Episode Report Card Sara M: B | 10 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Lots of Love
By Sara M | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 07.29.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Well, it took half the season, but I think this show might have finally figured out what it's trying to do. We skip the Japanese tsunami to deal with the aftermath, as Dr. Dr. Sloan gets to try her hand at anchoring a broadcast when Elliot takes off to spend the night with his five-year-old who just had his tonsils removed and needs to stay overnight in the hospital even though it's an outpatient procedure. She goes to Will for last-minute tips, and he yells at her that she lets people lie to her on the air and that's basically like being a drug dealer. So Dr. Dr. Sloan vows not to let that happen and ends up revealing what the spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Company told her off the record, thanks to her awesome knowledge of Japanese. She gets in a lot of trouble for this, but saves her job by lying on the air and saying she misunderstood the spokesman, at Charlie and Will's urging.
Maggie, Jim, and Neal spend the episode investigating Will's personal life for any future TMI stories. They discover that Will was in talks with Fox News to do a talk show in Los Angeles the same time that he was dating MacKenzie, which MacKenzie tries to throw back in Will's face to prove that he wasn't all that serious about her after all. Will says the Fox deal was never really going to happen and he knew that, and shows her the engagement ring he bought to give to her. Except that he actually bought it because he knew the Fox thing would come up during the investigation and he wanted MacKenzie to feel extra-bad about cheating on him again.
That's because Will is a bully in this episode. It's not his fault – his dad was abusive and he had to protect the womenfolk from him. We discover this when Will goes to his psychiatrist for the first time in four years after a bout with insomnia makes it hard for him to do his job. He just wants medicine, but is stuck talking about work problems instead, from Rick Santorum's gay black campaign advisor and show guest who Will thinks shouldn't be working for a man who hates gays (but who seriously tells Will off, which was pretty great) to the evil internet people who override ACN's new non-anonymous commenting system in order to send Will death threats.
Will's insomnia ends up being because he eats bacon before bed. We don't find out who was threatening to kill him, but that person should probably be hired at NewsNight because he's clearly better at the internet than Maggie, who doesn't know what LOL stands for. Or that Georgia the state and Georgia the country are not the same thing.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Will struggles to get through his newscast without confusing terms like "deficit" and "debt ceiling," "washing" and "watching," and "Will McAvoy" and "Terry Smith." Also, it turns out that Terry Smith is the name of the host of the show that's on after NewsNight and before whatever Elliot's show is called! Why haven't we ever met this "Terry Smith?" Is it a man or a woman? Does Terry Smith have his or her own HBO show that's actually really, really good in a parallel universe? Why can't we watch that instead of this?
MacKenzie asks Will what his problem was. "You think people noticed?" Will asks stupidly. Yes, they noticed and now they all probably think you were drunk on the air. But way to make NewsNight compelling appointment television for the first time in a year. MacKenzie holds up a handmade eye chart to make sure Will isn't blind (he passes and comments that our current healthcare system is fine. Which it totally is -- if you're a millionaire with employee health insurance -- and Will says he's just really tired, due his current bout with insomnia. He had that like two episodes ago, didn't he? And two episodes ago was six months ago, so ... that's been going on for a while. "You need to sleep," MacKenzie says, like Will doesn't know that. Will says he's taking care of it with a trip to his psychiatrist. MacKenzie is pleased to hear that he's seeing the same guy he was seeing when they were together, but Will reveals that he hasn't actually seen Dr. Habib in four years, although for some reason he's still paying him as if he's a once a week patient. He's probably not paying him full price though, thanks to our wonderful healthcare system!
A black Escalade drops Will off at the psychiatrist's office. Will apparently has his own driver and... it's Terry Crews! And he's going to accompany Will into the psychiatrist's waiting room for an awkward conversation that also informs us why Will didn't just see his regular doctor about this: because Will's regular doctor asks too many questions and takes too long. Unlike psychiatrists, who never ask about anything and wouldn't be at all curious about the fact that you've been paying them for the last four years for no reason.
With that, David Krumholtz introduces himself as Jack Habib, Will's psychiatrist's son. And Will's current psychiatrist since Dr. Habib Sr. actually died two years ago. Jack is 29 years old (except that David Krumholtz is older than that and looks it, so why not make him 35 years old? Does every single character on this show have to be some kind of prodigy? Even Will, who finished college when he was 19 or whatever). Terry Crews snickers. Will makes sure that Jack can write prescriptions and follows him in the office.