The Newsroom enters final season

Sam Vander Forest

With the first episode of the final season premiering this past Sunday night, it seems like the beginning of the end has come too soon for this controversial HBO classic.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, “The Newsroom” was created and written by Aaron Sorkin, known for writing genius stories and screenplays the likes of “The West Wing,” “Moneyball,” and “A Few Good Men.” The show, like many of Sorkin’s other ventures, focuses on controversial political issues and stories of recent history. The show uses a fictional news network, Atlantic Cable News, to analyze major events from recent history and to confront the media’s often-poor coverage of those events.

The reason that “The Newsroom” is so profound is because of how well it can draw you in. This isn’t one of those white noise TV shows that you can watch as you do homework. No, this is a show where most people can barely pick up their phones to text their significant other back. Beyond that, the show is such an icon because of how much it’s talked about, even amongst the people that hate it. You know you’re doing something right when people are still talking about you even though they hate you.

Amidst the polarized opinions about it, the show entered its final six episodes this past weekend, and not to spoil too much, it seems like Sorkin has put targets on everyone’s back and has returned to his dominant TV writing style. The episode was back dropped against the Boston Marathon tragedy, and showed a lot of character progression and change from the last season throughout. It will be interesting to see where all of our characters end up with tensions rising and seemingly everyone “up for sale.”

Overall, from the quick-witted dialogue, to the inspiring portrayals of the world’s most dramatic and terrifying events, “The Newsroom” has stamped its name as one of the few drama series’ to call out the flaws of the modern day media and society. If you don’t believe me, watch the opening scene of the very first episode and try and tell me that you’re not hooked. Despite this being the show’s last six episodes, from the tone of this first episode it seems like Sorkin has big plans and a lot in store for us in those short six episodes. Like Will McAvoy said at the end of the episode, “We’re not in the middle of the third act, we just got to the end of the first.”