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

Not here, because Mackenzie retreats to high school and mewls that “he’s not an ass, he’s not an ass, does everyone think he’s an ass? I thought they thought he was gruff but loveable.” Was she not in the rundown meeting where he randomly disrupted the meeting to spew facts about the staff he couldn’t even pick out of a lineup the day before and sprinkled his conversation with mild racism? That’s not just an ass that’s a massive dick. Then icing that humiliation cake, Mackenzie drags Sloan back into her office demanding that she go to each and every member of the staff and inform them that Will’s not an ass. Sloan looks at Mackenzie like she just blew the biggest snot bubble out of her nose and says “No.” The “I work with the ass and he is…an ass” goes unsaid and she leaves.

Pull yourself together, Mary.

Will and Reese are not having a meeting as they walk down the street discussing the spikes in Will’s ratings and how they’re across all demos. He’s become the go-to source for the BP spill but Reese wants to know why they’re not leading with it. Will gives Charlie’s explanation about trying something new and Mackenzie’s song & dance about giving voters the information they need (not all news is about voting, but go with it) and Reese interprets it as “Our hit show got bigger so we’re fixing it,” and assumes Will’s not on board with this.

Will says it’s what he wants in a way that sounds like “Wah” so Reese wonders where’s the guy who nitpicks each and every demo and trend because “the audience is his only friend.” Will dismisses that as the ramblings of a drunk in the midst of a dark period and Reese counters it was just two weeks earlier.

Jibber jabber, squawk squawk, after a bunch of debate and fast-talking Reese thinks Mackenzie’s on a fool’s errand and that Will should bolster his conservative audience by not taking a cheap shot at Palin’s inane comment about the spill. Will’s all, duh, I wasn’t going to but Reese tells him to explicitly not take the cheap shot on air. Also, tell Charlie the meetings are his idea and Reese will pimp out some chippy so Will can get his mind off Mackenzie. When Will balks that Mackenzie won’t approve the Palin segment. Reese questions Will’s manhood and says a mild “I’m not wild about your ex,” so Will can get all righteous about “her name is Mackenzie, Ms. McHale if you’re nasty,” but as Reese goes into the office, he clearly hit a nerve.

Sorry about your little man complex, little man.

Hey, let’s check in with Jim and Pam Maggie. Jim’s angry. I wonder why? Oh, because the wildly immature, inappropriate and unprofessional assistant cum brand new AP managed to fuck up the pre-interview five ways to Sunday because she hid the fact that she dated Glenn Fisher in college and made an inappropriate and unprofessional comment to him. Now he’s pulled the interview and put the governor on CNN, instead, and barred anyone from the governor’s office from speaking with them. Imagine that. Meanwhile, Don and Lettie Mae are making these faces:

Seriously, the reactions are better than the action. So it’s 90 minutes to broadcast and they’re screwed. Despite being about 15 kinds of wrong in this situation, Maggie still manages to find ways to blame everyone and everything for her childish behavior, continuing to disrupt the newsroom with her yelling. Is this what passes for charming in the Sorkinverse? I thought Donna was as obnoxiously up her own ass as it could get. Then after her tirade she mewls “Tell me what to do?” I can’t. Jim just tells her to gather as many bookers as possible so they can patch together those nine minutes.

You and me both, Don.

Mackenzie comes into the conference room to find out what happened. For some completely inexplicable reason Jim doesn’t sell out Maggie’s wholly inappropriate and unprofessional behavior and takes the blame himself. To her credit, Maggie does try to take the blame. Unfortunately, without anyone from the governor’s office, they’re stuck with three wackjobs. Mackenzie starts shrieking and Jim smartly suggests they scrap it, but Mackenzie, who earlier said not all stories have two sides, says they have to go forward because “they” will say News Night didn’t have anyone defending it.

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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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