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

One last Will fit when Mackenzie asks him to move his Blackberry out of frame and they’re live. And it’s tragic. The wackjobs are wackjobs, Will indulges them even though even Fox & Friends and the fourth hour of the Today Show features more lucid guests, Maggie continues her scorched earth policy of being a raging asshole to anyone who tries to talk to her, Mackenzie finally remembers that defending incompetence brings the whole team down, and Will defends Palin’s comment conflating The Little Dutch Boy and foreign aid to clean up the spill. Okay then.

With the fiasco done, Will goes to Charlie to apologize for the show “bordering on unprofessional.” Charlie must have won some money back from the punk middle schooler because he makes a funny instead of reaming Will. He also makes a crack about Mackenzie’s email and the tens of thousands of people at the parent company who received it, including the tabloid magazine staff. Then Charlie gets all thoughtful and kind and tells Will he wished he knew about the split because he’d have found a way to make Will feel better, but he still needs to run a tighter ship, which Will accepts, and to stop his daily meetings with Reese, which Will isn’t as keen on.

See that teeny, tiny speck off in the sunset…that’s your professionalism jumping off a cliff.

Jim’s in the newsroom watching Gov. Brewer on CNN and licking his wounds when Neal asks if he wants to join them at a shit karaoke bar for cheap drinks and tuna jerky. It may be awful, but it’s close, it’s open late (they’re talking at 9:15) and it’s cheap. Because you know what’s really hard to find in Manhattan? A bar in walking distance that stays open late:

Including a place called the Pig & Whistle. I’m pretty sure it’s affordable.

Regardless, the day can’t get any worse so Jim agrees and leaves with Neal…just in time to miss Will who probably forgot their on his staff anyway, have his fifteenth argument with Mackenzie, this time about including the Palin BS in the broadcast and asking “Victoria’s Secret” to do a five minute nightly economic report, and stay classy Will because that’s not demeaning or sexist to Sloan at all. Are you sure you’re name isn’t Richard?

Mackenzie continues demanding that Will take responsibility and be the Big Daddy they all need and have some integrity and stop watching numbers and needing to be loved by his audience and that was about 60% inspirational and 40% bullshit, so progress. She tells him it’s Friday and she needs to know by Monday if he’s on board with the new format. She storms off into her office and Will looks like he’s got wood while someone’s singing Colbie Caillat.

Oh, it’s the karaoke bar with the morose staff. Gary tries to give them a pep talk about how they’re 2.0 and they can do this, but no one’s drunk enough to buy what he’s selling. Except Maggie. Jim gets up to talk to her but Don slides onto the stool next to her to talk. He’s still pitching for her to come with him to Elliott’s show, but she says no since he’s only asking because she’s his girlfriend. When he’s all “No duh” she goes off on another of her long line of bullshit tirades, saying they should break up and blaming him for not being “supportive” of her. (Read, indulgent and unquestioning.) She whines about being broke and living in a closet and Will’s kind of a massive, insensitive dick but he’s trying to do good so it’s Even Steven but Don’s a big meanie who wants Will to fail…

And FINALLY Don shuts her up by agreeing with her. They should break up. She, like the strong and drunk off her ass feminist that she is, whines for him not to leave “like this” and mewls that she said the wrong thing. Don just kisses her on the top of her head and walks out.

Mr. Fruity Drink. You’re my only friend.

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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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