The Newsroom Recap: Is That All There Is?

Here it is, Gasmii. The night we’ve all been dreading waiting for. The season finale of Great Googly Moogly, Is This Crap Still On? Oops, sorry. I mean, The Newsroomand I’m sure it will be full of wit and beauty and pathos and…who am I kidding. It sucked. With all the creative freedom HBO allows its showrunners, the only take away for Sorkin was cursing, no commercial breaks, and 20 more minutes to speechify.

Judging you.

So those awful credits roll and I shed a tear, knowing I’ll be able to sleep the sleep of the few, the righteous, those who will no longer be tortured by so much treacle so close to bedtime. They scamper, they scurry, they fuss and furrow their brows because they’re just that important and with one last “The More You Know…” flourish, we fade to black one last time.

Truth in advertising.

We’re getting counted down to broadcast as the camera comes up…and it’s a crane shot of Will’s desk as he tells us it’s August 8th and then runs down a list of the actual hard news of the day that will not be the night’s top story because they’ll be telling the story of Dorothy Cooper. He says it with his serious newsman smirk, so you know he ripped someone off.

But if that wasn’t half-assed enough, we time shift to eight days earlier. Mackenzie, Lonny and I’ll say Will’s doorman break into his apartment so that Mackenzie can urgently chirp, WILL? WILL? WILL? Until my ears start bleeding. Will’s been missing. A whole six hours. In the middle of the night. It’s called “sleep,” people.

Oh wait, no. His bed hasn’t been slept in and Lonny sees a spot of blood on a copy of New Yorkwith Will’s stupid mug on the cover and the subhead “The Greater Fool.” Lonny, Mackenzie and the doorman all follow the perfect little blood trail to Will’s bathroom. While Mackenzie squeaks out “Billy” a few times to set my teeth on edge, we see Will sprawled on the floor with the tidiest blood stains around him. Oh, NOES! Don’t tell me Sorkin had the balls to kill off his lead in the first ten minutes of the first season finale? Who does he think he is? Terrence Winter? (JIMMY!)

Shell shock, fucked my mother then my surrogate father shot me in the face. You?
Bleeding ulcer from self-medicating after someone wrote a mean article about me.
Pussy.

Psych. Two seconds later they’re in the hospital and Dr. Day Player comes in to tell them that Will’s out of immediate danger. He wasn’t coughing up blood, he was vomiting blood and Charlie (When did he get there?) exposits that that’s a symptom of a bleeding ulcer. Will’s been self-medicating with Naproxen, Effexor and bourbon because he told Brian to write the truth and Brian did. But Mackenzie calls it a hatchet job because she still is the only person with less self-awareness than Will, which is why they’re made for each other.