Project Nim

On the surface, Project Nim is the story of an ape. Nim Chimpsky, born in 1973 to an ape named Carolyn at Oklahoma’s Institute of Primate Studies. At two weeks old, Bill Lemmon, who ran the Institute, took Nim from Carolyn, shooting her with a tranquilizer gun when she refused to give up yet another baby (during her lifetime, Carolyn gave birth to 14 babies, all of which were taken from her). In addition to Lemmon’s tranquilizer, Carolyn could look forward to being disciplined with a cattle prod, which Lemmon carried with him at all times.

Lemmon handed Nim over to Columbia University professor Herb Terrace, or rather to Terrace’s assistant, Stephanie LaFarge, who was to raise Nim as a human child. LaFarge, a former lover and student of Terrace’s, became Nim’s primary caretaker during the early years of the experiment. The experiment in question revolved around language. At the time, it had already been established that chimps did not have the physical machinery to learn to speak as humans do. The question then became whether they could communicate in other ways, like sign language. Chimps like Nim learned to sign hundreds of words. The research brought into question whether the chimps could learn the finer nuances of language (for example, “Dog bites man” vs. “Man bites dog”).

Nim with Bob Ingersoll

Over the years, Nim trained with several researchers, including yet another of Terrace’s students/lovers. What is notable about Nim’s caretakers during his time in New York is that none of them, not a single one, had experience in the care of apes. Nim continued to change hands as his usefulness to one party or another expired, or as the underprepared humans realized the difficulties of having an ape in their midst.

Director James Marsh (of Man on Wire fame) follows Nim’s story through the entirety of his life, making great use of the wealth of archival footage that had amassed around him. One of the most striking things is the reversal in Nim’s circumstances, as he desperately tries to communicate by signing to new humans who don’t understand and no longer care about what he’s trying to say. So, while on the surface, Project Nim is the story of an ape, it is also the story of the humans that populated Nim’s life. It is the story of the arrogance, the callousness, and the lack of empathy that each of these individuals displayed toward Nim. The one notable exception was Bob Ingersoll, a student who cared for Nim for several years in Oklahoma, and who devoted the rest of his life to advocating on Nim’s behalf. Sadly, Ingersoll never had legal ownership of Nim and was powerless to control Nim’s fate. The ethics surrounding Nim’s emotional life (and often his physical living conditions) were ignored by every other person in his life. To them, Nim was a means to an end, and from the moment he was ripped from his mother’s arms, the little guy’s needs were never a concern. Above all else, Project Nim feels like a devastating indictment of us.

Copper

The single most volatile time in our nation’s history was The Civil War. Even though New York did not see any major battles during the war, it was nevertheless a political hotbed, a raging city fueled by the corruption of Tammany Hall, the crime sprees of the gangs at the Five Points, the ambition of new immigrants (primarily Irish), the religious fervor of the Third Great Awakening, and the determination of the escaped and freed black men and their abolitionist allies. New York, then as now, was a city where people of all backgrounds, political affiliations and socio-economic statuses lived and interacted on a regular basis, whether they liked it or not. Though a couple of attempts have been made to capture this period in New York’s history (most notably in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York), none have quite portrayed with any level of vibrancy this almost lawless state in which the authorities are every bit as deviant as the criminals.

Copper, BBC America’s first original show, succeeds in this setting where others have failed. Created by Tom Fontana, most famous for St. Elsewhere and Homicide: Life on the Streets, Copper has more in common with Fontana’s most infamous and challenging creation, HBO’s Oz. Though it is slightly lighter in tone than Oz, there is no shortage of human depravity on display in Copper, but Fontana finds humanity and even humor in the monstrous.

The series stars Tom Weston-Jones as Kevin “Corky” Corcoran, an Irish cop who has returned home to NYC after serving in the Union army. Upon his return, he was shocked to discover that his daughter had been killed and his wife had disappeared. With the trail gone cold, Corky throws himself into his work, which consists of investigating the violent crimes that abound in New York City’s Five Points. Aiding Corky in his work are fellow cop Maguire (Kevin Ryan) and Matthew Freeman, a black physician of great skill whom Corky met during the war. Corky’s other friends include lover/brothel owner Eva (Franka Potente) and Robert Morehouse, a wealthy Fifth Avenue resident who was a major in the Union army. Anastasia Griffith is particularly effective as wealthy widow Mrs. Haverford, who desires Corky, and feels trapped by her high station in life. The most interesting and disturbing player is Kiara Glasco as Annie, a child prostitute who is cunning far beyond her years and who manipulates her way into Corky’s life.

The first season episodes consist of self contained cases, but each of these builds towards the season long arc of each character. Topics include child prostitution, the murder of a local abortion provider, and the poisoning of a dentist. All along, Corky searches for the answers to his own family tragedy while trying to keep New York safe from race riots, Southern spies, and political violence.

Copper‘s New York feels like 19th Century New York should: dirty, violent, and full of life. One can almost feel the dirt under the actors’ feet. The series understands that to get a full picture of New York, one cannot neglect the poor, just as one cannot neglect the elite. New York was forged by the struggles of its working immigrants just as it was forged by the power plays of its politicians and its monied aristocracy. It brings the city and its inhabitants to life, warts and all.

Copper is available on DVD. If you want to read more about 19th Century New York, I recommend Lowlife: Lures and Snare of Old New York by Luc Sante.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Pt. 1

On Thursday, I went to the Paley Center for a screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Pt. 1. The film is an animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 comic. The story begins with an aging Bruce Wayne, who left the Batman behind a decade earlier. These days, Bruce drinks away the rage and the memories of times past, as he watches Gotham City tear itself to shreds. The violence escalates with the rise of the Mutant Gang, who wage war on the city and on Commissioner Gordon, who is days away from his retirement. Adding to the chaos and general unrest is the fact that Harvey Dent, who has spent years in Arkham, has been released after a face reconstruction.

Peter Weller gives Batman a weathered, weary voice. Ariel Winter (Modern Family) is perfectly determined as Carrie Kelly, the girl who would be Robin. Her voice sounds young enough to correspond to the character’s age, yet serious enough to convey Carrie’s seriousness about her self-imposed mission. David Selby gets some great scenes as Commissioner Gordon, particularly in his exchanges with Weller. Michael Jackson (not that one) is very wry and downright funny as Alfred, who seems to grow more sarcastic with age, and who now finds himself dealing with a new child in the Batcave. Michael McKean seems to be having a ball as Dr. Wolper, who has been working with some of the inmates at Arkham and blames Batman for their condition, as well as the city’s deterioration.

(Spoilers abound from here on!!!)

Director Jay Oliva made a film that is very faithful to its source material. Like the earlier Year One movie, The Dark Knight Returns does not change anything in Frank Miller’s story. Unlike Year One, however, Returns is a story of talking heads, a tale of how the city perceives Batman. We get reactions from various newspeople, politicians, doctors, gangmembers, and people on the street. Because of this cacophony of voices, Returns benefits more from a film treatment than Year One. The story is, inherently, more cinematic.

The film moves cinematically as well. Oliva knows how to make beats linger where they matter. For example, the sequences that delve into Bruce’s memories and hallucinations are particularly effective, moments in which Oliva stops the action to ask the question: Is Bruce Wayne a well man? These moments recognize that Batman sustains Bruce Wayne, but that he is also destructive to Bruce (this was one of my favorite questions posed by Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, especially The Dark Knight Rises).

The film also clarifies and expands the action sequences from the comic. They are longer and obviously more fluid in a moving medium. I like that the film kept the look of Miller’s VERY distinctive Batman. My one complaint about the action is that some sequences are beyond Batman’s reach as an aging human being. They should have skipped altogether scenes in which Batman is punching through walls. The best moments (in any Batman story) are when Batman’s frailty puts the character in mortal danger. People like myself, those of us who prefer Batman to other superheroes, prefer him because he’s human, and therefore vulnerable. He is never more vulnerable than when he’s old, injured, or out of shape. There is a great moment in the film when Batman tries to climb a rope as he chases some Mutant gang members. He immediately tires and has to start again, struggling all the way up.

The aspect of the film that may prove more problematic for younger viewers, or those unfamiliar with the original comic, is the 80s stylization. The comic is set in a dystopian future, but it is very much an 80s dystopia. Even though the film (at least this first part) does away with Miller’s Reagan references, the glasses, the clothes and the slang are the 1980s with a twist. As the Comic Book website points out, the comic made fun of both conservatives and liberals, but removing the Reagan-like President leaves the hippies as the only butt of the joke. However, readers know that the President will almost certainly have to appear in the second half of the story.

David Selby, Andrea Romano, Jay Oliva, Gary Miereanu

The screening at the Paley Center was full. Gary Miereanu, who handles publicity for DC Comics, stated that he received over 2,500 requests for tickets to the screening. Only 200 were given out and I was lucky enough to be one of them. Also in attendance were David Selby (Gordon), Director Jay Oliva and Andrea Romano, voice director for Warner Brothers, which handles all the DC properties. Oliva spoke of how he first read The Dark Knight Returns when he was 11, and how he added little scenes into the film version, such as the moment when young Bruce Wayne attends his parents’ wake. He stated that he was always conscious of how the killing of Bruce and Martha Wayne, as drawn in the comics, always left little Bruce bathed in the light of the streetlamp, but that he felt the boy should be in darkness, for that moment represents the birth of Batman. He also explained the significance of casting Weller as Batman, since The Dark Knight Returns inspired Robocop, Peter Weller’s iconic role.

For her part, Andrea Romano revealed that she met the challenge of casting the myriad of speaking roles by calling her friends and asking them to take three roles each. By her “friends”, of course, she means the people who have populated the WB/DC animated series (which Romano cast) since the late 1980s, including Tiny Toon Adventures, Duck Tales, Animaniacs, and Batman: The Animated Series (the list goes on and on). People of a certain age, who watched cartoons in the 90s and beyond, may not realize it, but Andrea Romano crafted the soundscape of our childhoods. The crowd at the Paley Center knew it, and she was greeted like a rock star. There was loud cheering when she read each of the names on the cast list, names familiar only to fans of animation, including Rob Paulsen (Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Yakko in Animaniacs) and Maurice LaMarche (Chief Quimby in Inspector Gadget, Morbo in Futurama), or as Romano introduced them: Pinky and the Brain. When asked about the fact that Kevin Conroy, who has played Batman in the DC Animated Universe’s most celebrated titles, was not asked to play the role in Returns, Romano was quick to point out that he had played an older Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond, and that there were a lot of similarities between the two titles. Though Conroy would have done a great job in Returns, Romano stated, this doesn’t detract from Weller’s distinctive take on the role. I happen to think that since Returns doesn’t fall into continuity with The Animated Series/Justice League/Batman Beyond, then there can be room for a different Batman. It will be interesting to see if Michael Emerson (Lost) can own the role of the Joker, which has been played so memorably in the Animated Universe by Mark Hamill. Judging from his very brief- great- appearance in Part 1, I can say that I am looking forward to watching Emerson in Part 2.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Pt 1 will be available on DVD on September 25th. Part 2 will be released in 2013.

Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce was one of those films I’d always managed to miss. I knew that it was based on a novel, but I never even bothered to check who authored it (James M. Cain). Through pop culture osmosis, I knew that it was the story of a devoted mother and a spoiled child. So it was that I decided to walk into HBO’s miniseries as a complete newbie, before going on to read the novel and watch the Joan Crawford movie.

Mildred Pierce is a Depression era housewife who divorces her unemployed, unfaithful husband. Despite an ambition and pride that balks at the thought of doing service work, she finds that she won’t be hired to do anything else, especially in an economy that forces her to compete with more qualified, more experienced people. Trying to overcome her shame, she accepts a job as a waitress, and learns the ropes of the business before opening her own chain of restaurants. Despite her success, despite her considerable income, Mildred’s daughter Veda remains ashamed of her mother, for she looks down on all people who work for a living. Veda dreams of wealth, of class and privilege, attributes personified by her mother’s lover Monty Beragon.

The miniseries, like the source novel, focuses on the small moments between mother and daughter. This might come as a surprise to those who have seen only the Joan Crawford movie, a film noir. That 1945 movie, directed by Michael Curtiz, re-imagined a melodrama into a tight whodunnit, full of shadows, detectives and murder suspects. On paper, however, Mildred Pierce reads like a Douglas Sirk “woman’s movie”, something that recalls Sirk’s Imitation of Life (itself based on Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel). Cain’s novel is a character piece rather than a murder mystery, in which the drama centers around pianos, pies and domestic tensions, not on dead bodies. This is not to say that HBO’s more faithful adaptation is superior to the Curtiz film, but rather that they stand as widely different and fascinating adaptations of the same novel.

While the Curtiz film uses its limited running time to streamline the story and build suspense, the HBO miniseries, directed by Todd Haynes, takes advantaged of its expanded medium (5 television episodes) to linger on the emotional beats of the novel. This allows Haynes to explore the Depression’s long unemployment lines, Mildred’s grueling search for work, as well as her slow, hardfought climb to the top. One of the central narrative threads in the novel (and the series) concerns Veda’s musical ambitions, as well as the financial toll they take on her supportive mother. This plot-line is absent from the movie, but it is essential to the relationship between Veda and Mildred, making the purchase of Veda’s piano one of the most emotionally wrought and explosive moments in the story. This is where a well done melodrama excels: in allowing everyday activities to reveal the nature of a character and his/her domestic entanglements. How Mildred Pierce reacts to putting on a waitress’s uniform reveals who she is, how she hides it from her children illustrates the nature of their relationship, and the children’s reactions when they discover the uniform reveal who they are and how they perceive their mother.

Both adaptations of Mildred Pierce explore the selfishness and ingratitude of Veda, from her love of material things to the delight she takes in betraying her mother. Morgan Turner’s portrayal of the younger Veda in the miniseries is the single best incarnation of the character, more chilling and self assured than Evan Rachel Wood as the older Veda or Ann Blyth from the film version. Blyth in particular seemed petulant, but lacked Turner’s air of intimidation. What is curious is that neither adaptation plumbs the depths of Mildred’s own shortcomings, particularly her manipulative streak. Joan Crawford’s Mildred, for all her fast talking banter, is a victim of her daughter, an honorable woman who trusts the wrong people. Kate Winslet’s Mildred, on the other hand, is willing to sacrifice honor to further her ambition. She is far more practical than Crawford, and carefully maps out every step of her rise to success. The miniseries also sees its Mildred as more pathetic, a woman blind to anything beyond Veda. She stalks her wayward daughter after Veda moves out, and she tries time and again to insinuate herself into an unwilling Veda’s life. Nevertheless, this darker version of Mildred still doesn’t quite match the novel’s premeditating heroine. The original Mildred made her decisions with a distinct purpose of making Veda dependent on her, even if it meant alienating all of her true friends, even if it means using her husband Monty.

I recommend Mildred Pierce, as a novel, as a movie and as a miniseries. It presents a fascinating portrait of motherhood, and how self sacrifice can reach truly destructive levels. Though Veda is a damaged, bullying individual, Mildred plays no small role in her own destruction.

Jane Eyre 2011

I finally got my hands on the DVD of the latest (2011) version of Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga. This is a story, like Pride and Prejudice, which fascinates me to the point where I try to catch any and all adaptations of it. Most adaptations of Jane Eyre, however, have proved highly unsatisfactory. Either I don’t like Jane, or I don’t like Rochester, or I don’t like anything in the film at all. This is why I’m happy to say that in Fukunaga’s version I have found my definitive, favorite adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s beloved novel.

Mia Wasikowska stars as Jane, the orphaned girl sent to a harsh, strict boarding school, where she spends her childhood training to become a governess. Michael Fassbender plays Mr. Rochester, Lord of Thornfield Hall, where Jane is employed to teach his young ward, Adele. A large problem I had with previous adaptations was in the casting, but here Wasikowska and Fassbender are terrific. She hints at the passion that Jane feels beneath her carefully composed exterior, both in the longing she feels for love and in the seething rage she radiates when she is mistreated. Her Jane is obedient and hardworking, but she is not a doormat. For his part, Fassbender has chosen to part from the scarier incarnations of Rochester. He’s still rude, nasty and biting, but he is less of a thunderous, overbearing presence in Jane’s life. Rather, Fassbender’s Rochester pleads; he seems desperate and lost, and therefore, more sympathetic. Also worth noting, for the first time in any Eyre adapation, is St. John Rivers, played by Jamie Bell with a darker, more judgmental and manipulative take on the character than I’ve ever seen. His belief that he is entitled to Jane’s affections is justified in his mind as God’s own wish. He uses Jane’s piety and gratitude against her.

Fukunaga makes some bold choices behind the scenes. Unlike most films, his Jane Eyre uses natural light in all its scenes. This is particularly striking in nighttime scenes inside Thornfield, lit only by candles. The characters in the light radius are surrounded by an abyss of shadows that make Thornfield more mysterious and threatening. The natural light also accentuates the estate’s beauty in the outdoor scenes in the daylight.

The most interesting departure is to start the story at the end. Because the novel climaxes with the revelation of Rochester’s secret, the reader is left with a long section after the climax in which Jane runs away from Thornfield and tries to rebuild her life without Rochester. Moira Buffini’s screenplay enhances the narrative flow of the story by starting with Jane’s departure from Thornfield, opening with her arrival at the Rivers home, then flashing back to her life with Rochester. Her story with the Rivers no longer takes place after the climax, but as a framing device throughout the film.

Cary Fukunaga has restored strength to Jane, torment to Rochester, and a dark beauty to Thornfield Hall in his adaptation of Brontë’s novel. It is available on DVD, and I highly recommend it.

Agora

“Freedom and Power”

“Passion and Ambition”

Growing up as an atheist in Catholic schools, I was taught a skewed history of the Church. The true religion arrived with Christ, calming and civilizing the cruel pagan world that preceded Christianity. While my schools acknowledged the contributions of the Greeks, and the heresies that arose in Catholicism’s youth, the Greeks and Romans were, in the end, godless and violent, while the heretics were brief interruptions in the otherwise peaceful development of the Church. True Christians were simply victims, courageous martyrs.

What I learned AFTER I left school was that ecclesiastical history was MUCH more complex than that. Early Christians, famously victimized by the Romans, were later victimizers themselves. This is the part that is often overlooked: Early Christians practiced violence, towards nonbelievers, towards the Jews, and towards each other. There is the second historical oversight: That heresies were neither brief nor amicably resolved. One could say they not heresies at all, since there wasn’t ONE Christianity, but several sects that disagreed with each other on crucial theological questions. When one of these schools of thought squashed all others (again, through violence), the winner got to write the losers off historically as crazy outliers, when in reality, they all began with the same level of legitimacy. The orthodoxy of the Christian faith wasn’t established until centuries after its founding, centuries full of infighting and uncertainty regarding the faith.

In essence, the arrival of Christianity tore the world apart as each of the faiths fought for dominance. Into this fray was born the protagonist of Agora, philosopher/astronomer Hypatia. Hypatia was the daughter of mathematician Theon Alexandricus, the last librarian of the famed Library of Alexandria. Her father encouraged her to study, and study she did, becoming a lecturer in astronomy and philosophy. When we meet Hypatia, played by Rachel Weisz, she is in the midst of her lectures, trying to ascertain, along with her students, the trajectory of the planets in the sky. Some of her students are Christian, and their religion has recently been endorsed by the Emperor. With unease, Hypatia’s father Theon (Michael Lonsdale) watches the masses embrace this religion while brutally punishing anyone who resists them. Another member of the household is Davus (Max Minghella), Hypatia’s slave, who shadows her from the baths to the lecture hall. Davus is deeply in love with Hypatia because he responds to her beauty, her intelligence and her kindness. However, every time he senses a closeness between them, one of Hypatia’s careless and insensitive remarks remind Davus that he will always be a slave, less than a human, in her eyes.

As tensions among the Christians, the pagans and the Jews come to a boiling point, the Emperor sides with the Christians, who take control of Alexandria. Powerful people like Hypatia’s admirer Orestes (Oscar Isaac) choose to be baptized in order to maintain their influence, and to ensure their safety from the Parabalani, a Christian brotherhood that enforced morality within the city. Davus, who sees the Parabalani’s acts of charity towards the poor and the sick, decides to join them after becoming disillusioned with his status as Hypatia’s slave. Unfortunately, Hypatia’s refusal to be become a Christian puts her at odds with the ascendant Christian order within Alexandria, and with Davus’ news friends.

Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar, takes certain liberties with history (Davus is not a historical character), but some of this historical license allows Amenábar to explore themes like the attraction that Christianity held for the poor and the powerless. As expected, the film was controversial among Christians, who said it portrayed their religion in a negative light (it should be noted that the pagans are also guilty of violence in the film).

I feel the film is engrossing for several reasons. Amenábar, director of The Sea Inside and The Others, knows how to craft an aesthetically beautiful film. The performances, especially by Weisz, are outstanding. The movie also explores two dynamics that are rarely explored on film: the persecution faced by skeptics and the refusal to marry as a feminist statement on self determination. This theme abounds in Christian literature about female martyrs and saints who refused to marry. It is interesting that in Agora, this feminist theme is applied to a skeptic. Finally, I love that Agora is a sword and sandal film that is light on battles and heavy on ideas. There are no prolonged battle sequences full of Roman soldiers (although the film does contain brief instances of violence). Some might complain that Agora is too ponderous, but I like its intellectual ambition, and its celebration of female independence and scientific pursuits. It is a film about ideas, big ones, and there is something inspiring about mankind’s overwhelming need to explore the universe, to ask questions, and to obsess about things like the perfection of a circle, qualities that are all embodied in Hypatia.

The Newsroom

I’ve heard two main criticisms of Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show, The Newsroom. Either it is too Sorkin-y (ie, too full of sermons) or it is not realistic.
To the first argument, I would say this: Aaron Sorkin likes to sermonize. He feels that America should reach a particular ideal and he will not apologize for sermonizing about its progress (or lack thereof). If you’re watching an Aaron Sorkin show expecting not to see sermons, then I wonder why you walked into an Aaron Sorkin show. His fans (and there are many) seem to dig his sermons, as they dig his mastery of language and dialogue to put forth an ideal. It is almost a brand now.

The second argument ties into the first, somewhat. As I said, Sorkin is an idealist, he has a vision for America. His shows, consequently, reflect that vision, and they can be said to be aspirational, rather than realistic. I don’t see anything wrong with an aspirational piece of fiction. I’ve never heard Mr. Smith Goes to Washington be denigrated because real politicians are not like Jimmy Stewart. Sometimes, shows aim for realism and sometimes, they aim for aspirational. I think both types of shows can be great (just like both types of shows can be very, very bad).

I guess it’s not difficult to deduce that I fall into the group of people who dig Sorkin’s idealism and his sermons. In particular, I share the frustration that he seems to feel about the news. In The Newsroom, Jeff Daniels plays Will McAvoy, an anchor who has built a career and a large audience by not offending anyone. He is the Leno of the news. When he attends a panel discussion at a university, a student asks the panelists, “What makes America the greatest nation?” After being pushed for a “human moment” by the moderator, Will loses his composure and goes on a rant detailing why he thinks America is NOT the greatest nation in the world, why America has lost the qualities that once made it stand head and shoulders above the rest. When the rant goes on YouTube, Will is sent on two weeks’ vacation by his boss Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston). Upon his return, he is shocked to discover that his staff has left him to work on a new show headlined by his protégé. Charlie has also hired Will’s ex-girlfriend Mackenzie MacHale (Emily Mortimer) to be his new Executive Producer, much to Will’s chagrin. Inspired by Will’s rant, both Charlie and Mac feel that Will’s show can be great again, and they are both willing to alienate the audience by eschewing the vacuity that made Will so popular in order to fulfill their duty as newspeople- to educate the electorate. They believe it is their patriotic duty, per Thomas Jefferson, to bring facts to the people in order to improve the Republic.

As a man who berates his staff and refuses to give them any acknowledgement or respect, Will is a more problematic character than Josiah Bartlett before him, which means Sorkin has tarnished his hero in a way he did not on The West Wing. I think it’s an interesting choice and Jeff Daniels is up for the challenge. The problem is that by tarnishing Will, Sorkin felt he needed someone else to represent Will’s conscience, and that thankless task falls to Emily Mortimer’s Mac. The problem with The Newsroom pilot, as I see it, is not that it is idealistic, but that Sorkin has separated fallibility from idealism into two separate characters. I hope Mac becomes more complex as the series progresses, but in the pilot, she seems like an angel who’s always right. For his part, Sam Waterston steals the show as Charlie, who desperately wants to improve the news, for he shares Mac’s ideals, but also falls into the quagmires that entrapped Will. The rest of the cast seem very competent, but their characters have not been fully realized yet (some of the characters will be introduced in later episodes). I can say that thusfar, I enjoyed John Gallagher, Jr. and Thomas Sadoski as competitors with different work ethics in Will’s newsroom, but I felt that Alison Pill as Maggie felt like a tired, cliched ingénue character (though one with potential for growth through her association with Mac).

I liked The Newsroom pilot. I really liked it, and I hope the rest of the series builds on its potential.

Update (9/1/12): Having watched the first season in its entirety, I continue to love Sam Waterston and Jeff Daniels, as well as Olivia Munn and Jane Fonda. The problems with Maggie (Allison Pill), however, do not improve in subsequent episodes. On the contrary, she regresses, becoming ever more prone to falls, childish outbursts, and general incompetence. The character really makes the show hard to enjoy.