The Newsroom Recap: Girls Drool

Welcome back to another week of Who Does Aaron Sorkin Hate This Week The Newsroom. And this was a momentous week for production. Finally, the episode itself was more pompous and self-important than the opening credits. Huzzah?

I’m rolling in my grave, Will.

Those awful credits end and the screen fades to black as the improbably chipper and current, to the episode at least, The Sound of Sunshinestrums away on the soundtrack. Then  a chill runs down my spine because I see this:

OH NOES! Aaron Sorkin wants to fix me.

Terrifying. Scene fades up on Will continuing to be a dick and smoking in his office while wearing a tuxedo. It’s New Year’s Eve and ACN is so damn cheap they’re having their holiday party ON New Year’s Eve in the office. Keith isn’t even there to play Only You so Dawn can come back because she FINALLY realized that she loves Tim and they get their one happy moment.

Here, Will and Mackenzie trade pleasantries while Will fishes for a compliment but Mackenzie wants him to talk to Wade who wants to drop another deus ex machina in their laps discuss why the government’s having difficulty prosecuting the predatory lenders.

Meanwhile, Neal’s being a stereotype again, trying to convince the rest of the staff that Bigfoot is real. This is Saved by the Bell: The Lost Class, right? These aren’t actual adults in a newsroom. To confirm my assumption, everyone laughs at Neal and walks away, because it is high school. Or maybe Peanuts. Those kids are brutal.

I’m an ex-stumbling drunk cum Jesus freak and I make more sense than you.

Except Jim. He’s working because nothing goes better with “smug” than a martyr complex. Even Maggie’s loosened up and put on a party dress, her roommate’s of course, but Jim just plugs along and looks down on the others for actually enjoying themselves. That might just be my interpretation, though.

Neal’s still geeking out when his date, Kaley, shows up. She’s cute and normal and not a computer monitor or Neal’s own sense of self-satisfaction, so Neal wins! Of course, it ends up a drive-by sexist display for Neal but he did manage that one moment where he wasn’t a stereotype.

How normal people act on New Year’s Eve.

How Jim acts.

Jim’s a catch. He’s working on a list of stories they didn’t cover when they were relevant. Why? And a theme week in the New Year? You do those recaps/round-ups in December not the first week of a new year. That’s Bowl Week.

Oh, never mind. It’s so Maggie can offer to help (Why?) just in time for Don to show up while they’re flirting. Jim gets inappropriate but Maggie laps it up because she’s Sookie Stackhouse and needs one in reserve at all times. With her validation in place, Maggie hot foots it over to Don for his validation.