After watching the first four episodes, I have to say that I’m hooked on the show. I will disagree with Rolling Stone’s review that this is an awful show.
Of course, in my case, the main reason is the plot. Jeff Daniels, who plays Will McAvoy, is a newsman on the evening broadcast. I guess you would consider him popular since he’s in a time slot for ratings that are given to Bill O”Reilly of Fox News and Rachel Maddow of CNBC.
In any case, Will McAvoy is a high ratings newsman who is out to take down the tea party and that isn’t going so well in the boardroom. Jane Fonda, who is one of the women on the board, is unhappy, telling McAvoy’s producer that if he doesn’t tone his act down, he’ll find himself without a job. The producer says go ahead and find someone to compete against him. Fonda says it would be a problem since McAvoy is on a three year non-compete agreement.
Yes, this is what is attracting me to the show, along with the producer’s response, which is “that is a death sentence.” Fonda said that those are the terms.
I like the way the non-compete agreement is used here because to me, it is realistic. Here is a typical company crying that they don’t want any of their employees to work for a competitor and in the next breath, they’re taking advantage of their non-compete agreement to put a muzzle on McAvoy. You can compare that to companies like mine who abuse people in the workplace verbally or set hard quotas as an excuse to fire someone so they can’t be in the industry anymore.
As the story continued into the fourth episode, McAvoy makes Republicans look bad when people like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin complain that the Democrats want to make laws to enforce gun control. Yet McAvoy says that the opposite is true: that if anything, Barack Obama is not doing anything about making gun laws tougher. Since this takes place in 2010, this changes during the Gabrielle Gifford’s shooting in Arizona.
As a result, Fonda is trying to discredit McAvoy by having him meet several woman, one who writes a derogatory article on him, followed by another woman who goes to that reporter to write another story.
If anything, I’d like to see how the plot goes, especially since McAvoy’s non-compete is involved. It’s a great example of Corporate America abusing employees and taking advantage of their non-compete agreement power that they have. It’s all the more reason for me to say the same thing over and over again.
As far as The Newsroom goes, I can’t buy the idea that McAvoy is a Republican since his message seems to work more as a Democrat. In any case, I give the show four stars and I look forward to see how the plot goes with this show.
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