Newsroom Recap: Will Goes to Therapy

Jim starts by asking about the complaint. Maggie, who wouldn’t complain if her hair was on fire, gets her back up immediately and stonewalls Jim, saying that a desk producer saw Will yell at her…because she confused Georgia the state with Georgia the country and signed a condolence card from Will with “LOL” because she thought it meant “Lots of love.” Gah.  We already know she’s dumb, you don’t have to make her dumber, Sorkin. Jim finally does something that makes me like him when he asks why she still has a job. Maggie, showing that she’ll always give Will a run for his money in the awful department, snots to her boss that she dodges bullets.  Really Maggie?  You know you’re too incompetent to save yourself…and Don was Will’s EP at the time.  Just sayin’.

The face of a gentle little dormouse.

Back in the meeting with the non-contemptible members of the News Night staff, and Sloan’s still talking to the TEPCO spokesman. Although he tells her the reactors are at level 5, they expect to get them back online, the tinkling piano suggests there’s more there and Sloan asks the others to leave so she can speak with him privately. I’m sure this won’t be a major plot point. Once alone, and “off the record,” Sloan gets the spokesman, Daisuke, to admit that the reactors are expected to go to level 7.

In the meantime, Don proves that sometimes assholes are awesome and just barges into the newsroom bellowing for Sloan. The APs scowl at him because he’s so rude but Don don’t care. He needs Sloan to fill in for Elliot, who’s at the hospital with his daughter. She’s having her tonsils out. It’s not an emergency, he’s known for a week…he just forgot to take care of it.

I’ll let that level of idiocy slide because the only ship worth sinking with is launched: Doan. Or Slon. Maybe Safer. I’m not sure which, yet. They have a natural rapport that makes some of the overbearingly cute banter seem legit. She balks, he says she was his first, no fourth, and only choice. She’s never hosted a hard news show, he tells her she’s expanding. She’s about to go on a wobble about gaining a little weight but he points out he meant professionally.

He tells her the copy will be written for her approval and gives a vague rundown, ending on Fukushima. Don dangles a Gucci carrot in her face then foreshadowing drops a giant anvil on both their heads when she tells Don she just got off the phone with the TEPCO spokesman. Sloan mentions them low-balling the radiation and Don blows it off saying he’ll take their word for it since, and I quote, “The Japanese have some experience with radiation.” Really, Sorkin? (BTW, didn’t Don already ask about this?) Sloan starts to ask if she should mention that on air and Don stops her in her tracks. I’m sure this will end well.

SQUEE!