The Newsroom Recap: The Password is…Illegals

The Newsroom

By vallegirl | Wednesday, July 4, 2012 | 12:00 am | 6 Comments
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Posted in: Recaps, The Newsroom

While Don chews on his pen making WTF faces for my amusement, some random staffer mentions that there was a “crazy militia guy on Jon Stewart” (Which, no. It was probably Aasif Mandvi.) and figures they can book him, too, setting Mackenzie up to be both righteous and ditzy. Because it’s just adorable when girls try to be boss.

Don challenges Mackenzie on what she means by “best possible version” of an argument so she can parrot about sources and relevant facts and basic stuff you learn in high school debating. Don challenges her on what is the best possible version of the Birther argument. She says there isn’t one and basically negates her whole theory about News Night being a courtroom by acknowledging that not all stories have two valid arguments. Don proceeds to make this face while she’s talking.

Okay, maybe he is the asshole.

This leads to a sermon about how all the rest of the media is biased toward fairness, that they’ll never call out disinformation as lies but present it as a “difference of opinion,” then, randomly, Will tells Neal what his name means. Still a dick. Whatever, it’s an opportunity for Don to snipe at Will so Will can snot back then question why he’s still there. Mack publicly reprimands Will and demands he apologize to Don. It’s that level of professionalism that makes them such an inspiration.

Mercy, this meeting won’t end. Neal, the designated bleeding heart, suggests interviewing a man who lost his license when he was featured in an article about illegal immigration and now he’s been targeted by the state. Neal thinks it would help to put a human face to the immigration question, but Mackenzie only wants facts, Will argues about “the guy whose job he took,” and Neal thinks they’re both assholes.

Thank goodness it’s finally over. As Olivia Munn prettily tells us about the Dow, Don tells Mackenzie he’s not really in it to take shit from Will. Then he wants to know why she’s cutting the two fluff segments from the show. It’s because they’re just too important for fluff, Don, and you’re the asshole. Or something like that. Then she condescends to him that he can take them over to Elliott’s show. He points out that since Will’s the evening’s lead-in, there won’t be an audience left if News Night is just Will being a pompous ass. Or something like that. Mackenzie zones out on Don because she sees Olivia Munn giving a financial report and has an idea so Don can patronizingly pat her on the hand before he leaves.

A burgundy blouse with an eggplant skirt? Your argument is invalid.

Jim and Pam Maggie come into the newsroom. Mackenzie (I refuse to use that nickname) wants him to go over her pre-interview with the governor’s office including a practice run. Maggie, who up until three days earlier was Will’s de facto assistant who was just an intern a few weeks earlier, actually tells HER BOSS that she doesn’t think she needs to be supervised even though she’s never had this much, or any, real responsibility. This isn’t a disaster waiting to happen, though, because they’re “cute” so it’s “charming” instead of “stupid.”

Showing that she doesn’t quite understand how seniority, job duties, or basic human communications work, Maggie tries to pull rank, thinking she’s perfectly qualified because she’s been there a year. As an intern and unofficial assistant. Jim mutters a dumbfounded “Okay” which Maggie, who is now at Sookie Stackhouse levels of entitlement, takes to mean he’ll let her conduct the pre-interview with no rehearsal or supervision. When he more or less laughs at her she says she’s doing it under protest. She does realize she can be quickly and easily replaced by someone less contentious, right?

She even looks like Sookie.

Jim changes the subject to wondering if she’s really considering going to ten o’clock. Maggie says that Don made the compelling point that building a show from scratch is valuable experience and Jim chuckles a semi-mocking “Okay” because he’s the shaggy-haired, good guy. These two are like chicken pox and poison ivy. They just won’t go away and make me itchy with irritation.

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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.

6 Comments

  1. 1
    hstrhth
    Posted July 4, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    that was absolutely horrible.
    you seem like quite a nasty person.

  2. 2
    Matthew S
    Posted July 5, 2012 at 12:35 am

    i thought there were times you were nasty–i’m not sure if you used the term cum one time to describe maggie or if that was for something else–either way i’m a huge sorkin, i was totally looking forward to this show and i dont know i feel empty watching it. and then i read this and its fuckin hysterical. it sort of confirms that empty feeling, and thus i can’t delude myself into thinking the show is too good (well, actually, it has promise, but its so damn unoriginal, it’s like paint-by-sorkin-numbers). and youre remarks were great and funny and there you go good sir. YOU WIN.

  3. 3
    JasonR
    Posted July 5, 2012 at 8:46 am

    I kinda liked the pilot, but this was Sorkin at his most preachy & intolerable, and couple that with characters acting in a way that professionals with brains never would in real life and it = suck. I’ll give this one more week and if it’s anything like this past episode I’m done.

    Nothwithstanding the bad episode, this was a GREAT recap!! Great job calling Sorkin & Co. on all the ridiculousness.

  4. 4
    maryedith
    Posted July 5, 2012 at 10:02 pm

    I’m still scratching my head over why this show is on HBO. People wouldn’t have such high expectations for it if it were on the networks and there’s absolutely nothing about it that isn’t network. I usually hate it when people say this, but Jeff Daniels come across as completely unlikable, and it’s a problem because I think he sees his character as someone you just can’t help but love. Which makes me think Jeff Daniels is kind of dumb. I keep thinking of William Hurt and how he would have played the guy more subtly.

  5. 5
    vallegirl vallegirl
    Posted July 7, 2012 at 9:19 am

    Yeah, this is a straight up NBC drama. Especially since Sorkin isn’t even that comfortable writing in the vulgarity.

    But I think the biggest hurdle for Daniels is the cognitive dissonance of Will being such a preeningly awful person in general with the fact that the writing suggests that we’re supposed to identify and even admire the character. He has to find a way to make something as cringeworthy as interrupting a staff meeting to throw out factoids like he’s Mr. Burns “endearing.” He’s normally quite good at finding the charisma if not the likeability in difficult characters but thus far, Will hasn’t been able to show either.

    I don’t normally place all the blame for a bad performance on the writing, and maybe it’s because I’m a big Daniels fan in general, but Sorkin’s not doing Will any favors with the flat, obnoxious he’s being written. He took a truly unlikeable character in The Squid and the Whale and managed to convince us that, at some point, someone as smart as Laura Linney would find him attractive enough to marry him. Here, I don’t understand why he doesn’t get punched, or sued, on a daily basis and I especially don’t understand Charlie’s devotion. Specifically because if he’s based on Olbermann he should have alienated everyone he’s ever worked with, since Keith never met a bridge he didn’t want to blow up.

    In a weird way, Will would be more “likeable” if they’d acknowledge how utterly unlikeable he is. Let him really embody what a jerk Will McAvoy is in “real life” behind the public Jay Leno mewling affability and that would come across as more human than a douchebag who tells us what Neal’s name means, then have Neal tell him, starry-eyed, that he didn’t know that. Really? The guy who broke down the BP oil spill in five minutes didn’t know what his name meant?

  6. 6
    maryedith
    Posted July 7, 2012 at 10:06 am

    Maybe hearing that Fresh Air interview with Daniels threw off my judgment of his acting, and intelligence. I completely agree with your idea that the character should be written as more unlikable. Because Daniels, in that interview, seemed to admire the character so much himself, I was blaming his acting. But reading what you say, I’m wondering whether the problem isn’t more that the other characters’ reactions to him just aren’t credibly written. I wonder too if Sorkin is so surrounded by people who all read and say the same things that he was figuring the HBO audience was just waiting with baited breath to see these opinions expressed on the screen and so he didn’t bother too much with details like character and dialogue?

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