After a couple of weeks spent outside of the framing structure from this season, this hour gets spent moving quite fluidly between various points in deposition timeline as well as the time immediately around the Genoa airing -- which just so happens to be near adjacent to Benghazi. This is the show at its best, keeping momentum for the oncoming trainwreck without sacrificing any coherency. It's the sequences like these that keep me watching despite my many, many frustrations with the series.
Will's major speech before the lawyers is the show at its worst; he strings together stories of Great Moments in American Institutional Negligence that feel to me like nothing but the pale shadow of Cliff Gardner. It's so very Sorkiny that Will, paragon of virtue, has four scum-sucking corporate lawyers quietly eating out of his hand in awed silence.
One key detail of the legal case about the story previously unknown is that the depositions are not about the blowback from the story itself; rather they stem from Jerry's wrongful termination lawsuit. Throughout Genoa's unraveling some legal threats up to and including light treason get bandied around the newsroom; that the season-long festival of deposition hinges instead on Jerry's personal fit of pique is a recurring theme this week. General Stomtonovich being a second, off-camera fit-thrower, but late in the hour we see two more with enormous repercussions even though they're at cross purposes.
Charlie's government source who verified the Genoa weapon loadout in episode five reveals he's deliberately screwed ACN for firing his intern son, who later died. It's almost shocking how much pleasure he takes in twisting the knife face-to-face with Charlie -- this is a man petty enough to scrawl "Fuck you, Charlie" in invisible ink on the alleged loadout paper.* Between that and the interview edit, it's time for a retraction of ACN's most-watched-moment-ever, and Charlie and Will are soon ready to resign.
Only Leona saunters in with her own fit of pique, determined to fry Jerry in court and completely unwilling to fire them. At first the reversal seems left-field, but shortly after it seems actually consistent with her past appearances. Her episode-closing admonition for them to regain public trust seems something best left for season three...
* given the revenge, one must wonder if it's urine..
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