Newsroom Recap: Will Goes to Therapy

Mackenzie realizes, five seconds later, that she was still with Will when he got the offer and Jim confirms the offer went so far as a deal memo. Mackenzie gets all mopey and tells them to get back to their regular work. As Lettie Mae and Neal don’t have to be told twice and run, Jim and Maggie hang back and laugh so Don can see them and get smurfy.

But who cares about Don (I DO!) Mackenzie’s rushing into Will’s office to ask about the talk show. She’s finally managed to get her back up and tell Will to stop making her feel like shit for cheating when he was planning on leaving, anyway, but loses it while prattling about “leading a life that was good and pure,” and then reverts to form when he pulls out a product-placed jewelry box with an engagement ring.

Having retrieved the upper hand, Will tells her the deal was never real and he was still trying to impress her. Mackenzie starts feeling guilty, again, so he makes sure to step down extra hard on her neck, making her admit that she was cheating on him while he was buying her an engagement ring.

Put your hair shirt back on, slut. He’s not done shaming you, yet.

As Mackenzie slinks out and Will stands so proud of himself, Dr. Habib exposits that Will actually JUST bought the ring because he knew about the opposition research. DICK! He tries to justify the slut shaming because she cheated on him four years earlier. Dr. Habib isn’t buying his BS so he tells Habib to fuck off because he doesn’t know what it’s like living in Will’s head. I’d expect it’s akin to when John Malkovich entered his own head and everyone looked like him and all they could say was MALKOVIIIIICH.

Sloan’s packing up her office when she gets called down to the newsroom floor. They have video of a Japanese news report about her interview. Turns out Daisuke has resigned in the aftermath. Despite getting horrible advice from him in the past, since Will’s an imperious blowhard Sloan asks for “his wisdom.” Ew. Double ew when Mackenzie offers her “wisdom” and Sloan reminds her of how her advice generally blows up. Like when she told you to badger an interview subject until he told the truth? Oh wait, that was Will.

Who’s back with Dr. Habib recapping her situation but eventually circles back to how this whole thing started because…hee hee, it’s still funny…he changed the posting policy on his website. Turns out one of the posts Will read on air was about someone named Sutton Wall.

Wall is a gay, African-American Republican who allegedly worked for Rick Santorum. I say allegedly because he’s a fictional character so Sorkin can both make the case that Santorum, and by extent the RNC, hates teh gays and thereby hates Wall and show Will being a horrible bully by having him browbeat and humiliate Wall on the show. But also still kind of, sort of be the hero because he put Wall in his place for supporting someone like Rick Santorum.