All’s Well That Ends

Just a few hours before shooting the final scenes of The Newsroom, Ken Finkleman had yet to pin down how it would all turn out. On a dreary grey morning, he plunked himself down beside a pillar on the tenth floor of cbc Toronto with a copy of a script balancing on his lap and started running possibilities for the show’s final line past one of his cast members, Karen Hines. The words were to be spoken, as many of The Newsroom’s best are, by anchor-mimbo Jim Walcott.

“How about ‘Good night and God help us?’ It’s not unlike him to sort of—”

“No, it’s not unlike him. It’s not unlike him.”

“Good night and God help us—”

“He never listens to—”

“Yeah, maybe we can do better than that.”

“Jesus? Jesus save us? Allah? Mohammed?”

Hines giggled at her own joke, either at the idea of Jim finding religion or the thought that Finkleman, the writer, director, and star of the show, might offer salvation to his cast of charlatans, pushovers, and dim bulbs. It was a rare moment of levity in an otherwise downbeat day for the writer/actors who make up most of the cast.

The Newsroom’s exit from television comedy will not garner a Seinfeld-esque buzz in Canada. It has been too dark, erratic, and uncompromising for that, and it has played Lazarus too many times. The show will, however, have to address the same question everyone asked of Seinfeld on its way out the door: how does a show that pointedly refuses sentimentality reach a satisfying conclusion?

Darkly comical shows on North American television usually reveal a soft, mushy core at the last—witness Edith’s near-death in the last episode of All in the Family or Al’s fatherly concern when Kelly got engaged to a jerk on Married. . . with Children’s finale. The Larry Sanders Show, the series with which The Newsroom is most often compared, ended its run with Larry looking back misty-eyed at an empty set as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” played in the background. And the clip show that ran before Seinfeld’s finale featured a “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” montage so cloying it would have embarrassed Céline Dion.