The Newsroom Recap: What’s a Maddow?

While his staff and Charlie watch on adoringly, Will closes out his broadcast by once again plagiarizing Maddow about how Angle’s “Second Amendment remedies” means she hasn’t ruled out a violent overthrow of the government. For real. If you’re going to rip off someone else’s work, make it someone less visible. Or at least make it a story she didn’t relentlessly cover for five months.

Mackenzie comes out of the control room to see a lovely woman in a party dress and beelines over. She’s not staff; she’s there to meet up with Will because they’re going out. Mackenzie starts tweaking and stuttering and the woman, Danielle, is the head cheerleader for the Jets. Geez. Will drags Mackenzie to his office so they bicker about how Danielle is probably a gold-digger, since she’s a cheerleader who’s studying physical therapy. Will thinks those are points in her favor. Stay classy, you two.

As they exchange what I’ll assume is supposed to be clever banter and as Mackenzie musters up all her professionalism to storm out and shriek like a toddler in front of the staff and Will’s date, Charlie says they should stick with the Tea Party story. Will counters by asking why he’s on radio silence from the Executive Suite. Charlie unconvincingly tells Will everything’s fine and he’ll let him know if there’s ever a reason to worry.

Doo-dee-doo…ignoring my boss being yanked around by her boss’s boss, because we’re professional.

Back in the war room, numbers guy says there’s reason to worry. Charlie scoffs at the 7% drop because “they lose that when the Yankees play the Red Sox,” which a) doubt it and b) ratings crunchers know to factor in sports events. Why make Charlie dumb? He was my bright spot. But all this is irrelevant. The “reason to worry” was Will going after Sen. DeMint? Not Boehner, not Cantor, not even McConnell, or the real power brokers like Ailes or Rove or the almighty Kochs but a rube senator from SC? Over the repeal of DADT? Oh, I see. It’s to show how Will’s a smart Republican.

And to lead into another scene where Mackenzie continues to disappoint Gloria Steinem by being sexist and judgmental about Will’s latest date, this time a gorgeous Indian woman named Darshna Yadav. Will’s hot foots it over before Mackenzie can get out her first sneer and drags her into his office. She chirps a “Pleasure to meet you,” before asking Will if she’s a “spinning instructor.” No, she’s a neurologist, or a literal brain surgeon, but thanks for playing “who’s the bigger sexist asshole” and winning this round by a mile.

Judging you.

Because Sorkin never met a stereotype he didn’t secretly like, turns out the karaoke bar is called Hang Chew’s, and Jim continues to test the boundaries of exactly how dickishly the nice guy can act before he becomes insufferable by telling Neal he couldn’t care less about Wikileaks. (Seriously?) Then he mocks Neal for his nerd speak. Maybe, but a nerd who gets laid on a regular basis.

Anyway, they continue debating the merits of Wikileaks (Jim defends the concept of anonymous sources because anonymity NEVER encourages people to settle scores or fabricate information) and blahblahblah, they’re both annoying. Then Maggie shows up and first Jim thinks she’s over the moon to see him then she doesn’t even see her co-workers as she blows right past, but within inches of, them to meet up with Don…who was sitting ten feet away. Are they all wearing blinders?

We head back up to the war room so Charlie can further polish Will’s knob because he managed to cover three times as many international news stories as Fox and MSNBC combined (even though Maddow had a direct line to Richard Engel AND did a week of live shows from Afghanistan in 2010) then…they make up a completely fictitious member of Congress named “Bryce Delaney” who lost his primary to a Tea Party candidate. Really, they didn’t want to use Mike Castle or Lisa Murkowski or even Bob Bennett since they referenced him earlier?