The middle of the season has found the series apparently bored with the heretofore season-long framing structure dealing with the Genoa fallout. Episode five restricts its scope to one evening, while episode six pushes through the interminable months of the republican primaries. It's not completely ignoring the Genoa elephant in the room, but the timeline change is jarring at the least.
Episode 5: News Night with Will McAvoy
While on-air Will deals with the death of his father* and yet another inane, Sorkin-v-Internet twitter annoyance, Reese must reckon with the minor scandal of Sloan's ex going public with risque photographs -- the exact nature of which is left to the imagination. Despite the creaky start it's a good subplot that pays off with Sloan delivering a punitive beating to the man in front of his high-powered Manhattan colleagues. It also, unfortunately, continues the white-knighting of Don, who has yet to indicate he is a character who is worthy of rehab.
The retro-news story for the week is the Martin case, specifically the 911 calls prior to the shooting. More technology laffs ensue as every news agency in the world attempts to download the calls simultaneously.
Given the tight window of the episode, all the various Newsroom love trapezoids receive little progress; this is likely why this week's episode felt like the strongest the series has produced this season and maybe ever.
* Spoiler: Will's father, largely unmentioned before, has had a heart attack, and by the end of the hour word arrives that he has succumbed.
Episode 6: One Step Too Many
About two-thirds of the way into the hour, The Newsroom's second season chronology has become completely broken by a montage that burns through the entire republican primary cycle. Which means the framing sequence from episode one takes place, what, a year after the rest of the episode?
Will Maggie ever get her hair cut?
The unexpectedly double-date dinner -- indulging the same exasperated, why-me, why-now circumstances that nearly ran 5-10 off the tracks last season -- with Aubrey and Dana Gordon felt like vintage Sorkin overreach by "cleverly" structuring a NewsNight 2.0-style no-bullshit debate between Romney, Obama, and Paul proxies. The conversation doesn't go far enough with the candidates content to score cheap gaffe points and then heads quickly into the groaning realm of Sorkin subtlety as the Paul surrogate interrupts repeatedly with drunken, incoherently-shouted populist-libertarian straw men from the corner.
And then there's Genoa, where subtlety is again trumped by weak characterization. The General it seemed to me was nearly inviting the heavy finger of Jerry, with the long, coy pauses around the "admission" of sarin. He didn't say it, but he sure made it sound like he wanted to with the repeated pauses and ifs and subject changes. That Jerry can later just fit-of-pique edit the "if"s out -- calling back Maggie's Zimmerman call gaffe last week -- makes him an outright villain, and, lacking a prior presence on the show or by now any redeeming qualities as he's also a very dumb outright villain, means he's free to be exposed and fall on his sword, etc. The edit was lame enough but the background of the basketball game is bleedingly obvious; even at her most season-one level of idiocy Mac should handily spot the splice. With the added details of the Sloan picture analysis team last week, it's clear the basketball game will be the fatal flaw.
Which of course takes us into the last part of the second season. More depositions? Oh. Boy.
The Will/Sloan back and forth scenes were both good for each character and natural-sounding, a rare feat. Sloan has become the MVP of this series; she's consistently the best-written and most competent person on the show.
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