The Newsroom: Word Salad

Will’s down at Dr. Habib’s office who proves he’s a quack when he tells Will, metaphorically, that if you stand in the rain without a jacket you’ll get a cold. And it doesn’t even make sense as a metaphor because it somehow wends its way back to Will being more sensitive to betrayal because his father was abusive. Huh?

Will continues down the forked path and drops a load about accidentally stumbling upon a relationship website where the “advice columnist” suggests that a woman may bear some of the blame for her husband cheating. Now, of course that’s preposterous regardless of who the cheater/cheatee is but Will blubbers on so Dr. Habib has to cut him off and let him know that the world does not, in fact, revolve around him. That Mackenzie was probably just trying to get undumped.

Will refuses to allow anyone else be the center of attention so he wants to know why he can’t forgive her even though he’s been abusive, cruel, withholding, demeaning and punitive toward her and she just takes it. Because Will wasn’t rejected, he was betrayed. And that makes his behavior less reprehensible?

You don’t need therapy, you need a near death experience to reprioritize.

Ugh, we’re back with Neal and Sloan. He’s updating her on how he had to work at taking cheap shots at her in a comments section and tosses off the hoary comparison between balancing a personal checkbook and balancing a federal budget. Sloan takes the bait so Neal regales her with all the awful things he’s said about her and how her slutty tits are a conspiracy by the government and even changed her Wikipedia page to say she used to be a stripper, because no one knows that Wikipedia is crowdsourced and not necessarily reliable. Neal blathers on some more about trolling and Sloan indulges him that he’s a good reporter, but here’s the final word on trolls:

Because, for real, once Jay Smooth speaks your argument is invalid.

Anyway, Sloan’s understandably peeved at how gleeful Neal is about debasing her so Neal decides to tell her that he could totally get behind a government conspiracy to shove Sloan’s breasts in his face. Great googly moogly, he does realize he can lose his work permit if he gets fired with cause, right? Sloan doesn’t threaten to get him deported, because she’s classy like that, she just tells him to fix her Wikipedia page. He just promises to do it “soon.”

Charlie, Will and Mackenzie are all stewing in Charlie’s office when Jim comes in. He’s finished vetting Hancock and he’s not looking good. Poor psych eval, lowered security clearance, TRO from his wife and busted for solicitation…in 1979. Wouldn’t he have known these things about himself before he told Charlie to vet him? That doesn’t even make…never mind. Chance.

Maggie hot foots it over to Will and Mackenzie to speak in code that she wants to give Lisa talking points to make it a harder news story and Mackenzie agrees. Meanwhile, Jim goes to talk to Lisa in hair and makeup and, really, Sorkin? Do you have to make Elliot look like a fool? I thought he was Will’s protégé.

Really, Sorkin?