Media

‘The Newsroom’ Finale: How to Write Eulogy, Will McAvoy-Style

I almost felt bad going into <em>The Newsroom</em>'s final episode last night: after all, it's not like Aaron Sorkin <a href="http://t.co/6jEEKEy23h">came down to where I work and told me how to do my job</a>. The show is fiction! It was the last episode! Maybe I should give it a rest, already, and enjoy the few precious minutes we had left together. A memorial, of sorts.

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Saying goodbye to The Newsroom.
Saying goodbye to Will McAvoy.

I almost felt bad going into The Newsroom‘s final episode last night: after all, it’s not like Aaron Sorkin came down to where I work and told me how to do my job. The show is fiction! It was the last episode! Maybe I should give it a rest, already, and enjoy the few precious minutes we had left together. A memorial, of sorts.

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Then I watched the episode, and I realized there’s nothing that says “I honor your memory,” than hijacking its funeral and make it all about yourself. Preferably during a cello jam session in a garage.

Because sometimes it’s not about the grand speeches you make. It’s about refusing to make the grand speech, because that’s what’s expected of you when you sign up to speak at your best friend/daddy figure’s wake. It’s about smoking a million Marlboro Lights and getting all your employees names wrong and re-gifting dead people’s ties and THEN making the grand speech. It’s about pulling the plug on the Internet until the bloggers agree to only write posts about underrated and under-appreciated stuff, like living art and/or prostitutes. (Shout-out to Kara Smoke for breaking that big scoop about ACN’s president’s Dov Charney-esque pick-up methods. WE R #1! Right along with Business Insider, who gets the big post-scandal profile of said ACN president. #TheNews #OnIt.)

The Newsroom, in the end, was a show about the right way to stand up for your beliefs, especially if it leads to unintentional homicide when your boss literally dies from you being the worst. It’s about questioning the institutional status quo, which can be hard when you are the institutional status quo. The Newsroom taught me that sometimes, we have a moral obligation NOT to do our jobs. And then kill our bosses. And then spend his funeral announcing the promotion we just gave our wife. Who isn’t paying attention because she’s on the phone. At the funeral. For your boss. Who is now your wife. Who is now pregnant.

THE NEWSROOM!

So with the spirit of the show in mind, I would like to pay Aaron Sorkin a fitting final tribute to his brave, brave statement on the Internet kids these days The News. As such, here are some of the livetweets I wrote during the episode, a la The Newsroom’s finest character, Hallie Shea. I promise, I did my due diligence reporting this one: I went on my Twitter account and carefully analyzed every single one of the things I wrote, and then I copy & pasted my own cranky reactions to things, as if it counted as a legitimate journalistic endeavor. I hope I made Don & Sloane & Will & Mac & Charlie & Fiona & Lucas & Maggie’s stupid baseball hat & Jim proud. If not, who cares? It’s not like anyone’s watching.

‘The Newsroom’ Finale: How to Write Eulogy, Will McAvoy-Style
Filed Under: Media, TV, TV Reviews, THE NEWSROOM