Seriously, it was this guy:
The character of Don Keefer is such an excessively grating straw man in every sense, both personally and professionally, that it stretches any bit of credibility at times and is hard to take seriously. He’s built to be disliked. He won’t go to dinner with the cute assistant’s parents after dating for four months. He ignores any hint of “real” news when it starts breaking. He resists even pretending to pay attention or prepare. There are reasons why this makes sense on paper (power plays, the way things are done here, etc.) but in real life, I can’t ever imagine a journalist telling people to knock it off the way this character does, especially shocking because this character is lauded for his meteoric rise to EP in so short a time. How and why did it happen? None of the skills or insight were remotely on display in The Newsroom’s premiere. Every moment he was on screen was simply a moment to groan and wait for the Good Guys to knock this punk down a peg. He’s just silly—like the way he ignores news based on the color of severity is just crazy and tonally off.
His only redeeming moment? He did slam the character of Will pretty good about halfway through the episode and talked about how Will’s personality (his grating, over-the-top, worse-than-Bartlet’s-worst style) was the reason he left the show. That was a fine and honest few words. Who knows though. Maybe he’ll be entertaining as hell.
