Tonight marks the official halfway point in the second season of The Newsroom and the show has jumped about six months from episode four into what has to be the most busy news day in recent memory. Between George Zimmerman, the suicide of the Rutgers student, and explosions in Syria, it seemed like the perfect storm to allow Sorkin to do a bottle episode in the newsroom, in real time, as the March 16 edition of News Night went to air. There are also personal dilemmas galore, but do you think they get in the way of most important newscast ever made? I think we all know the answer to that.
Briefly, let’s just say that this episode was the origin story for Maggie’s new look, the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” motif we’ve seen glimpses of since the season premiere. I’m sure you thought you knew where that story was going, and frankly, so did I, but I think Aaron Sorkin satisfactorily subverted expectations, and it’s rather something of a relief that he didn’t go down that somewhat more obvious route.
It seemed like someone opened hunting season this week on The Newsroom: Will hunted for signs of humanity, Jim hunted for allies in his war against campaign spin, Neal hunted for some respect concerning Occupy Wall Street, and Jerry hunted for confirmation concerning Genoa. There was success on all those fronts this week, but a little success can sometimes be a dangerous thing.
Considering that the episode was called The Genoa Tip, a surprisingly slim amount of time was spent on this thing called “Genoa,” which is supposed to be at the heart of this year’s storyline on The Newsroom. Instead, we get more Maggie drama, and talk of drones and other types of executions.
What was shown was an animation where Iron Man’s helmet is bent and reshaped into the head of the super-team’s robotic nemesis Ultron. At the end, the words Avengers: Age of Ultron appear on screen, and while that will thrill fans of The Avengers’ comic book, less savvy movie fans may be wondering, who’s Ultron, why is this such a big deal, and what about that purple guy at end of the first film?
In the beginning (sort of), there was The Da Vinci Code, a delightful summer beach novel which most people read too much into. Due to its popularity, it was turned into a box office hit in 2006 by director Ron Howard. The Da Vinci Code wasn't the first book to feature the adventures of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who was played in the film by Tom Hanks, and it also wasn't the last. So on the heels of the latest Langdon book, Inferno, burning up the best-sellers list, Sony is looking at putting this latest romp through European art history into active development for a 2015 release.
Hate-watching: A bizarre phenomenon amongst TV viewers where they watch a show on a weekly basis because it drives them into a frenzy of anger and disgust. It seems as if that was the way many of us were watching season one of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s ode to why liberals are right and everyone else can suck it. Oh, and the idea that women tripping over their feet constantly is adorable.
According to Vulture, actor Donald Glover, who plays high school football star turned air conditioning messiah Troy Barnes on the NBC comedy series, will only have a part time role in the upcoming - and unexpected - fifth season of Community. There were rumblings that this was coming last month as Glover's attention has turned to side projects like his musical alterego as Childish Gambino and developing a new semi-autobiographical comedy for NBC, but a new deal between Glover and Community's studio Sony will officially commit the actor to a mere five out of 13 episodes of Community's next season.
It was a bit of a surprise for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans when it was announced that actor William Fichtner would playing the part of the Turtles' long-time arch-nemesis, The Shredder. Of course, that surprise has nothing to do with Fichtner's acting skills, which many would consider above average, but rather it's because the character of Shredder has always been, across all the various media the Turtles have appeared in, Japanese.
