The Newsroom Recap: Girls Drool

Down at the studio a squeaky-voiced pop culture reporter pings a few stereotypes and throws it to a remote before picking up the gossip rag she’s reading:

Oh.

Meanwhile in the newsroom, Neal, the 22-year-old blogger, called the entire AP staff in on a Saturday to discuss his Bigfoot theory and create a reason for Maggie to be unprofessional on the weekends, too. Will wanders in long enough to make Neal feel like shit then Charlie whisks him away to show him the magazine and discuss damage control.

Maggie continues to be completely over the line until Jim finally drags her out of the meeting to remind her he’s her boss and that she needs to curb her insubordination. Then a scene that is so reprehensible in what it says about Maggie and Jim and how they, and by extent Sorkin, think love and commitment works that I’m not even going to recap it. Except it seems that Jim thinks the instinct to lie about sleeping with Lisa is A GOOD ONE. And Maggie almost agrees. Then Jim finds a way to make their respective lies and deceptions Don’s fault. That’s fucking pathological.

Back in Will’s office and Mackenzie and Don are trying to parse together exactly what happened with Carrie so they can cover Will’s big, dumb ass because somehow the concept of how gossip works still eludes him. He refuses to admit that he’s kind of a massive, oozing dick and just assumes all women are jus jellus that some other unfortunate woman has to deal with his ish, then Don and Charlie do this:

Heh. Yes, he is laughably pathetic in his cliché midlife crisis. Will twists this to be all Murdoch’s fault but then Charlie finally remembers that TMI is an AWM title. It took him this long? Then he tells Will and Mackenzie about the meeting with Leona from two months earlier where she threatened to fire Will by creating a “context.” Booze kills, y’all.

Having regained what he thinks is the moral high ground, Will goes off on a wobble about Charlie keeping the information from him and Charlie flat out calls Will a big scaredy-cat baby while Don just wants to lock in the damage control and Mackenzie wonders why Will suddenly let a non-compete clause into his contract. Because the ability to be a petty and punitive tyrant over his fiefdom was more important to him. How did you let him go, Mackenzie? Of course, she’s never comfortable on her own moral high ground so she goes out onto the newsroom floor where her staff is having their ridiculous Bigfoot meeting to act unprofessionally and give them plenty of gossip fodder because it’s the fuel that powers civilization, Will.

While Jim moonily watches, Fix You by Coldplay starts playing, momentarily horrifying Maggie enough to run for the safety of Will’s office. Oh. It’s January 8, 2011 and Maggie ran to tell them about the Tuscon shootings. Well, who feels like an asshole now, vallegirl?

I know, Maggie. I hate Coldplay, too.