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| Television Extra! Extra! EXTRA!!!!!! Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom takes just two episodes to go awesomely over the top. Posted Thursday, Jun 21, 2012, at 11:45 AM ET  Television's finest minds have their heads up their asses—or so Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom (HBO, Sundays at 10 p.m. ET) asserts in its bravura opening and, in numerous scenes thereafter, haplessly demonstrates. Before we scan Sorkin's latest—a fantasy set at a prime-time cable-news show—let's, for the sake of perspective, scan the dial. On Comedy Central, partisans of The Daily Show and citizens of Colbert Nation are united in analyzing the nonstop democracy-maiming horror of media distortion. NBC is home to America's funniest terminal decadence—the meta-narrative Community, the corporate self-critique 30 Rock, the comedy career of Brian Williams. Fox News and MSNBC exist symbiotically, sucking sound bites like fresh blood. This is not to mention the establishment on AMC's Mad Men manufacturing desire for a living, or the blocks of the network week given over to talent competitions that invite all the world behind the music. Fantastical projections and inside-baseball X-rays are a main game of home entertainment, especially on HBO, 20 years after The Larry Sanders Show presented a showbiz satire not to be flipped away from. Sorkin—the creator of The West Wing, a populist whose subjects are rhetoric and ethics—has written often about mass media. He has written often; he has often written well; he has sometimes been awfully overwrought in his zeal for showing people talking about putting on a show. He wired Sports Night (a TV comedy about a show like Sportscenter) and Studio ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate How To Rethink Immigration: We Need More Janitors and Cooks, Not Just Doctors and Engineers What Do Devout Jews Fear Will Happen to Them if They Eat Nonkosher Foods? The Newsroom Is Over the Top but Still Fascinating and Energetic | Advertisement   |
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