What did you think about the first episode? The Gulf Spill scenes really got me going but I thought the acting, in general, was terrible. Emily Mortimer's (token british accent) impassioned rants were really hard to believe and Sam Waterston (token drunk boss) was not that compelling either, IMHO.

I will give it a shot because (a) it's Sorkin and (b) it's about news, but I was underwhelmed. The whole character development bit at the beginning totally fell flat for me. (Especially with the secondary characters... Ambitious-yet-messy intern/assistant dating the hot-shot Columbia Journalism EP? DON'T CARE.)

I will say this, though: I was riveted toward the end when the show went on air. That portion reminded me a lot of the best scenes from the West Wing: high-intensity, perfectly paced, beautifully edited.

(Also talking about this here with a a few friends: beta.branch.com)

I almost wish each Newsroom episode would be ACN (WTF name, too?) episode within an episode (EPI-CEPTION), if that makes sense. The Newsroom is an hour, ACN is slotted from 8-9... character development during commercial breaks? It could work.

I think that mostly makes sense. I've been anticipating this premiere for a while, and — let's get this out of the way — will probably watch it every week even if it gets truly bad.

I don't think it was as terrible as some people seem to think it was (see politico.com, but also, notably, Jake Tapper's TNR review — tnr.com — and Emily Nussbaum's New Yorker take — newyorker.com), but I was also not all that impressed. As most journalists seem to be saying, the reporting/producing parts were pretty interesting and exciting. The human drama/Northwestern speech portions were far less convincing. But I guess that's pretty close to what you said, Libby.

Here's where I think the show could get really interesting: its portrayal of actual events. Kicking the series off with the oil spill was ambitious — everyone remembers the spill, not everyone remembers the coverage. Assuming the show follows a somewhat predictable timeline, pretty exciting things will be coming up (how is Will McAvoy going to handle the emergence of the Tea Party, for example?).

If the show can deal with real-life events in an unpredictable fashion (meaning Will doesn't nail the broadcast every time, and Jim doesn't have sisters and college roommates at every relevant organization), it will be worth sticking with.

If not? Well, then viewers will jump ship just like Will's staff.