The Newsroom 1.04 ‘I’ll Try to Fix You’ review: The Right to Bare All

I suppose we could talk about The Newsroom‘s women and how they’re written like frantic, boy-crazy schoolgirls since that seems to be the topic of much debate. Unfortunately, I never saw this show as anything but entertainment (something I’m assuming many critics didn’t exactly plan on) and therefore could not care less. Sure, the email mistake from a couple of episodes ago remains as one of the silliest gaffes in our recent television history, but somehow because it was Mackenzie’s doing, it’s magnified. Forget the fact that Jim is written as head over heels as Maggie, or that Neal is insanely obsessed with Bigfoot this entire episode.

Seriously. Bigfoot. The. entire. frickin’. episode. Someone as intelligent as Neal, someone who works in a serious newsroom, is seriously considering Bigfoot for an entire hour of television.

Sure enough, the show paints a picture of Will trying to correct everyone in his path — and sure enough, everyone he tries to correct (or “civilize”) happens to be women — but the matter of fact is that he’s painfully wrong. And the show doesn’t try to hide it. In fact, he gets a few drinks tossed in his face. Should we be as obsessed about the ongoings of people who are famous for being famous? Who cares. The point is that Will doesn’t think so, and he makes it his duty to correct these mistaken people, these lost souls. But what he gets from it is being a total asshole. That’s the picture the show is painting.

The only true relationship that I think is cause for concern is between him and Mackenzie, who needs to constantly be belittled for having cheated on him more than three years ago. How this is still an ongoing development on the series, I don’t know. The very fact is that it still disgusts me. But at least Mackenzie told him off this episode. Just get over it, Will. Allow the audience to do so, too. (Then again, Will’s romantic relationships are a huge concern in this episode, so it was pretty topical.) The same goes for Maggie, who in this episode was just completely frantic.

Everyone’s so concerned with how badly women are written on this show, we’re forgetting that it’s actually all-inclusive. Society’s obsession to fixate on how well the minority is being represented (this being anyone who isn’t a White male for the context) is almost a burden sometimes. Here’s what’s happening on The Newsroom: some guys want to make a show and their boss doesn’t want that to happen; in related news: the relationships are complicated. End of story.

Sorry if you were looking for something deeper than that, but you’re not getting it. The faster we realize that, the faster we move on, and the faster I can talk about how much I loved Olivia Munn and Jeff Daniels’ comedic timing and chemistry together or that I’m totally rooting for Maggie and Jim like a giggly teenager or that I’m just here mostly for the well-crafted pace and the main conflict.

Should we strive for “deep” and “meaningful” television all the time? I don’t know. I guess those people can be divided by T.M.I. readers and Will-sympathizers. I’m just saying: it’s not always bad to just watch television.

So yeah, we can talk about the women on The Newsroom. And yes, we can discuss how it can be interpreted as Aaron Sorkin’s long diatribe for just about everything in our (pop) culture. Or we can just watch some TV.

The latter is much less exhausting.