Faking It!

So MTV has been getting pretty darn good at this TV thing lately, it seems. Not a huge surprise, while they did invent reality tv, which I've never been especially fond of, they also had some of the best shows of my youth like Daria and Aeon Flux (and Undressed -- at least when I was eleven years old!)

So they came out with this show called Faking It, which I found out about completely randomly on youtube. I was curious, but skeptical. Luckily it showed up for free on Amazon Prime so I gave it a shot.

First episode, I still had some trepidation. I was like... There has to be some catch, something more to this. I mean if this is really a show about two straight girls pretending to be gay... then this is not something I'm going to be watching.

But, of course, in the last second of the first episode you find out one of the fakers, weeelll, she might be having a pretty easy time faking it.

And it pretty much gets better each episode. It feels a little like MTV's other hit romance romp, Awkward. Faking It isn't as funny or clever as Awkward, but I'd have to say that the characters on Faking It are a lot more sympathetic. Jenna on Awkward is just a straight up bad-ass. Everyone around her is crazy as fuck and that gets her into 'awkward' situations, but she herself isn't awkward. She's smart and collected and basically ready to take on all comers. So I mean, I root for her but I don't exactly relate to her -- I'm nowhere near as cool as she is.

Faking It gives us characters that are a little more flawed and a little more down to Earth. I mean, I'm not as cool as Amy either. But she's more conflicted. And even the evil popular girl -- confounded by her inability to lord over the school because of the school's inverse social structure that puts outcasts on top and barbies at the bottom -- even she ends up being pretty sympathetic.

I thoroughly enjoyed Awkward's first two or three seasons but the premise has run thin for me with all the constant back and forth between Guy A, Guy B, or Guy C. Faking It hopefully has a better plan for us. But even if it only lasts 18 episodes, it'll be a whirlwind knockout of a show. I'm curious where they intend to go with this set-up and I'm hoping it turns out to be a classic best-friend romance, we haven't seen that in a long time. At least not on TV.

I'm up to episode 6 of a disturbingly short 8 episode season, and #6 was the best so far. I mean, in most cases the whole threesome concept is thrown into a TV show as a lowest common denominator appeal to male fantasy. But gosh, the version in Faking It was fiendishly nerve-wracking in such a unique way. Imagine you're pretending to be in a relationship with your best friend who you are secretly in love with, and you're tasked with, um... pretending to have sex with this friend but you really want to have sex with her so you have to... pretend to pretend to have sex with her? That's an Oscar-worthy performance if you can pull that one off!

So, way to go MTV. I'm looking forward to finishing this season and I can't wait for next season of Faking It. I also can't wait for Finding Carter's season to end so I can watch that. But I still can't get into Teen Wolf. It's like a not-as-good version of The Vampire Diaries which I already gave up on in the third season. But I'm sure there's something great about it which I'm just not seeing.

HBO's The Newsroom

A few years ago I was turned on to an older show, a CBS phenomenon from the turn of the century called The West Wing, written by famed writer and showrunner Aaron Sorkin. It was an innovative, unique, and very touching series about the inner-circle of the US President and their struggle to keep afloat and do no harm while navigating the politics and crises of the world's most powerful office.

Sorkin's newest show is The Newsroom, an HBO drama that could work as a spiritual sequel to The West Wing. This time the focus is on the staff of a cable news network and their struggle to bring real news to the people without succumbing to the petty tactics of the tabloid mentality which has befallen cable news.

The pulse and flow of the series is very similar to The West Wing: we have plucky idealists at the pinnacle of their respective career path, fighting the good fight but failing to always keep their head. The Newsroom isn't half as innovative as The West Wing was, but it improves on the formula in two notable ways. Firstly, The Newsroom doesn't concoct artifical news stories for their fictional world, they frame their fictional story around real-life news stories. This is a very unique and engaging flourish, that also allows real ethical questions to come into play on a more realistic playing field.

Secondly and most importantly, The Newsroom brings to life a cabal warm, charismatic, loveable characters in a way The West Wing never did. I liked The West Wing's crew as human beings and individuals. I was rooting for them, I wanted good things to happen to them. But I never found it in me to really feel for them, to really relate with them or love them. They were just such dry, burdened workaholics. "Real life," the personal stuff, was never more than a burden to them. The star of The West Wing was the politics and the writing, the characters were mere vessels. When they tried to get personal, they always failed, and those were the episodes that didn't interest me.

The Newsroom, on the other hand, almost instantly endears you to these characters. They're people with lives and loves, hobbies and aspirations. I've fallen in love with all of them and I really care what happens to them. Emily Mortimer is especially beautiful and engaging as the Peabody-winning journalist & producer who keeps this tumultuous group together by the skin of her teeth.

This program has received a lot of middling reviews for its perceived preachiness and saccharine ethos. But mostly critics are forgetting that this has been both Aaron Sorkin's M.O. and his claim to fame from the start. It's not 1999 anymore and the tone of well-crafted adult dramas has changed. Today the critics are all about main characters who are vicious monsters (Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Vikings, Dexter), and anyone can die at any time (Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead). But there's room on the airwaves for more than one zeitgeist, not everything has to be grim and brutal.. If you appreciated The West Wing, there's no reason you can't appreciate The Newsroom.

In the last year's time I've watched about 20 different drama shows. Out of these, four are worthy of a perfect 5/5 rating. These are: Jericho, In the Flesh, Switched at Birth, and of course The Newsroom. The Newsroom has really been able to improve upon The West Wing's formula to create something truly special:  enormous fun, clever characterization, and heart-wrenching sentimentality at a pinpoint perfect note.