TV Club

Week 5: Hopes for the Second Half

Dear David,

You’re shortchanging the Sun subplot because this is “what our readers want”?

What if our readers wanted you to jump out a fifth-floor window of a Baltimore apartment building?

What if our readers wanted you to stop Marlo Stanfield from boosting Tootsie Pops?

What if our readers wanted you ditch your wife for Snoop?

What if our readers wanted you to speak from now on with a ridiculous Greek accent?

Since when do you care about your readers? What do you think you’re writing for, the Web?

The People of the Fray are only partially right; we do in fact (speak for yourself, Goldberg, I hear Plotz say) write about our industry because we are interested in it, but the truth is that we’re supposed to write about David Simon’s show, and David Simon’s show has much to do with journalism. Unfortunately.

I’d like to write only about Omar’s auto-defenestration, but this season is mainly about Simon’s obsession with newspapering. Halfway through, I still have hope (because, like Obama, I’m all about hope) that the newsroom drama will somehow become complicated and realistic. But I promise—if next week’s episode has something interesting to tell us about Marlo or Omar or Bunk or Cedric Daniels, I’ll be sure to make note of it. Before going back to complaining about the Sun.

Jeff