The Newsroom: Word Salad

Mackenzie briefly pitches a fit, with Brian still watching and taking notes, then tells Will to use the word “bombshell” more during the Casey Anthony Half Hour. Which, ho ho ho, he does because smug is the new black while Jim and Mackenzie roll their eyes at each other. Brian wants to know, officially, how Mackenzie’s feeling and she twitches and blinks a no comment. Heh.

Just don’t look her in the eye

This segues into Weiner continuing to implode and stuttering through the “hacking” lie that monumentally blew up in his face. Jim comes out into the newsroom to see them all sad-faced that they have to cover such an awful story, because that’s time taken away from Neal’s Bigfoot and aliens. Jim suggests doing mock debate prep to take their minds off Weiner’s weiner. Or they could go home since it’s, like, 8:30.

Will throws the broadcast to the pre-tape they did with Sandy. She’s a bartender, and Will “inadvertently” calls her “Witless” when her name is “Wittles.” Hahaha, not sexist at all. Even though she’s not based on a real person and could have been named anything. Some women really do suck.

Meanwhile, Will throws caution and liability to the wind and just fires up a cigarette in the studio which I’m pretty sure is not an enclosed room so the smoke can waft into the newsroom. Hope no one’s allergic! Brian asks if he’s in the habit of doing that and rather than cover for him because it’s actually illegal to smoke in office buildings in NYC, Mackenzie just gets a sad.

The best anti-smoking ad, ever.

Sloan’s angrily walking & talking with Neal while she explains that 2½ minutes to explain the debt ceiling crisis is ridiculous. So is Neal’s plan to write an exposé on internet trolls. Do you think Sorkin, or should I say “Sorkin,” got them confused with Anonymous? Because infiltrating them would have been a great story, but being a crank on a message board hasn’t been news since West Wing was on the air and some guy named “Benjamin” got banned from TWoP for being one.

Neal’s still pitching the idea to Sloan that he go onto some website and write horrible, misogynistic things about her so he can brag about it on another site so Mackenzie will let him do the story. And yet, Anthony Weiner is too demeaning. Rather than just suggest he go on a Fox News Forum and say Obama’s the greatest president, ever, because of the ACA because now he can take his girlfriend to Planned Parenthood, Sloan indulges him and agrees to allow him to debase her on a site her father and his friends, who are also economists, read because it will be his “first story.” Why does he have a work permit again? You’d think Columbia or NYU or Fordham could produce a journalism student or thousand who could come up with such brilliance.