I'm not sure what the point of completely changing the facts about what was known that first day was though.

Forget knowing the exact cause, flow, or magnitude of the disaster. In reality, nobody knew whether the safety devices were going to be able to stop the flow or not for a couple days.

On the show, the 'new guy' was able to find out how much was flowing and how it happened within a matter of minutes.

It distracted from an otherwise great Sorkin pilot. They should have gone the Law and Order route and just done some made up rig.

Particular points as story line developed were merely vehicles to present the methodology of delivery.
The speech to the student body should be spread far and wide.

...when I said they should have gone the Law and Order route and made up a fake oil rig explosion.

They could have maintained the same storyline but they wouldn't be blatantly rewriting history.

We'll be digging for grubs for a meal, living in caves and praying to the sky god for rain, and our leaders still won't admit we're not the greatest anymore.

I think the third ones already happened. Get ready for the other two.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/prayerplainandsimple/2011/07/a-prayer-for-rain.html

Had to watch it twice to make sure it was as good as I thought.

don't you wish we had politicians with the courage to actually say this kind of thing for real?!??!

I preach this shit every day. The one exception is I'm a liberal. Why they gave this speech to a "conservative?" character, I don't know. What they hell would they know about it? They are the ones ruining America.

My only issue with the speech is that it seems that a conservative/Republican would not say what was said in that scene. I do not think I have heard one conservative say anything like what was said in that scene. What conservative would say that? In the last twenty years what conservative has said that outside of trying to bash a Democrat and get that Democrat voted out of office?

I think Aaron Sorkin wrote a conservative character making that statement because Sorkin did not want Democrats to be criticized.

they will believe in sacrifice and morals in economics & politics once again. So there will be a market for good quality news of a type that is hard to find on the MSM these days.

this looks like a brilliant show!

Jeff Daniels was great as was the rest of the cast. My view it was similar to West Wing due to the fact that the hour just went by so fast. Cannot wait to see next Sunday's episode.

I will be looking forward to watching this on YouTube...

Great clip, and very true...