TV: The Newsroom: Season 2, Episodes 3 and 4

Season two, episode three:

Willie Pete

As the Genoa story inches toward its already-determined failure*, the Newsroom checks in on subplots from last season that have received scant attention.  The returns on all are diminished.

Nina Howard** returns, bringing with her the revenge of Will's mission to civilize and the nature of that damnable voice mail.  And now she's banging dating Will.  I look forward to the episode nine or ten meltdown when Mackenzie finds out, just like in season one.

There's a voicemail two-fer in which we learn with little consequence that Nina does know the contents of Will's stoned declaration of love to Mac, but she's playing dumb to him and actively misleading her. We also learn with to-be-seen consequences that the guys have no evidence on Reese's wiretapping after all -- thanks to Charlie's technical ineptitude, as if I even need say that about a Sorkin protagonist -- and for all intents and purposes the hostile-management status quo of season one is back in play.   I look forward to Will being fired again when Genoa hits the fan.



Bad Sorkin:

Is there any fish more in a barrel than Sorkin cherry-picking Republican debate soundbites?


Good Sorkin:

Yet when you compare Jim's idealistic Romney-bus Actual Journalism martyrdom with same-day examples from, say, cnn.com,  it's a little hard to argue with the guy.




Episode four:

Unintended Consequences


The Newsroom keeps paying out diminished returns, inching along Genoa and Maggie's breakdown. The specifics of the first have been known since week one, the latter from the moment Maggie meets a schoolboy early in her trip.  Spoiler: he dies for her.  Take that, Jim!

Not that Jim is particularly concerned for Maggie, as in this week's installment of the love pentagon his clearly-telegraphed rebound with the Friendly Rival on the Romney Tour begins this week.  I look forward to one or the other of them falling too hard, and for Maggie's inevitable, further meltdown when she learns.

Oh, and Will crucifies the OWS girl, apparently in some misguided Sorkin effort at "balance."  Everyone then scrambles to curry her favor when they learn she's has a convenience link to the Genoa mess.  Is Neal going to start dating her?




* Is this major news non-story starting to seem a lot like last year's much-ado leaker?  At least we were allowed the suspense in whether or not it would fail..

** Last season I would frequently think of her name as "Nina Gordon," which would then lead to the similarly named Dana Gordon from Entourage.  This week, Constance Zimmer, who in fact played Dana Gordon on that series, appears here as a Romney flack/Jim foil.