justify giving 4 of the 6 spots to one show?

Was Robbed: Nick Offerman, Danny Pudi, Aziz Ansari, Adam Driver, and Adam Pally could hold an even better “Best Supporting Actor Inexplicably Snubbed by the Emmys” contest. My money would be on Driver in that one.

Best Supporting Actress, Comedy

Should Win: Yikes. With so many incredible women on TV, it’s amazing that Kristen Wiig is the only woman I’d like to see win this category. (To be fair, I haven’t seen Nurse Jackie, but I hear good things about Meritt Weaver).

Shouldn’t Be Here: Kathryn Joosten, Mayim Bialik, Sofia Vergara, Julie Bowen.

Was Robbed: Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Maya Rudolph, Casey Wilson, Elisa Coupe, Gillian Jacobs. (In a repeat of the Best Inexplicably Snubbed group, I’d go with Brie)

Best Animated Series

Should Win: American Dad. Or maybe Futurama. Possibly Bob’s Burgers. Meh.

Shouldn’t Be Here: That Madagascar bull.

Was Robbed: HAS NO ONE SEEN THE SHOW ARCHER? NO ONE? NOT ONE GODDAMN EMMY VOTER? JESUS.

Best Variety Series

Should Win: Colbert

Shouldn’t Be Here: Maher

Was Robbed: Conan

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So, those are my thoughts, which I’m sure most of you disagree with. Feel free to let me know if you do.

GET EXCITED, PEOPLE.

Details of Dwight Schrute’s Office Spinoff The Farm Revealed, Including Detailed Character Descriptions 

The long-discussed spinoff series for Rainn Wilson’s Office fixture Dwight Schrute is finally taking shape. TV Line posted a list of character descriptions for the new show, currently titled The Farm, and to be quite frank, it sounds pretty terrible. Call it Spinoff Skepticism or Joey Syndrome, but the idea of a Dwight-centric show already sounded pretty ludicrous, and the character list below does nothing to assuage my fears.

Here’s the known character list of The Farm, and writeups from TV Line. No word on whether Mose Schrute (Parks & Recreation showrunner Michael Schur) will have any involvement, though it seems doubtful he’ll be available for much more than a cameo given his commitments.

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FANNIE SCHRUTE | Attractive, urban and in her late 20s/early 30s, Dwight’s younger sister fled the Schrute farm life for Boston as soon as she could, and has had little to do with her roots for quite some time. Now divorced with one son, Fannie is “a bit of a pseudo-intellectual lefty” with an ironic sense of humor and a great heart.

JEB SCHRUTE | Dwight’s easygoing thirtysomething brother hasn’t done well in any of the career paths he’s followed – worm breeder and Bigfoot hunter among them — but has found some success with a pot farm. He’s got none of Dwight’s dedication or work ethic, but he has made an exercise video about things you can do with a knife and a canoe. (We like him already.)

CAMERON WHITMAN | Dwight’s smart and slightly weird 9-year-old nephew (Fannie’s son) is a cosmopolitan lad who nevertheless feels the pull of his Schrute heritage, especially when he’s around someone — his uncles, perhaps? — who can offer the fatherly guidance he lacks.

HEINRICH MANHEIM | The Schrute siblings’ great uncle is charming, greedy, manipulative… and just may have had to spend time in Argentina following World War II, thanks to his German National Socialist roots. Oh, and he vows to kill Dwight by the end of the first episode.

NEWS(ROOM) ROUNDUP

The full first episode of Aaron Sorkin’s controversial new show, The Newsroom, is now on YouTube. Smart move by HBO to make it as easy as possible for viewers to check out the show in light of negative early reviews that I touched on late last week. 

On a slightly related note, for those of you who read my piece on hype and backlash from Friday, pseudo-elitist-intellectual culture site Grantland essentially proved my point by running an interview with one of their writers who had the audacity to say he actually liked the show.

Whether the interview was tongue-in-cheek or not is immaterial — though, for the record, it clearly was. What matters is that by publishing a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the backlash, Grantland is sending us down a path where Backlash — like Hype before it — becomes tired, trite, and ripe for parody. I, for one, welcome a move from the negative feedback loop of backlash, but can only wonder what societal response mechanism will be the next criticism du jour.

Until then, I’ll be counting the days until someone writes a think piece offering a reactionary post-post-neo-post-post-modern reading ofCommunity, at which point culture will collapse into a black hole of irony and self-reference.

On Hype, Backlash, and the Value of Criticism in Today’s Media

Aaron Sorkin’s newest rapid-fire, hyper-literate drama The Newsroom is set to debut on HBO this Sunday, and the early reviews are in.

• “The Newsroom gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping.” -Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker
• “The Newsroom, after four exhausting, smug episodes, gives us none of [The West Wing’s clever dialogue]: just Aaron Sorkin writing one argument after another for himself to win.” - James Poniewozik, Time
• “Sorkin’s writing lapses into self-parody, leaving savvier viewers to marvel at how quickly the show goes awry.” -Hank Stuever, The Washington Post
• “When The Newsroom isn’t obvious and self-congratulatory, it’s manipulative and shrieky.” -Maureen Ryan, The Huffington Post

Of course, there are positive reviews of The Newsroom to be found as well. But in all likelihood, early coverage of the show will be simplified into a collection of pithy quotables strung together to form a larger takedown — something along the lines of “10 Reviews that Prove The Newsroom Sucks” or “Read this Epic Takedown of Aaron Sorkin’s New Show Right Now”. These are the kind of headlines Buzzfeed, Gawker, Uproxx, and HuffPo know the average internet skimmer is going to click on, so why not resort to tabloid-style pageview grabs?  Or, if the culture reporter of these fine content mills is feeling especially lazy, “The 15 Funniest Reactions to The Newsroom on Twitter”, wherein a smattering of 140 character nanoreviews by comedians of varying repute are scraped from a service built on shorthanded snark.

When did the dominant form of crowdsourced criticism move from unhinged, genuflecting, excited-beyond-belief hype to detached, ironic, dismissive-wanking-motion-at-your-culture-of-choice backlash?

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Richard Rushfield explores this very subject in his essay “The Backlash Era: Smelling Sorkin Blood”, and cites early 2012 as the turning point when prevailing internet attitudes shifted from Hype to Backlash. Besides pinpointing a specific date, he raises a lot of good points as to why this shift in attitudes has occurred. His breakdown, chronologically, is essentially this:

2005: YouTube barely exists. Facebook is used exclusively by college kids. Twitter is a twinkle in Biz Stone’s eyes. Through whatever internet back channels people used to communicate back then, people begin to buzz about a film whose working title is simply Snakes on a Plane. Fans go wild for the film, envisioning a reptilian gorefest with Samuel Jackson shouting his now-famous (and fan-made) mothafucking catchphrase. Studio execs order the crew to shoot additional scenes in an attempt to meet fan expectations. It’s referred to as “the most internet-buzzed film of all time,” and despite tanking at the box office, the internet hype machine is born.

2006-2010: Subsequent internet fan campaigns — Betty White hosting SNL, fans of Chuck saving the show by eating Subway sandwiches — pop up almost weekly. Outside of entertainment, President Barack Obama is hailed as the first commander-in-chief of the internet age. Political talking head turned internet mogul Arianna Huffington says “Were it not for the internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee.”  This is the golden age of internet hype, when individuals feel that their e-interactions are helping change the world, or getting Kim Possible a third season, at the very least.

2011-present: The Backlash begins to inevitably rise. Too many campaigns exist. It now becomes standard for everything — from a big-budget Hollywood film to a 10-person plumbing company in Dubuque, Iowa — to have a social media presence. Major companies spam consumers with barely-veiled “fan hashtags”, attempting to force users to share things like “Great night with a couple of Buds! #herewego” or “Can’t wait to watch #Tosh on #ComedyCentral tonight!” Fandom fatigue sets in, and for those who live on the web, fatigue quickly turns to anger. People’s previously held belief that their role in fan campaigns somehow made a difference has lead to an inflated sense of self; this is parlayed into utilization of social networks to build their own personal brand — where likes and retweets can inflate or deflate an ego, where buzz and attention are the only acceptable currencies. Facebook goes public — attempting to convert these Buzz Bucks into Real Bucks — and fails miserably, as hedge fund managers are privy to the fast-rising Backlash Model. The Backlash Era is now in full effect.

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So what does all of this mean for the average consumer? Or, for that matter, the average media critic? Will we ever be able to be genuinely excited about a TV show again, or has internet killed the television star? Has appointment viewing been permanently replaced by a detached indifference from the general populace, who will only commit to a show once it’s had a couple good seasons and is available on Netflix? For now, the answer to that question is unclear. But as long as viewers and critics alike are aware that the current negative feedback loop exists, and do their best to rise above it — consumers by conditioning themselves not to be deterred by a few negative reviews, critics by resisting the urge to issue scathing takedowns or write a show off completely based on a few early episodes — we can make it through this together.

As for The Newsroom, I’m still going to watch the show this Sunday, and probably several subsequent episodes as well. Maybe it really is as bad as some critics allege, or maybe it simply needs time to grow, and can’t be written off because of a few uneven early episodes — I’m looking at you, Seinfeld and Parks and Recreation. It would be relatively easy for me to read into the criticisms leveled at The Newsroom and write it off as a knockoff blend of Sports Night and The West Wing from an aging scriptwriting Shakespeare whose highfalutin, 80 WPM dialogue feels stale. That sounds like a plausible reason not to like the show, right? But the thing is, I’ve liked everything Sorkin has written, Moneyball and The Social Network included, and citing his dialogue as preachy and condescending is a little bit like the criticism Girls faced from the Backlash Machine earlier this year decrying it’s upper-middle class view of twentysomething urbanites. Sure there may be a relative lack of diversity, and yes, many of the show’s stars come from privileged backgrounds, but neither of those criticisms disguised the fact that Girls is an amazing show. Critics citing the first point apparently haven’t watched Friends in awhile, and critics citing the second apparently think Hollywood is a meritocracy in which no famous people’s offspring deserve to get work.

In summary: Watch what you want to watch, and try not to allow external influences deconstruct everything you love until you cease to be entertained by entertainment. But try not to live-tweet your favorite show either, because I will unfollow you immediately.

Attention Arrested Development enthusiasts: The Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, WI is holding a contest on Facebook to name their new baby seal, and somehow, Lucille is losing. This needs to change. Vote by visiting their Facebook page (you don’t have to ‘like’ it or anything) and help Madison avoid making a… well, you know.