The Newsroom Season 3 Episode 3 recap
It is my opinion – and I know opinions are worth not all that terribly much – that I didn’t talk all that much about my wedding. (Lainey: this is true.) Answered questions when asked, maybe asked a friend a comparison question about photographers, that’s about it. I seem to remember my friends being similar, give or take a question or a phone call here or there.
I do not remember anyone with seating charts at their desk. I do not remember anyone yapping about whether you were or were not going to be a bridesmaid. But then again, I don’t work with Mackenzie.
She’s much less shrill this season, she drops fewer Blackberries and clumsy-emails fewer people, but there’s still that …pettiness that sticks around. Sitting people at the loser table. Pouting about what she will or won’t put on the air instead of just…putting the actual news on the air. My favourite thing about this show has always been the visual cues of actual newsroom production, but there’s nobody watching the wires, not enough panic in the control room – everyone was practically sleeping as they asked Will to stretch things out – and generally, a little fatigue with the romance of creating television. Even in the whole “let’s scare the FBI by putting them on TV” part, it was punctuated by the newsroom’s technical ineptitude.
Maybe art imitates life?
I liked that Maggie called Jim on being what I believe I can paraphrase as “a Dickensian dick”, but the disingenuousness is still pretty exhausting. He didn’t know that there are places who pay a bonus for clickbait? WHO IS JIM? Interesting too that Maggie lumps him in, in his willful ignorance, with Charlie and Will and…Don? Don, though he inappropriately dated Maggie for a minute, has always been completely and totally pragmatic. Truth, no bullsh-t (as per this week’s seemingly irrelevant “write better”), and no suavity whatsoever [can we all pause while we wait for Word to underline “suavity” and realize that no, it’s in fact a word?], but not a Dickensian needing to date a virtuous virgin type that, yes, Jim and Will (and absentee Neal) all fit into.
We’re clearly on a continuum to the end of six episodes here, so the one thing I don’t expect, but still think about, is what exactly is the deal here with the men and the precious perfect virtuous never-sign-a-contract-unless-it’s-morally-airtight women they appear to need in their lives? Are we going to talk about this, fictionally? I will never forget that Aaron Sorkin said “I’ve given up trying to understand women and now I just try to make them happy”. This is not the insight of a man that I think is going to figure anything major about the Madonna-whore complex before the next three Sundays, but at the same time, I just don’t understand why he knows – or someone has told him but he can’t register it – women can make bad choices. Men can make bad choices. It doesn’t make you not-noble.
In fact, everyone on this show is so noble (as we discussed last week) that now, while there’s an actual situation going on, where people are being brave and unshakeable even at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, it doesn’t mean as much because the nobility that they carry is with them All Day, Every Day, because of the memory of Genoa, which gets mentioned every single day also. It just must be such a burden being so important and so entrusted with the morality of the whole world. I really do know that I’m being hyperbolic, but two characters are basically tempting the wrath of God because they’re dating while being slightly senior to one another, and one other could not comprehend that sometimes people have to take jobs that are less than ideal.
Meanwhile, Will quite literally thinks he’s too big for just about anything – but his ego I’m not expecting to have a revelation. He’s richer than God, he’s getting the woman – gosh, do you think he’ll be the one with the balls to stand up to B.J. Novak since he has nothing to lose?
BUT:
F*cking right that Mackenzie got to have a power steam-room scene and Maggie has found a backbone. We take our delights where we can get them.
Attached – Olivia Munn at the American Music Awards.
