I'd really like it, at some point in the not-too-distant future, if Aaron Sorkin could write a rom-com. Because it'd be the most incredibly awful film ever made, a love story based on all dialogue and zero romantic feelings. Sorkinese works best coming at you light-speed through anger or intelligence or sass or smarts, not when it comes to matters of the heart, but I'm still watching the show's two couples develop, gritting my teeth the entire time.
It's strange in so many ways, how "News Night 2.0" envelopes whatever parts of The Newsroom are about the logistics of a chaotic news program into a strange, very strange set of love stories, and how awkward and emotionless all of those parts are set against that backdrop. I guess every show has to have a bit of romance, but the two central relationships—Will/Mackenzie and Maggie/Jim—feel forced beyond belief, interjections in between what could really be a much better episode had it not tried to stuff those parts in there.
Mostly on the Maggie/Jim spectrum, the show's done a lot of telling instead of showing: it has to be asserted by other people that Jim likes Maggie, where if they'd never mentioned it, it'd be harder to believe that he did, and their dynamic would be better left to the viewer's interpretation. Meanwhile, the Will/Mackenzie situation lacks even the slightest bit of chemistry, so it's completely intrusive to go beyond what could be just a normal producer/host conflict and splinter it by injecting unnecessary relationship fodder. Tonight, Will has his angriest scenes yet when Mackenzie accidentally leaks out the details of their intimate relationship (the public opinion was that he cheated, the truth is that she did), but in his defense, Mackenzie was a complete idiot about the issue (both from the viewer's standpoint and the storyline's execution as a whole, so I guess that's okay).
Where Will and Mackenzie clash much better is when it gets down to brass tax: Mackenzie wants a good show, Will wants good ratings, and there's a distinct way about achieving the two. Where Mackenzie has drawn up—literally—a series of guidelines for the way News Night should formulate its stories, Will faces pressure to keep his numbers up now that his audience—the same 18-49 audience who faced the cruelty of his Northwestern tirade—are tuned in. It rightfully divides them tonight in a series of ways, the largest being when Will won't drop an absolutely horrible segment despite Mackenzie's insistence. Terrible interviews can generate the biggest buzz—Will McAvoy knows that firsthand—and Mackenzie has to wrangle him into what it takes to make her show, not his.
But what's even stranger is that here is the episode where Will McAvoy finds better footing. Last week, he was irrationally angry, spewing hatred of everyone and everything everywhere as a man just genuinely frustrated with nearly every aspect of his life. This week, his attempts to be a know-it-all when it comes to his staff is pretty believable, and he's just as pissed as he was in the pilot, but with agency, and all that rogue character establishment from the pilot inexplicably boosts him into a being reasonable creature. He's a much better loose cannon when he's got reason to be. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is an episode that reduces Mackenzie and Maggie into blubbering, stuttering, frazzled idiots.
It's good to see Will and Mackenzie and Maggie and Jim all struggle to work with others as well as their own shortcomings; in this environment, that's completely expected. But the romance aspect of it is wedged into The Newsroom—specifically, "News Night 2.0"—in all the wrong ways. I'd stand by the fact that there are still the etchings of a very good show, and at this point, I'm willing to wait for the one episode that can pull all of its good parts together. But this wasn't it.
SumOlogy: Strange. Just… strange.
Grade: B-
Leftovers
I guess the closing scene in which Will reveals his good side was supposed to be endearing? It was a bit much after everything else that occured, but I'll take it.
I'm not sure where Mackenzie gets off talking about News Night's integrity and then hiring Olivia Munn to talk about the news while looking like a slut.
"I'm going to take out your teeth. One punch at a time."
"At the end of a romantic comedy, that would make everything okay!"
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