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Season 3 Speculation

Lisin

By Lisin
in The Newsroom [V]

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KHenry14

KHenry14

Allison Pill is the reason I can't watch this show.  She is an atrocious actor.  It's like watching a high school drama student try to reach the people in the back.

I tend to disagree. She was much better in season 1 than 2, mostly IMO because of the terrible storyline they gave her. Even Meryl Streep would have been hard pressed to do well with the scripts Allison got.

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Danny Franks

Danny Franks

I tend to disagree. She was much better in season 1 than 2, mostly IMO because of the terrible storyline they gave her. Even Meryl Streep would have been hard pressed to do well with the scripts Allison got.

 

I liked her fine, but I can see how she's the sort of person that might be disliked. I draw comparisons between Maggie in season 1 and Donna in the first few seasons of the West Wing, because I think the characters are quite similar, in a lot of ways. Maggie is just more prominent than Donna was, so we're more exposed to her, and to the things that might grate about her.

 

But I really disliked the vitriol thrown at her by the TWoP recapper (who seemed to hate the entire show, to be honest, which made reading those recaps a dreadful chore), because it was usually unfairly skewed to ignore anything that might paint Maggie in a more sympathetic light.

 

I did not like her season 2 storyline though, because the trope about spiralling women who drink and fuck the pain away is really, really tired. She seemed like a completely different person, to the extent that it was just jarring. An evolution of character is fine, a complete reinvention is not.

 

As for speculation, I do wonder how they're going to get past the whole Genoa thing, and how they're going to do it quickly enough that these last few episodes aren't just bogged down. If the show's going to end, I'd like to see it end on a triumphant note for the characters.

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oceanblue

oceanblue

Telling the Genoa story mostly in flashbacks made it impossible to empathize with Maggie's story.  Her hair was cut 11 months after she came back from Africa?  And the lawyer made it sound like she looked absolutely freakish, but she didn't.   

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madam magpie

madam magpie

My beef with Maggie's storyline in season two was that it was way too obviously telegraphed. There was nothing surprising and we as the audience didn't lose anyone that mattered to us. They should have killed Gary. I realize that then the critics would have called Sorkin a racist for killing off the only black guy on the show, but it would have packed a huge emotional punch for the audience and would have made us all feel Maggie's response. As is, they killed an obvious character to whom we had no emotional connection in an obvious way.

 

Maggie as a character isn't the type of woman I tend to like, but I do find her believable. She's young, lacks confidence, and makes bad boyfriend choices. I buy that she drinks too much and talks about sleeping around. I'm not sure she actually does it.

 

In season three, I really hope Jim doesn't dump Hallie for Maggie. I like Hallie a lot and would love for her to have a bigger role; I'd like her to work at News Night. Also, based on the short promo I saw, it looks like they're going to do some whistleblower story that somehow becomes a legal/moral issue for Will. But I too am really interested to find out how they overcome the whole Genoa thing.

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Mozelle

Mozelle

I'm glad that they didn't kill off Gary (and for Maggie's arc, at that) because I would have been one of the people complaining about them killing off one of the two black characters the show has.

 

Honestly, I found the whole Maggie subplot cumbersome, and I think it had to do with the decision to tell the story in flashback. We already knew that Something Big Happened to affect her, but it probably would have served the narrative better to tell it linearly--spend several episodes of Maggie overseas, let us get to know the school children over those episodes, and then have the tragedy happen. As it stands, we only got those short moments in one episode to find out about this boy that was somehow deeply entranced by the blonde hair. :/

 

Anyway.

 

There's a brief teaser on the HBO YouTube page about this season. It's a bunch of script pages being photocopied and there are shadows over text. It may or may not be the script for this season.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X63rdIcHLA&feature=youtu.be

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loriro

loriro

(edited)
My beef with Maggie's storyline in season two was that it was way too obviously telegraphed. There was nothing surprising and we as the audience didn't lose anyone that mattered to us. They should have killed Gary. I realize that then the critics would have called Sorkin a racist for killing off the only black guy on the show, but it would have packed a huge emotional punch for the audience and would have made us all feel Maggie's response. As is, they killed an obvious character to whom we had no emotional connection in an obvious way.

 

 

I honestly don't think that the story originally was going to be what it turned out to be. I don't think they were originally planning on killing Gary, but I think they may have originally planned on having Maggie be attacked.  No real evidence to support that except the line in one of the episodes where Will says to the lawyer that if what happened to Maggie happened to her, she'd curl up and cry forever (or something like that).  Additionally, Maggie told Jim she was afraid to sleep alone at nite.  I mean, don't get me wrong, what happened to the boy was awful and the idea that the bullet would have otherwise hit Maggie is a difficult thing to put her head around, but I always felt a bit of a disconnect between the drama with which her storyline was built up and the actual pay-off, including the things she said. It just didn't resonate with me as much as it should have.  (Probably makes me sound really unsympathetic...!)

 

I honestly don't care what happens on the show -- I just love the dialogue -- with the exception of Don/Sloan. They had better damned well end up together or I'm gonna be p*ssed!! 

Edited by loriro
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oceanblue

oceanblue

I completely agree.  A child being shot is horrible, but since the child was just introduced I wasn't that attached.  I did think something much worse, like a gang rape, had happened to her.  It's TV, something happening to a character we've invested in is worse than something happening to a character we just met who wasn't developed.

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Danny Franks

Danny Franks

Looks like they're going back to more of a season 1 vibe, with the real life events. I'm glad about that, because while season 2 was good, and an interesting premise, I think it was occasionally less than coherent.

 

Wish we were getting more than six episodes, because Aaron Sorkin writes the best dialogue on television, and I don't give a shit whether some people hate him or not. He's a better dramatic writer than most people, and a better comedic writer too.

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Pallas

Pallas

As someone who doesn't even frequent my neighborhood bar...I say, that sounds right.  Unless, after they run the story, the network's entire executive team  -- and Will as a producer there, as well as an anchor -- can be brought up on Patriot Act charges.  

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