YMMV / The Newsroom

• Anvilicious: A Sorkin standard.
  • Additionally, many critics argue that Sorkin seems to be just lecturing everyone about the "proper role" of the news media without really knowing what he's talking about (apparently, his "ideal" news show involves the host being... a highly opinionated commentator), and belittling the actual work of journalists by having his fictional ones make long, elaborate speeches about what to do and always be right.
• Awesome Music:
  • Thomas Newman is as good as always, with his theme song really making things seem epic.
  • The "Fix You" montage from the episode of the same name. Awesome and tearjerking all at once.
  • "Baba O'Riley" in "The Greater Fool".
  • Luminate's cover of "Let My Love Open The Door" in "Election Night Part 2"
• Broken Base: Some critics loathe the "Don talks to a college student about her website" plotline in "Oh, Shenandoah." Others say Thomas Sadoski and Sarah Sutherland were awesome in their scenes together.
  • While the rant from the pilot episode was lauded, some critics took issue with him attacking the college student, specifically describing her as part of "Worst Generation Ever", which they saw as a blanket statement and an insult towards an entire generation.
• Character Shilling: The show will never miss an opportunity to tell you what a "nice guy" Jim Harper is. Some of the most egregious examples include Jim being the one to comfort Kaylee after Bin Laden is killed (instead of, you know, her boyfriend Neal) and Hallie being chewed out by her sexist boss solely to give Jim a white knight moment. By far the worst is how his insistence on being a "nice guy" actively screws up Lisa's life, and by extension, Maggie, Don, and Sloan. Jim actively stringing along a woman he has no interest in is never treated as a character flaw or the cruelty that it really is.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Hallie Shea, despite "coming between" the designated Official Couple of Jim/Maggie. Quite a number of fans wish that Jim would end up with her instead. This is probably at least partly due to the fact that Grace Gummer apparently inherited a sizable chunk of her mother's acting talent.
  • Rebecca Halliday is popular with the fanbase to a degree that is entirely out of proportion with her actual amount of screen time thanks to being played by Marcia Gay Harden, who runs away with every scene she is in.
• Genius Bonus: While arguing with Don about whether she likes puzzles Sloan mentions "they often don't put in enough boxes for the word" to explain why she shouts at the New York Times crossword. In context this works a joke about Sloan getting the answer wrong, but the Times uses the "Rebus" in it's puzzles which is a square that contains multiple letters by design that is controversial among some crossword enthusiasts who view it as making the puzzle unnecessarily complicated
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In season 1, Maggie tells Jim about an HR incident precipitated by her confusing Georgia the state and Georgia the country, and then sending a condolence bouquet with "LOL" on the note (she thought it meant "lots of love").
  Jim: How do you still work here?
  Maggie: ...I dodge bullets. Here comes a bullet- *boom* I'm over here! Here comes another- *boom* Over here!
  • Then comes her trip to Africa in season 2... For context: Yes, Maggie does dodge bullets; the people around her, not so much.
  • Likewise, in the third episode Jim tells Maggie that she seem like she's "under sniper fire" during her Freak Out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the first season, McKenzie accidentally sends a lot of people a private message by misunderstanding how to work her Blackberry and the Newsroom later covers the Anthony Weiner Twitter fiasco. In September 2012, after the first season had aired, Allison Pill (Maggie) accidentally tweeted a nude photo of herself to her public profile.
  • There is a subplot in season one about the NSA gathering data secretly and illegally on US citizens. This was written in 2012, a whole year before Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal came to light. By season 2's "News Night with Will McAvoy," Charlie is meeting with an old agency contact, and they rather blithely refer to the infamous "Utah data center"^note The contact jokes about how people will think they're stupid for putting heat-sensitive computers in the middle of the desert. that the NSA is building for PRISM; known to most people watching the show now, but set at a time when this would be an earth-shattering revelation to the general public.
  • Also the Operation Genoa story became rather funny when something similar happened with CBS when they had to retract a 60 Minutes report on the supposed "truth" behind the Benghazi attack(the Benghazi attack was ironically a part of the episode "Red Team III" in which ACN retracts the Genoa story) because the informant they used had given out false information and FOX news was left looking foolish since they quoted the CBS report as fact.
• Ho Yay:
  • Jim/Neal quickly emerged as a favorite ship.
  • Neal/Amen.
  • Don/Jim.
• Moral Event Horizon: A journalistic one. Jerry doctors footage from an interview with one of the architects behind Operation Genoa so that it appears that the interviewee outright states that the US used sarin gas, rather than alluding to it. While no puppies were kicked or love interests murdered, the level of "journalistic malpractice" (as Sloan would put it) going on is pretty severe.
• Narm:
  • In one episode of season 1, a bunch of staffers on the show, led by Don, are on a plane. They know that Osama bin Laden has been killed, but it hasn’t been announced yet when other passengers on the plane start getting text messages and emails about the president making a televised speech to the nation. Don stands up in the middle of the plane to make the big announcement. A flight attendant tells him to sit down, and Don says that she’s just being hysterical. Then the captain comes out, and then Don calls him “Sir” and the flight attendant “crazy lady,” and says that the Army killed Osama bin Laden “for you.” Then the pilots shake hands. Then Don turns to his fellow News People and says: “We reported the news.” The scene is supposed to be dramatic, but the bizarre directing, acting and the sexism of the script makes the scene comical or uncomfortable to watch. In 2019, with the 18th anniversary of 9/11, this scene has been making the rounds on social media again, with many detractors of the TV series using it as the prime example of its irregularity.
  • In "The Blackout Part II: Mock Debate," the scene of Will walking out of the smoke at night towards Lisa's vandalized place of work. The scene is meant to be dramatic but is so over the top at painting Will as a Messianic Archetype that it'll prompt a giggle instead.
• Retroactive Recognition: John Gallagher Jr. actually guest-starred in Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, albeit he's almost unrecognizable as an awkward, skinny, gawky teenager.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Some viewers aren't really interested in any of the relationship plotlines (I.E. Lisa/Maggie/Jim), and even many of those who are consider the Jim/Maggie plotline this trope.
• Seasonal Rot: The first season, being fairly episodic but with various character arcs, is the least divisive. The second was hotly debated due to an overarching story arc that altered the pacing of the season and how dramatically it changed the character dynamics. The third season was widely derided and some accused Sorkin of slumming it with lazy writing and an over-reliance on the characters lording their moral and intellectual superiority over others.
• She Really Can Act: Olivia Munn was largely regarded as a lightweight in acting, if that. Then the episode "Bullies" rolled around. Cue a whole lot of people sitting up and going "Whoa!"
• Signature Scene: Pretty much what everyone remembers from this show is Will's rant about America not being the "greatest country in the world" due it's Values Resonance in practically describing real-life USA during the latter half of The New '10s. The scene itself often displaces the very show it is from due to how widespread it is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The How We Got Here story in season 2 started out quite exciting, with the promise that we'd actually get to see the team seriously screw up rather than always know the right thing to say about any news item by virtue of being written two years after the fact. Then it all turns out to be the fault of a new character.
  • Also the subplot about Will getting death threats in season 1 looked to be building up to something truly interesting, and then it's completely ignored and forgotten about in season 2, with Will's bodyguard Lonnie Church no longer around and no mention of the storyline whatsoever.

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