[Baby Lee]

A long, but amusing litany of TN gripes from AVClub comments

Things I’ve Learned from The Newsroom, Season 1:

I thought at first Will McAvoy killed himself because he just couldn’t take another moment with these people and for a moment, I envied his decision.

Though Maggie Jordon may not be the “average New York woman” she would pass for an average saucer-eyed elf, raised by Martians and forced to live in a box until ten minutes before this show began.

After watching the film Run Lola Run for the tenth time, MacKenzie McHale believes she can freeze time by screeching.

No John Gallagher, Jr., I don’t know why you’re here. From a Tony Award for Spring Awakening to playing Jim Halpert, er, Harper, if he was bitten by a radioactive beta male.

Anonymous internet trolls do it for the fame.

By episode 4, which somehow managed to exploit both Gabrielle Giffords and Bigfoot, I wanted to take a copy of Huckleberry Finn, write the word “TONE” on the front cover with a black magic marker and beat Aaron Sorkin until his hairplugs fell out.

The New York headquarters of Atlantis Cable News is located at 42nd Street and 6th Avenue in New York, the site of The Bank of America Tower.

Jane Fonda is amazing, but her character’s motivations are absolutely bananas. Apparently her loyalties to the Koch Brothers are somewhere between bought-and-paid-for trusted ally and amnesia patient.

No Olivia Munn, I don’t know why you’re here either.

Characters gossip about their love lives more than a 70’s naughty nurse movie but somehow manage to never TALK TO EACH OTHER ABOUT HOW THEY FEEL. And did I mention this story has covered a year and a half and they all work 20 feet from each other 16 hours a day?

Movies like Broadcast News inspired people to become real life TV journalists. The only thing The Newsroom might inspire is for Dev Patel to fire his agent. Sorkin, you had your hero call him “Punjab” for ****sakes, and without any consequences, I might add. Harold and Kumar would steal your second Prius and laugh at you all the way to White Castle.

At some point around episode three Sam Waterston got an eyebrow wrangler.

Shows on HBO with a one hour running time have a different pace than a network show at 42 minutes. The Sopranos and Game of Thrones use that extra time to dig deeper into character and plot, creating a hybrid of serialized novel and a feature film. The Newsroom uses this time for Jeff Daniels to fall down in his underpants.

If you have the opportunity to date beautiful news women, DON’T DO IT. No matter how tantalizing their breasts look in silk shirts, they’re all monsters who have no agency whatsoever and are relegated to screeching, manic trophies who never shut up and beat you moments after you wake from intensive care.

Women wear too many silk shirts for such a cold studio.

Don The Producer’s problem isn’t that he’s a good guy who’s been told he’s bad. The problem is he’s apparently never dated a human being before. You didn’t cry over your high school love as much as Don cries every episode. And hokey smokes is Thomas Sadoski a great actor, but these terrible scripts exist only in polar emotional extremes. He’s either the cynical “master of the dark arts” or a knuckle-biting spurned lover with nothing in between.

No Terry Crews, I don’t know why you’re here either.

Despite Will McAvoy’s only personality trait being one shared by Aaron Sorkin– a deep love of Broadway musicals, Will doesn’t know how to pronounce the name “Dulcinea.” Even though The Man of La Mancha has an entire song that sounds out her name ten times. It’s not “dulCINea,” Harry from Dumb and Dumber.

Sometimes you need multiple seasons stretched across several years to tell the epic, dumb love stories of the most unengaging, single-note characters on television.