GREGG DEGUIRE/WIREIMAGE (DANIELS, FONDA AND SORKIN); HBO (MORTIMER)
Exit
room is a letdown. Her fiery conversation with Atlantis Cable News
(an AWM subsidiary) president
Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston)
seems focused more on developing
Skinner’s character than her own.
Lansing is there so we can hiss at
her lust for ratings, not so we can
really examine her as a character.
Worse yet, the power dynamic on display during their first
scene together is out of whack. “I
thought you got where you are by
being fearless,” Skinner says to
Lansing. Would such a statement
ever cross a boardroom table if
the CEO sitting on the other side
of the room were a man?
“It’s not important to me that
something be real, but it’s very
important to me that it feels real,”
Sorkin recently told Huffington
about The Newsroom. Ultimately,
though, Sorkin’s female characters — the foxy financial correspondent, the boy crazy tearprone assistant, the producer in a
relationship with the leading man
— are little more than caricatures.
Even worse, the show’s female
CEO screams through her scene,
the latest in a long line of threadbare “ruthless female executive”
stereotypes. It’s a shame. If Sorkin is trying make a point about
TV
HUFFINGTON
07.01-08.12
Above (left
to right): Jeff
Daniels, Jane
Fonda and
Aaron Sorkin
arrive at The
Newsroom’s
premiere. Left:
Emil