The Newsroom Recap: Aaron Sorkin Saves the News

The Newsroom

By vallegirl | Wednesday, June 27, 2012 | 1:00 pm | 11 Comments
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in: Recaps, The Newsroom

Once they’re in his office Will starts acting like a punk, actively ignoring her and looking at the newspaper while she tries to make small talk. Dick. As Mackenzie tries to go a little deeper, talking about how she tried to get in touch with him a lot over the last three years and did he get her emails, he says he did…he just didn’t read them. Oh important white man, why are you so important?

While he decides bitch smoking is the best course of action, Mackenzie starts in on the small talk, again, before getting to the heart of the matter, saying that she’s so sure it will work she signed a three-year contract, which is the longest she’s ever signed. Will tells her it’s not a three-year contract anymore, it’s a 156-week contract whereby he has the option to fire her at the end of each week, but he’ll give her a couple of months so he doesn’t get raked over the coals, again, for being a dick. He gave up $1 million a year in salary for the privilege.

Now do you remember why you ran to the Middle East to get away from me?

Don comes back from his pizza meeting so Maggie can introduce him to Jim and the men can get into a chest-thumping, dick-measuring contest. Turns out Jim doesn’t have to woo Maggie, he just has to be butcher than Don because he was Mackenzie’s producer in the field…in Iraq, Afghanistan and sometimes Pakistan.

First Don tries demeaning Jim’s experience, wondering if he ever produced in a studio (he has, for a year) then switches tacks to what a loon Mackenzie is and how patriotic she is, considering she’s not even American (She’s actually a British anchor baby.) and Jim keeps “jovially” swatting Don down. Knowing, but not acknowledging, that he’s beat Don smarms a welcome and drags Maggie away, ostensibly to find out how much trouble he’s in with her. Like the strong feminist she is, Maggie says she’s over it.

Haha, you’re awful.

Back in Will’s office, Mackenzie’s trying to get Will to lighten up, if not for her than for her staff that came with her. Mackenzie grossly overestimated the milk of human kindness that flows through Will and he just barks at her that they fucked up by trusting her.

His outburst shuts up the newsroom long enough for Jim to hear the news alert go off. No one listens to him so he brings it to Don’s attention, who blows it off because the alert is yellow. The rest of the newsroom also ignores Jim so when he hears the news alert one more time he checks it. There’s been an explosion in the Gulf and Jim and Neal bond over being the only people who seem to know that there are oil rigs in the Gulf of Florida. Don sends some blonde extra, Tess, to cover the assignment desk.

Ooooooh….

While Will and Mackenzie continue to obliquely discuss their failed relationship, the newsroom is tracking the BP oil rig explosion. Although emergency rescue crews were dispatched and 12 to 15 people are believed missing, Lettie Mae lets us know that the alert is still yellow so Don isn’t prioritizing the story. Noble Jim, though, can tell it’s going to be major and tells him they just haven’t updated the color and thinks someone should tell Will.

Don patronizes Jim some more, telling him he has no intention to step into that lion’s den and since Jim doesn’t work there, yet, he may as well just sit his pretty little ass down. Don asks some random if there’s anything new, in the last five seconds, and random says no. Noble Jim thinks there might be but Don says there won’t. What? Suddenly Don’s become lazy and dumb? It’s only the pilot. Retconning should take more than 35 minutes.

Oh hey, Lettie Mae. Congratulations on getting the hell out of Bon Temps.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
vallegirl
About

Vallegirl has never actually lived in a valley, has a lot of time on her hands and likes to yell at kids about how things were in her day.  Currently in LA, she's also spent a lot of time in the great states of  New York and Florida so she's not crazy, it's just a cultural thing.

11 Comments

  1. 1
    ChaCha
    Posted June 27, 2012 at 2:55 pm

    Loved your recap, Valleygirl, but I didn’t come close to loving the show as much as you say you did. Maybe that’s because I worked in and around television news for sixteen years (the fabu career portion of my life) and I couldn’t help but nitpick the really showbizzy, stupid stuff that never happens like applause by EVERYone at the end of a seat-of-the pants newscast. Really? Not bloody likely! And an open, obvious liquor bottle in the news set–not unless you want to get fired, and there is certainly someone higher up than Charlie in the network. I won’t be watching that silly treacle anymore, but I will be reading your recaps because they’re waaaay better than anything Sorkin could write.

  2. 2
    maryedith
    Posted June 27, 2012 at 3:51 pm

    I think the record-scratching noise in my head when I reached the end of this recap may have been loud enough for vallegirl to hear. Because, if this was a show she liked, I seriously want to read a negative recap of hers!

  3. 3
    vallegirl vallegirl
    Posted June 27, 2012 at 4:28 pm

    I liked it…but I never said I liked it because it was good. It has a lot of kinks to work out and isms to get over, but Sam Waterston was pretty great. (Even if he would have been fired for drinking in the office.) And, despite being the designated jerk, I rather liked Don, too.

    But maybe it was seeing Alicia Corwin in the opening scene that threw me.

  4. 4
    ChaCha
    Posted June 29, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    Judging from the lack of commenters, I’m guessing that this show is not going to be a hit with Gasmii. Don’t let that discourage you, Vallegirl, from recapping it.

  5. 5
    vallegirl vallegirl
    Posted June 30, 2012 at 8:25 am

    Oh, I’m in it for the season. Unless they bring on a Safe Haven baby.

  6. 6
    maryedith
    Posted June 30, 2012 at 9:10 am

    *coughs* POI? *coughs*

  7. 7
    maryedith
    Posted June 30, 2012 at 9:14 am

    Oh. DUH. You WERE referring to POI there, weren’t you? I forgot that one amidst all the other plot disasters. So that was the straw that broke your back? Because I did wonder.

  8. 8
    vallegirl vallegirl
    Posted June 30, 2012 at 9:19 am

    Nah, that was just the beginning of the end. It was a perfect storm of things that came together. But the baby really started the ball rolling.

  9. 9
    maryedith
    Posted June 30, 2012 at 11:22 am

    I became obsessed with the Gawker recaps of “Girls,” did you see them? The comments afterward that complained about them made me think of you. People would be like, “Why are you recapping this show if you hate it so much?” I really appreciated your analysis of why POI was going south and I think it’s important to point out intelligently just what makes a show bogus. So I hope you stick with this show even if it gets bad — you put your snarky finger on things so well!

  10. 10
    maryedith
    Posted June 30, 2012 at 11:26 am

    I don’t mean that I want this show to get bad. I realize that comment may have come across like that.

  11. 11
    Jaycee
    Posted December 5, 2012 at 11:33 am

    Something I just realized. Mackenzie shouldn’t have been able to alter Will’s title card by changing a chyron. The title of his show is in the clip. Even if a title card is just a still image, you can’t just hop onto your chyron program and change the embedded text. I’m pretty sure they designed it that way so producers couldn’t be assholes and give the program a new name whenever they feel like it.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Human Verification: In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.