That's a good point, and a poor choice of word on my part—Falstaff, as a knight, is at that wonderful hinge between "untitled" and "aristocracy", where all sorts of weird, wonderful, individualist behavior are found—he's definitely not "common" in the sense of "commoner."

Like the reviewer, I found the two HENRY IVs much less successful than the rather brilliant RICHARD II—there was a rushed quality to these last two adaptations—the director taking less time to establish all the beautiful contrasts that make the two plays so engaging—The Court of Henry versus the Inn of Falstaff—the…

True, but if you read the plays that come before RICHARD III in the tetralogy, you're more aware that people do, in fact, treat Richard like shit because of his deformity—and that even his familial allies turn their backs on him as soon as he's won their war for them. But your reading works too—it's all up to the…

I teach Shakespeare, and I mention this only because I want to make clear that what follows is not my idea, but that of someone else—a student, who wrote a brilliant term paper about how BREAKING BAD is a re-imagining of RICHARD III. In my lectures, I stressed how Richard's deformity—a physical flaw, for which he…

People, people, please! (Raises hands.) Now, sure, you've all made good arguments, with your "Robocops" and your "Jim Gordons" and that fancy cable tee-vee show called "Wiring" or some such—

Indeed. Like everyone else ever, I came into this show already sick and goddamned tired of Ms. Deschanel, the IKEA version of Quirky* that had been shoved down my throat like an overdose of rose-petal-infused saccharine ("with a sprig of jasmine, just because it's Tuesday—tee hee!")

The key to Winston's character has been slowly-but-surely revealed: He has no idea who he is, either because he never had any real guidance (no father of his own—he had to make do with Nick's, who was not what you'd call any kind of a role model), or because he made life choices (the out-of-the-country basketball…

Ever since seeing this movie, I have been able to cope with every single awful, disastrous thing that has ever happened in my life by saying, of said awful disastrousness*, "So. *That* happened."

That's a valid interpretation of Piper's speech, but—and I particularly got this vibe in her diatribe to the Scared Straight kid—there's a difference between saying something clever and saying something substantial. At the end of her speech, I thought "Wow, that's was clever—but it wasn't anything more than that,…

I'd dispute the assertion that Piper has grown, or will grow, in prison. I think the flashbacks to her earlier life indicate that all the elements of her personality—her unselfconscious narcissism, her meandering approach to life based on the easy privilege of her social/racial status, her ability to compartmentalize…

"Symptom of Watching THE NEWSROOM: Choking on my own fresh vomit." - David Sims

No, Neal is the Jeremy. Jim is more like the Sam. And Maggie is totally the Charlotte, and Sloan is the Miranda and…wait.

THE NEWSROOM has become a show about itself. Not a show about "News Night with Will McAvoy," which is what it was the first season. Now it's some kind of weird ouroboros in which the regulars (Will, Jim, Sloan) are engaged in a cycle of:

I'd offer the (uncreative) assertion that Piper is the villain of the series. That, like Walter White, she thinks she's the good guy despite a consistent string of actions that prove the opposite.

If that's the dynamic at play here—I hope it is, and I can, upon reflection, see how people are responding to the heavy-handed "look at how fucked-up her hair is followed by portentous ambiguity in reference to her fate" foreshadowing on Sorkin's part, rather than anticipating the portrayal of the rape of a young…

Actually, I give Sorkin and the show credit for the fact that such moments of "Hey, they need us, not the other way around—all we have to do is stick together" usually collapse immediately, and usually because (comparatively) real, lower-income characters refuse to buy into the well-fed bullshit of the elite…

It needs THE DAILY SHOW.

I was impressed that Sorkin censored himself from the original version of the line: "Snark is the idiot's version of wit, SIMS."

@ infernocanuck: That's a more than fair question, and I really should have an answer besides some vague reference to "tone" or "attitude." My opinion that the review is disrespectful to his readers isn't just based on the unremitting childishness of the writing, though that's part of it. But I understand the need to…

@ infernocanuck: You are trying to portray me as having written things that I did not write. I have said that I do not think the show is above strongly negative criticism. I have said that last night's episode was poor and deserving of a negative review. I referred to the "hand wringing" in reference to not chastising…