Are You Not Entertained?
It’s not a concern; it’s entertainment. – Nina Howard
I’ll Try to Fix You catches up with Will’s
“mission to civilize." He’s trying to fix the nation’s
obsession with gossip and lies, at any cost necessary. The news team's trying to fix the way they tell the news, filling in stories they missed in the past
year. At the same time, Don’s trying to fix Jim up with a girlfriend. Sloan’s
trying to fix Will up with a girlfriend. Well actually, Will’s trying to fix
himself up with a slew of girlfriends…
He first meets a gossip columnist at the company's New Year’s party.
She flirts with him; but he thinks the stroke of midnight is better suited for
a lecture on why gossip is corrupting our nation rather than just laying a fat
one on her. A drink is thrown in his face and he ends up on page 10 of the
gossip columns. A few nights later, Will goes out with a pot-smoking,
gun-toting, self-proclaimed “southern liberal” woman who's more inclined to get jealous than romantic. He promptly cuts their night short. And in another case of Will’s hubris
overwhelming his logic, he insults a date who’s more interested in talking
about The Real Housewives of New Jersey than
current events. Another drink is thrown in his face. This time he finds himself on the cover of the gossip magazines.
This episode is seemingly drawing the ire of every living critic for its depiction of clumsy, dysfunctional, and generally dumb women.
And I completely understand why people are hissing. The women depicted in The
Newsroom thus far have been either 1) too inept to operate their own email
account, or 2) so prone to panic attacks that they’re only consolable by a man,
or 3) only interested in fashion and therefore, incapable of speaking intelligently
about current events, or 4) all of the above. And yet, I found this episode entertaining.
It had a few laughs; it had moments of reflection; and it featured a rousing
example of how good this show can be when its characters are actually working
towards something important.
Does my enjoyment of this episode make me a misogynist? No, mainly because the depiction of the characters is for entertainment and
arguably, nothing else. The general premise of The Newsroom presents an interesting dilemma.
Sorkin is writing fiction from a non-fiction standpoint; he readily acknowledges that "the show is meant to be a fantasy set against very real and oftentimes very serious events." The upside to this format
is the show can now idealize real news events from the recent past; it presents how the news should have been done, not necessarily
how it was done. But this is
simultaneously its greatest flaw because you already know what actually
happened in 2011; no matter how it should
have been reported, it’s already been reported. This handcuffs the show into playing as some
kind of hypothetical parallel universe, one in which the stakes – at least on
the news side of things – aren’t very high. As such, this leaves the entire
relevancy of the show to
be carried by its characters. In effect, Sorkin solely relies on the constructs
of his fictional characters to entertain us. And make no mistake, The Newsroom is a piece of entertainment
first and a reflection of realism second.
I find the accusations of misogyny sound, but not entirely
warranted. It seems to me that critics are getting angry because they seem to
think that just because the show deals with true news events, everything about
it needs to be realistic. And that’s simply not the case. Indeed, I’m
reminded of the most recent arc in Mad Men. The show has continually drawn inspiration from real ads run in the 1960s. In effect, Mad Men, not unlike The Newsroom, often reflects non-fiction in its depiction of fictional stories. But in Season 5, Joan Harris, the bombshell secretary at Sterling Cooper Draper
Price, implicitly agrees to sleep with an executive at Jaguar in exchange for
his business. In essence, Joan volunteers to trade her body for wealth and
security. Despite all of the cries for Civil Rights and empowerment of women
throughout the season, Joan ultimately falls into the most reviled
depiction of sexism: prostitution. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, I'll admit that this plot-line was effective in highlighting the helplessness of women in the 1960s; it illustrated the degree to which the times had not yet caught up to its people. But even so, did people cry out in outrage? Did critics cry
foul at the depiction of Mad Men’s less than perfect characters? Actually, people lauded this unexpected twist, understanding that
“at the end of the day… people know it’s a fictional character.” In other
words, people accept that Mad Men is a fantasy that sometimes leverages non-fiction for influence; and they’re more inclined to accept the characters’
actions purely for entertainment's sake.
I’m not excusing Sorkin’s depiction of women; the show could surely benefit from a few more balanced characters. All I’m saying is there’s a marked difference between something true - such as the news - and something fabricated for entertainment - such as the characters. It seems that in Sorkin’s attempt to blend the two through this show, people are expecting either one of the two, but can’t seem to accept both. "I think I need some consulting on what's real and what's not," Will even admits during the episode. In fact, the inclusion of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in this episode seemed to be the exclamation point to Sorkin's point. By using Giffords as an emotional climax, Sorkin essentially uses a real event to glamorize the news, turning the show into something more akin to a performance circus than a professional workplace. It’s exactly the kind of thing that Sorkin has spent four episodes railing against. "We don't do good television," MacKenzie even argues at one point, "We do the news!"
I’m not excusing Sorkin’s depiction of women; the show could surely benefit from a few more balanced characters. All I’m saying is there’s a marked difference between something true - such as the news - and something fabricated for entertainment - such as the characters. It seems that in Sorkin’s attempt to blend the two through this show, people are expecting either one of the two, but can’t seem to accept both. "I think I need some consulting on what's real and what's not," Will even admits during the episode. In fact, the inclusion of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in this episode seemed to be the exclamation point to Sorkin's point. By using Giffords as an emotional climax, Sorkin essentially uses a real event to glamorize the news, turning the show into something more akin to a performance circus than a professional workplace. It’s exactly the kind of thing that Sorkin has spent four episodes railing against. "We don't do good television," MacKenzie even argues at one point, "We do the news!"
But the funny thing is, the inclusion of this emotional catharsis does make good TV. The montage of the News Night team
scrambling to get on air soars because they’re so good at what they do. Look how professional - and how confident - these petty, insecure, infantile people can be when they're faced with something truly important! At that moment, notice how all pretenses of sexism or elitism or anything-ism is eclipsed by something inherently more important than any single person. It's Sorkin's pointed declaration of the difference between what the show presents and what the show actually is. It's a distinction between the truth and the fabrication. And it reflects what Sorkin is really trying to say: "I don't want my fidelity to be the truth; I want it to be storytelling."
