Review: The Newsroom: The Complete Third Season

The Newsroom: The Complete Third Season

HBO Home Entertainment
Street: 06.14

That’s right, folks. It’s all over. All of Will McAvoy’s (Jeff Daniels) beautifully crafted sarcasm is gone forever … but wait! Through the magic of technology, you can watch Will, MacKenzie (Emily Mortimer) and the whole Newsroom staff be witty and journalistically ethic everyday until forever—and in beautiful HD! I kid, but the idealized “news” within this show has provided a nice standard with which to judge the news shows you enjoy—I’m much more likely to call bullshit when I see bias in a news story than I ever was in the past, and that’s a very good thing. As a fan of The Newsroom since the epic first 8 minutes of the pilot episode, I have to say I’m disappointed that the final season was shortened to just six episodes. It was mostly enjoyable, but felt rushed in places and certainly was not the sendoff that a show of this caliber deserved. The character development that takes place in this final season only makes the show’s end all that more bittersweet—it’s so worth watching, and re-watching, but it’s all gone … all gone. If you’re on the fence about finishing the series, I recommend following this one through to the end—let it be your call-to-action to be more informed, more honest, more ethical, more attracted to Jeff Daniels and less likely to put up with bullshit reporting. What else are you gonna do, sit through Rachel Maddow pretending she’s Olivia Munn? –John Ford