The Newsroom

[neversremedy8]

I am incredibly grateful to the creator of The Newsroom. We just started watching the show (we're on the fourth episode), and it's refreshing to have a show that's intellectually stimulating, challenges the status quo, and demands its audience become more aware of the sociopolitical machinations going on around them. (It's a mini civics lesson amidst newsroom drama.)

The timeline is a couple years behind reality, but allows for hidden facts to come to light so we can at least pretend there was an honest, politically center news show that actually presented the news. Like journalism, ya know?

After the first episode, which with an active baby approaching toddlerhood took us three nights to watch, I got on my knees and said, "thank you! Thank you for a show that stimulates my mind instead of only appealing to base impulses." Seriously. I did that, but hey, cooped up mom with baby, right?

What surprises me about the show, are the little things I didn't know. For all the time I've spent over the last decade actually caring about politics, there are little things no one in any media outlet is saying that was said on the show. "Is that right?" I asked, as I backed up the show a couple of minutes to hear something again. Then I grabbed my phone to fact check. I've done this a few times now that we're on the fourth episode.

Craig and I started watching The Wire a couple of months before, and I thought the writing on that was excellent. (Ana did, too, and started watching them with us, though sometimes she draws and listens instead so she doesn't see upsetting images.)

The Newsroom is even better, though of an entirely different subject matter.

This may be old information to people with cable and time to devote to regular viewing, but for anyone not familiar, I recommend giving the first episode a shot. It's certainly a nice break fromMLP:FiM and children's audiobooks, and I can put The Newsroom on when my son's awake the same way I can music or an audiobook. We watch The Wire when he's asleep, though. Never know when he might glance at the screen.