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MacKenzie tries to assert her control over her super brand new version of News Night that she likes to call "News Night 2.0" because MacKenzie's knowledge of technology and cool buzzwords is stuck somewhere in pre-9/11 America. To that end, she manages to screw up at sending email, accidentally sending everyone who works for ACN not one, but two emails meant for Will. The first was a test email that says he hates immigrants. The second is the truth about what happened between them three years ago: while everyone thinks he was the one who cheated on her, she was actually the one who cheated on him and broke his cold, dark heart. Except she somehow doesn't think it counts as cheating because even though they were two years into their relationship, she didn't realize how much she loved Will until after she slept with someone else. So yeah, MacKenzie is basically terrible.
Will, on the other hand, is suddenly a great guy who makes an effort to know his staff's names and interests and doesn't fire anyone even though, between MacKenzie's insistence on reporting news stories that she thinks the voting public needs to know about rather than cool shots of oilrigs falling into the Gulf of Mexico and Maggie's inability to do a pre-interview without causing everyone involved in recently-passed Arizona immigration bill to bail on the show 90 minutes before air, "News Night 2.0" is a great big (albeit fun) mess. When Will sneaks a clip of Sarah Palin into the show and then defends her stupid statements in order to appeal to his conservative viewers and save his ratings, MacKenzie says he's not fully committed to what she's trying to do and demands to know if he's "in." I'm not sure if it was the Radiohead song from 1995 convinced him or the fruit basket his new asshole neighbors gave him, but he decides that he is.
Olivia Munn is also in, as New Night's new business and economics correspondent. Her character has a Ph.D. in economics, looks like a model, and turns down more lucrative jobs because she just loves the news so damn much. I really thought I wasn't going to like her, but it turns out that Olivia Munn is the only lead actress on this show capable of saying her lines without over-acting and coming off like someone in the throes of a manic episode, so she just might work.
Two Blackberries were harmed in the making of this episode.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!After the longest opening credits in the business, we open in Will's giant apartment. It's sparsely furnished except for the four giant TVs in his dining room, each showing a different news channel. Will's cleaning woman dusts them while Will looks through dossiers of his staff members, which include photos to make them easier for him to recognize. And then part of his ceiling comes crashing down on his dining room table, almost killing him. "New neighbors," the cleaning woman says, pointing at the ceiling. Are the new neighbors are playing a basketball game above him? You'd think that he'd be able to afford a place with sturdier ceilings and better soundproofing, but maybe he had to scale down after he took that million-dollar pay cut.
Will goes to work. MacKenzie is setting up her new office. She's very excited about her first real day on the job. Will comments that his mostly-new staff is "very young," but MacKenzie doesn't think that's a problem. "What they lack in experience they make for in inexperience," she non-explains. "They don't know how to do things badly yet." It turns out that you don't need much experience to suck at stuff. Just ask Maggie. What Will really wants to discuss with MacKenzie is their prior relationship and what to tell the rest of the staff about it. Will would prefer to go with "nothing." MacKenzie promises him that she will keep her mouth shut.
Will and MacKenzie head into the morning pitch meeting. Hey -- who's that old bald dude in the back? So much for MacKenzie's young, inexperienced staff. MacKenzie and Will bicker over what should be tonight's opening story. Will thinks they should lead with the oil spill, as the rig recently sank and that will look awesome on TV, but MacKenzie says "we don't do good television, we do the news." Yes... god forbid we should try to do good television. This show, for instance. Clearly it has loftier goals than being good television.
MacKenzie welcomes the staff to the first pitch meeting of what she calls "News Night 2.0." Do we still say "2.0?" I didn't think so, but this does take place IN THE PAST so perhaps Sorkin is being time period-appropriate. No, wait, calling something "2.0" was lame even two years ago. Maybe it was cool ten years ago, which is when Sorkin probably wrote this script, intending to spin-off The West Wing. Also, what is Neal doing in this meeting? Isn't he just Will's blogger? Which I'm not sure how that's a real full-time job in the first place?
MacKenzie yammers on about doing a "real news show." Will interrupts her to inform everyone that he learned all of their names last night. He is ignored. MacKenzie says the show is going to open with the new Arizona immigration bill and thinks everyone should know that Will supports it because he is not a liberal, but a "closet moron." Yeah, that's a great attitude, Miss "I Want To Do Real News Well." Call anyone who disagrees with your politics a moron.
Will would rather get a round of applause for memorizing everyone's names, only to hear from Don that most of the names he memorized are people who don't even work for him anymore. Mohammed al Mohammed al Mohammed bin Bizir, for example, left ACN for Fox, which should show you right away how much ACN must suck if MoalmoalmoBB would rather work at Fox. It also shows you how much Sorkin sucks, since this is yet another one of his recycled bits. I guess that Top Baby Names of the 50s book Sorkin gets most of his names from didn't have a Muslim section, so he had to re-use this one. Will is shocked that Fox would hire someone with three Mohammeds in his name. Speaking of names Will has a problem with, he has a staffer named "Gary Cooper," which is also the name of a famous movie star from back in that time that everything was awesome because old white men kept us informed.
MacKenzie gets the attention back by reading an important message from IT about in-house emails: "Auto-complete has been enabled on your Outlook." MacKenzie has no idea what this could possibly mean. Neal is the Computer Guy, what with his official blog position, and explains that if you put an asterisk in front of a group name, the email will be forwarded to the entire group. MacKenzie still doesn't get it because it doesn't really make any sense, so Neal asks her to demonstrate by sending a random email to someone. MacKenzie fires one off to Will, taking ten minutes to do so because she can't just write "test" in the subject and body like anyone else would. "I'm typing it. I'm still typing it." "What are you doing now?" Will deadpans. That old guy who looks a lot like Rodney Dangerfield LOVED that line.
MacKenzie sends the email off and every single person in the meeting's phone starts beeping because none of these people thought to put their phones on vibrate while they were in a meeting. MacKenzie just stares with her mouth agape, completely dumbfounded. Neal explains that MacKenzie managed to put an asterisk and the letter S instead of Will's name in the "to" prompt, thereby sending the email to everyone on the staff list. Yes, because it's so easy to accidentally hit the * and the S instead of a W and then *S looks so much like a W that you wouldn't even notice if you mistyped. Will decides to read MacKenzie's email out loud: "Will McAvoy is a closet bigot who hates immigrants even though this country was founded by immigrants." Very professional, MacKenzie.
MacKenzie never learns how to properly address her emails, but I'm sure that won't be a problem later or anything. She changes the subject to the unveiling of her precious Whiteboard O' News Rules and manages to knock the whole thing over. I'm starting to think that the reason why she went to so many funerals and got stabbed during her war reporting days is because she is a moron who accidentally put herself in the path of danger three times an hour and had to be saved by the Marines she was embedded with every time. But I can't judge her too harshly for her clumsiness since I managed to fall down the stairs on my second day of work this week.
Charlie is better at computers than MacKenzie, and is using his to play poker against a 12-year-old (and lose). Some guy named Reese walks in. Charlie tells him that the secret meetings he has with Will every day to discuss the ratings are going to stop now. "Don't break down the numbers for him for a while. We're trying something new and I don't want him getting cold feet," Charlie says. Reese asks what's new. "We're gonna try doing the news and see what happens," Charlie smirks. Is Charlie too drunk to realize that, as the guy in charge of the news division, he can actually just order every show to do the news? And if the shows are not to his liking, that's his own fault? Reese talks about demographics and raising ad rates and how this is his job and Charlie can't tell him not to do it. "Just don't break down the numbers for Will," Charlie says. Reese thinks that's impossible and that Will will somehow force him to give him the latest ratings information. "Will McAvoy's the biggest ratings whore in the business," Reese says. Charlie happily threatens to punch the teeth out of Reese's mouth if he dares to call Will a whore again. So on one hand, Reese is being unnecessarily difficult about something as simple as not telling Will the ratings. On the other, Charlie is (albeit cheerfully) threatening physical violence out of almost nowhere. Everyone is ridiculous!
MacKenzie reveals her three new rules for News Night 2.0 stories: 1) Is this information we need in the voting booth? 2) Is this the best possible form of the argument? And 3) Is the story in historical context? Holy crap, that is a boring list. MacKenzie doesn't think the morons on her staff will be able to remember all three rules, so she suggests a mnemonic device and then realizes that every rule starts with the same letter. Between this and the email, MacKenzie is terrible at letters this week.
Gary Cooper thinks they should just open with the BP spill again and how Obama has let four days go by thus far without commenting on it. This annoys Kendra, the only other black person on the staff (Gary Cooper is black), because black people fighting over Obama is so funny. MacKenzie asks her teacher's pet, Jim, to change the subject back to the Arizona law. Jim, whose shaggy hair and slouching sitting posture makes him look even more like Jim Halpert than last week, explains to everyone what the law says and that the governor will be signing the bill today. They have nine minutes with the governor to talk to Will, which is a big exclusive MacKenzie credits to Governor Brewer's respect for her new News Night 2.0 system. The studio will be a courtroom, and the guests will be expert witnesses and Will will act as the attorney for both sides. "You'll be amazed at the guests we'll book," MacKenzie says, somehow thinking that people like being interrogated on the air and audiences like to watch it.
Some guy who hasn't been paying attention to anything MacKenzie just said (can't blame him) suggests booking "one of those crazy militia guys" for the crazy anti-illegal immigrant side. MacKenzie says that breaks Rule 2 about the best possible form of the argument. Don finally speaks up to ask MacKenzie what happens if the other side is so ridiculous that there's no one sane to represent it. MacKenzie is delighted to report that sometimes there won't be another side. Sometimes, there will be lots of other sides. It's unwritten Rule 4: are there really two sides to this story? I hope there's another side to this particular story, because the one I'm watching right now is kind of awful.
Neal speaks up to change the topic back to immigration. But first, Will informs him that his name means "blue jewel." Neal beams, such is his love for Will. "I didn't know that!" Neal says. "I did. I took the time. I care," Will says. "Are you asking him out?" Don asks. Will asks Don to exposit why he's still working on this show. Don says MacKenzie asked him to stay on and help News Night transition from being a show that people enjoyed to being informative and unwatchable. Don will apparently do this by sitting around judging everything. MacKenzie orders Will to apologize. Will does so half-heartedly. Don doesn't really care anyway. Moving on.
Neal gets a chance to suggest that they have on an illegal immigrant who was recently featured in a story in a small Spokane alt-weekly. The guy didn't know he was illegal until his parents told him when he was 16 and since his story got out, Washington state rescinded his driver's license. (Washington state doesn't require proof of legal status to get a driver's license. Oops). Now he can't drive to work or his kids to school. Neal says it would put a "human face" on the issue. Will says they can try putting a human face on the presumed legal citizen who didn't get the guy's job. It doesn't matter, since MacKenzie says they don't have the time in the program for it and even if they did, it would be "emotionally manipulative." It would also be interesting, which is why many news stories like to open with a real person's story.
"WE'D BE PUTTING HIM THERE SO WE CAN FEEL SORRY FOR HIM!" MacKenzie suddenly exclaims, all worked up. "We should feel sorry for him," Neal says. "We should feel sorry for the guy whose job he took," Will mutters. "I don't want to feel sorry for anybody! I want the facts!" MacKenzie says. And while I can see both Neal and Will's point here, I can't really see MacKenzie's. Facts tend to be meaningless to most human beings if they can't see how those facts relate to their lives, or at least to the life of another human being. Meaningless and boring.
Post-meeting, Don asks MacKenzie why she's cutting the two most popular segments on the show: PopWatch and Today on YouTube. Really? Today on YouTube? MacKenzie wants to listen to Don's complaint but gets distracted by a pretty girl on the TV screen talking about durable goods reports.
Jim tracks Maggie down and asks her if they can do a "practice run" before she calls the Governor Brewer's spokesperson for the pre-interview. Maggie bristles, saying she doesn't think she needs to be supervised. Oh really? Because last I heard, she got this associate producer job like yesterday. "I've been here a year. You've been here three days," Maggie says. Jim doesn't care. He asks her if she's "really considering" moving to the new 10 o'clock show. "Don made some compelling arguments," says the woman who three days ago got promoted for her loyalty. That loyalty is the only thing she seems to be decent at, and now she sucks at that.
Maggie thinks building a show from scratch could be a good experience. "Okay," Jim says with a laugh. Maggie, suddenly angry because people on this show's emotions turn on a freaking dime, thinks Jim thinks she's making a choice based on her relationship and cares more about marriage than her career. Jim has no idea what she's talking about. Enough talking then happens that Maggie agrees to do the phone call run through. That's when she finds out that the guy she'll be speaking with is named Glen Fisher. THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER. Actually, it's important right now, but Maggie doesn't say anything about it.
Jim walks Maggie through the basics and she gets mad again. "I've done this before," she growls. Oh really? Because the only time we've seen her talk to anyone on the phone, she couldn't figure out how to use the hold button and she almost decapitated herself on the headset cord. So I can understand Jim's lack of faith in her. Instead of just dealing with the fact that the people who are in charge of her might want to make sure she knows what she's doing before trusting her with the pre-interview for the lead story of the show, she keeps being sarcastic and angry until Jim asks her what her problem is. "I have no idea why I'm being mean to you." "Do you think you'll stop?" Jim asks. "It doesn't feel like it. I'm just being honest," Maggie says. Fire her. Instead, Jim says he "can't ask for more than that. Except rational thought." "WHAT WAS THAT?" Maggie barks. Fire her right now. At the very least, act like you're her boss and not her employee.
By the way, Maggie also sucks at pre-interviews, which may have been why she didn't want to do the pre-pre-interview in the first place. She starts off by attacking Arizona and how horrible it is. Jim responds by saying that Arizona has a hard enough time paying for its legal citizens these days, and Maggie is so angry that she forgets about the phone receiver she was miming and yells at Jim for "scapegoating these people." "Stop," Jim says, "ask the follow-up." Maggie's follow-up is that Arizona should be proud that it's such a hot destination. Jim says the correct follow-up question would have been to ask how much illegal immigrants cost, and that the governor's response will be that they are happy to accept people from all walks of life into their state as long as they are allowed to be there. Maggie is done with this helpful instruction that she could clearly use, saying "I'm going to ask the right questions, you dweeb!" Fire her. Also, "dweeb?" That's worse than MacKenzie's "punk" last week. Maggie says her point in all of this (which she shouldn't have because she's not there to argue with show guests, but to do a freaking pre-interview so that the world may know precious facts) is that people can be so dismissive of illegal immigrants that they don't think of them as people who are just trying to make better lives for themselves and their children. Well, go yell at MacKenzie for that, because she's the one who doesn't want to put a human face on the issue. Also, maybe you should stop referring to them as "these people." That's kind of marginalizing. Maggie also has a problem with the term "illegals." Yes, because "undocumented workers" makes them seem that much more human. Something about Maggie's argument convinces Jim that she's ready for an unsupervised pre-interview. Or maybe he's just sick of listening to her.
Sloan Sabbith, financial reporter, talks about Greece and signs off. MacKenzie gives her a round of applause and Sloan looks duly weirded out. MacKenzie asks if they can talk about something. MacKenzie says she noticed that Sloan referred to two companies as "which" instead of the teleprompter's "whom." Sloan says she didn't write the copy and the copy incorrectly referred to the companies as people, so she switched it. MacKenzie is apparently very impressed by this, when honestly anyone who knows anything about business news (which both MacKenzie and whoever wrote Sloan's copy should) knows that companies are singular entities and not people.
MacKenzie says she asked around and found out that Sloan could be making much more money as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Sloan says MacKenzie could be making a lot more money as a reality TV producer. Uh... not really. That's why networks love reality shows: they're really cheap because they don't pay anyone very much. "I like my job," Sloan shrugs. MacKenzie asks her if she likes it so much that she'd be willing to work longer hours. Sloan assumes she's being offered another morning show slot and says that's not for her because she is all about Serious News because she is a Serious Economist. MacKenzie says she's offering her something in primetime: a five-minute slot on News Night to "talk about where we are and how we got here." ZZZZZ. Sloan doesn't think she's qualified enough for that and recommends some of the "professors [she] studied under." Heh heh heh. "Studied under." "They're not going to have your legs," MacKenzie smirks. How does she know? Way to assume without looking at the facts, MacKenzie.
Sloan doesn't know what to say to the fact that MacKenzie just brazenly offered her a job based on her looks even after Sloan told her that she is clearly trying to be a Serious Journalist. MacKenzie says people won't listen to an economics lesson if it isn't being given by a hot woman. Hey, remember how MacKenzie was all about integrity and just presenting the facts and not thinking about what people want to watch? I guess that doesn't count when it's economic news. Or MacKenzie is just a big hypocrite being written (and acted -- you are not blameless here, Emily Mortimer) in a way that makes her impossible to like or respect. Sloan says she'll do it. "We're start a conversation with Will about our goals and how we're going to get there," MacKenzie says, somehow putting "I'll talk to Will about it" the wordiest way possible. Then: "I think you and I are going to become good friends." "I'd like that," Sloan says. "Me too. I mean it. I don't have any friends," MacKenzie says. So now she's just clingy and weird and trying to hire people to be her friend instead of a good addition to whatever this borefest of a show she's trying to create is?
Sloan doesn't know what to say to this, so she changes the subject to what she thinks she and MacKenzie have in common: they were both cheated on by a boyfriend. "I don't understand," MacKenzie says. "I know about Will," Sloan says. "Yeah. Yeah. I still don't understand," MacKenzie says. Best EP in the business, guys. Can't imagine why no one else wanted to touch her with a ten-foot pole. MacKenzie finally gets that Sloan thinks Will cheated on her. She insists that he didn't. Sloan doesn't believe her... or care, really. She only brought it up to get out of MacKenzie's awkward friendship discussion. Sloan says everyone seems to think Will cheated on MacKenzie. MacKenzie says that didn't happen but she can't tell anyone what actually did on his orders. Also, her arms are flailing all over the place in what I guess is supposed to indicate panic, but just makes her look like that much more of a crazy person. Sloan decides to get out of there, but MacKenzie follows her out. "You need to tell people that!" she orders. "You're enabling an ass," Sloan says. Despite all evidence we've seen thus far to the contrary, MacKenzie insists -- her hands flying around the screen -- that Will is not an ass. He is the opposite of an ass, she says. Yeah, he's a non-ass who doesn't know his own assistant's name. "I thought they thought he was gruff but loveable," MacKenzie says. Totally. They all quit Will's show at the first available opportunity because he's loveable. MacKenzie physically drags Sloan back into her office and orders her to go to everyone at ACN and tell him that "Will is an extraordinary man with a heart the size of a Range Rover." No, he's not. Why does she think he is? He's mean to blonde college students. He called Neal "Punjab." He got his salary cut so he'd be able to fire MacKenzie. She didn't seem particularly thrilled with him last week, so what's with the turnaround now? Anyway, Sloan says she has no intention of spreading MacKenzie's message for her and leaves. If she were to never, ever come back, she would be my favorite character on this show. And the smartest.
Will and Reese have a secret meeting. I guess Reese isn't very scared that a 70+ year-old man will beat him up after all. Reese says a bunch of ratings jargon that basically amounts to Will having a lot of momentum after Northwestern and breaking the BP story. So Reese doesn't understand why Will isn't leading with that story tonight. Will explains MacKenzie's news strategy to Reese, doing it more concisely and clearly than MacKenzie ever could (and managing not to knock anything over as he did so). Reese, of course, thinks this is a bad plan because he is a rational human being and suggests that Will check out some conservative websites and see how the people like that Will doesn't take "cheap shots" at Sarah Palin. Will nods, then gets distracted by some woman's ass. Reese says Palin just said something stupid about the oil spill last night, so if Will can use her segment but not make fun of her, he'll get ratings from a bunch of conservatives who think Sarah Palin doesn't deserve to be made fun of. Will says MacKenzie will never let him use the Palin clip. "You're the boss," Reese reminds him. Will says MacKenzie has "reported more real news in one day than I have in my career." I find this impossible to believe, given what we've seen so far of MacKenzie.
Jim stands up, sighs, and marches over towards Maggie, his mouth hanging open the entire time. Please close your mouth, actor who plays Jim. Jim informs Maggie that the governor just bailed on their show in favor of CNN. "Whaaahhhhooohhouuhhhwho's she sending instead?" Maggie asks, apparently drunk. Jim says no one from the governor's office is coming on the show, and he thinks it could be because something went down between Maggie and Glen Fisher. Oops! Guess he should've supervised her after all. Maggie says that while she did manage to keep her political opinions to herself, she wasn't able to be a professional because it turns out that she dated Glen Fisher in college. And even though she realized this before the pre-interview, she didn't tell Jim. So Jim just found out after the fact from Glen Fisher and he wants to know why Maggie committed a huge breach of journalistic ethics. Maggie says she was afraid Jim would have taken the pre-interview away from her. FIRE MAGGIE RIGHT NOW. There is no excuse for this. Also she makes fun of the Arizona Cardinals for being bad at football even though they wouldn't suck at football almost as much as she sucks at everything else until much later in 2010. Period drama fail.
Maggie explains what went down between her and Glen Fisher, for anyone who might still be interested. After their fourth date, they went back to Glen's dorm room to make out, only to be interrupted by Glen Fisher's furious ex-girlfriend knocking on the door. Glen Fisher told Maggie to hide under the bed -- she did - and then let the ex-girlfriend in, only for her to quickly become his current girlfriend. They celebrated their reunion by having sex on the bed while Maggie was still hiding under it. But she wasn't under there for too long, because, "as it turns out, Glen doesn't take very long," Maggie says. "Under two minutes." So when Glen Fisher mentioned "Obama's 'Race to the Finish' initiative," Maggie couldn't help but make a comment about how good Glen Fisher would be at that race. Jim points out that it's called "Race to the Top." Maggie grins and says she knows that, and when Glen Fisher got it wrong she took that to mean "God was on [her] side." Yes, God loves it when we make jokes about people's sexual inadequacies.
So while Maggie and Jim are fighting over whether or not Maggie should have hidden under the bed in the first place and Maggie is flailing around and being weirdly hyper, Neal just sits there and looks like he wishes his desk was to someone who didn't argue about personal matters all the freaking time. Neal is great. You know why? Because he's so quiet. After wasting all of that time, Jim says they only have 90 minutes to get a replacement for Gov. Brewer. "Tell me what to do," Maggie says, suddenly back to her whispery and demure first-episode personality. Jim tells her to grab their bookers and report to the conference room for an Emergency Meeting. Maggie freaks the hell out and calls for Martin, Tamara and Kendra while hopping up and down and looking like she's about to laugh and cry at the same time. You know, like a crazy person. Whose decision was it for her to act the scene this way? The director? The writer? The actress?
MacKenzie walks into the Emergency Meeting, and Jim has to inform her that they no longer have Brewer booked on the show. Jim lies to MacKenzie that it was his fault this happened. "Are you freaking kidding me?" MacKenzie exclaims. Hey, MacKenzie? You're on HBO. You can totally swear. It's a lot more realistic that way. Although I hope this show isn't trying to be realistic. MacKenzie asks who is replacing the governor. Jim says the pickings were pretty slim. For example, an adjunct professor at the University of Phoenix who has self-published several books about immigration. There's also a second runner-up in the Miss USA pageant who thinks she lost out on being first runner-up because of her answer to a question about illegal immigration. And third, some guy in a volunteer border patrol group. MacKenzie says these guests represent the opposite of the program she wanted to create. Well, get better bookers then, because I refuse to believe there's no one out there against illegal immigration and for the Arizona law who isn't crazy and/or stupid. Yes, it's true! There are intelligent conservatives out there. I'm not one of them, but that doesn't mean I can't acknowledge that they exist. Maggie just wants to get in a shouting match with Jim over who gets the blame for this. Very noble of you to try to own your mistakes, Maggie. It would have been better if you hadn't made them in the first place. Not divulging a relationship with a source is inexcusable.
Jim says they'll have to scrap the segment. MacKenzie thinks it's better to go on with the three terrible guests they have and hope Will can "carry" them. Maggie says Will is going to fire someone for this. MacKenzie insists that he won't. Looking at everyone's doubtful face, she asks "Are people here under the impression that Will is an ass?" Their silence suggests that they are. Meanwhile, that one woman who looks like Melinda Clarke is just staring at her phone and probably playing Angry Birds. Wait, did that exist way back in 2010? Ah, I just checked and it says it was first released in December 2009. See how easy that was? Why can't this show do that kind of fact-checking?
MacKenzie insists that Will is not an ass, and to think of him as such is "an injustice" when "he would throw himself in front of a train" for them. How could he when he doesn't seem to know who actually works for him? Also, why is MacKenzie squirming around like she's either trying to do The Snake (TM Axl Rose) or has to pee really badly? She finds the nearest computer and types out an email to Will in the hopes that she can convince him to let her tell the staff that he didn't cheat on her because she assumes that's the reason why they all hate Will and not because Will is a dick to them. She writes that she was actually the one who cheated on Will (WHAT? YES! SHOCKING REVELATION!), hits send, and tells the world that "Will is the best man I've ever -- " before she's interrupted by the sound of everyone's phone beeping with news on an incoming email. Yes, MacKenzie managed to accidentally email the entire staff when she really just meant to email Will. Again. This time, she managed to be even stupider than before, because: 1) She should have learned from the last time she did this, and 2) Even if she hadn't sent the email to the entire staff, she would have accidentally sent it to Sloan.
MacKenzie has a nervous breakdown and runs out to the bullpen to try to order everyone not to look at the email she just sent. Gary Cooper's phone only now has received it (I guess he has 3G while everyone else has 4G. No, wait -- that didn't really exist in 2010. This period piece writing is hard!), which gives MacKenzie a chance to slap the BlackBerry out of his hand and then stomp on it. She dumps a mug of coffee on it for good measure. Because destroying one cell phone totally makes all the email stop and prevents Gary Cooper from reading his email because he can't access it any other way. MacKenzie orders everyone to delete the email without reading it and then sneak into Will's office and delete it from his computer or just smash it with a baseball bat. She kind of screams that last part while jumping up and down, much like Maggie did earlier when she called the Emergency Meeting. I'm sorry, but I remember thinking that Emily Mortimer was good at acting. Why is she so horrible now? Why does she keep fidgeting and flailing her arms all the time in a way people never actually do? I think Sorkin has kidnapped someone in her family and is holding him hostage to force Emily Mortimer to be on this terrible show, and this is Emily Mortimer's way of alerting us that she needs help. Perhaps the flailing is actually an attempt to communicate in some kind of crude semaphore. Maybe Jeff Daniels only smoked in that one scene and then never again because he was trying to send us smoke signals about how Sorkin has his youngest child locked in a dungeon, to be released only when Jeff Daniels completes his work on this season. I can't explain why either of them would agree to do this show if not under duress.
Will emerges from his office, having just read MacKenzie's email judging by the expression on his face. He's kind of furious, and expresses this by stamping his foot on the floor and screaming. MacKenzie thinks this might best be discussed in private. Yeah, now she's all about the privacy. She leaves the crew with a cheerful request to delete the email. "I think I just accidentally forwarded it to corporate," says the guy who I think is named Martin. He's the same guy MacKenzie basically called an idiot in the staff meeting. Now he's making the same mistakes she is, except he only made it once and I have a feeling he did it on purpose.
Will has to be held back to prevent him from ripping Martin's head off. MacKenzie does more fake panic-stammering and hopping around while she assures Will that she's just trying to "change minds all over the place." Now that the staff knows for sure that this show is being run by crazy people, Will and MacKenzie finally make it into his office, where MacKenzie generously assumes "100% of the responsibility" for the email screw-up. While Will is having a rage stroke, MacKenzie decides to inform him that tonight's show is pretty much ruined. At this point, Will has apparently run out of anger, so he just heads for his desk. MacKenzie changes her mind and tells him she's only "98%" responsible for not being able to send an email. How? Well, as she tells it, Will was always in love with MacKenzie, but she didn't realize that she was in love with him until, two years into their relationship, she slept with her ex-boyfriend. Only then did she realize how much Will meant to her. "So technically, I wasn't cheating on the man I loved. I was falling in love with the man I love." And then she gets all angry and says that this would -- were this a romantic comedy -- "make everything okay." That's weird. I don't think I've ever seen a romantic comedy like that. Maybe Sorkin has and that's why he thinks that this show is quirky fun, but with a serious important message? At least, I think that's what he's going for. Will asks MacKenzie why she told him that she cheated. "Because I wouldn't have been able to live with it," she says. Will says he would have rather not known at all. Well, it apparently wasn't about what you wanted, Will. It was about what MacKenzie wanted. Because she's selfish and crazy. And also, somehow, capable of navigating dangerous war zones.
Will takes his place behind the set desk and gets ready for broadcast. When no one is looking, he asks that blonde woman, Tess, to find a clip of Sarah Palin calling Holland Norway and give it to some guy in the control room without MacKenzie knowing about it. Tess is all "yes, sir," because Tess is professional and capable and thus doesn't get much by way of lines or character development. Which is a good thing.
In the control room, Jim asks MacKenzie if their trip to Afghanistan was the result of her cheating on Will. "I got shot in the ass," he whines. Yes, apparently MacKenzie only goes to war zones in response to relationship woes and not because she gives a shit about the news after all.
Maggie hands Will a script and tries to make him feel better by saying she knows what it's like to be cheated on. She was once cheated on. While she was in the room. Then she realizes that no one really cares about her problems and admits to Will that she's the one who ruined the interview with the governor and she's prepared to resign. So noble! No, wait -- she's fine with resigning because, she says, Don wants her to go to the ten o'clock show anyway. Will says he wants Maggie to stay on his show. Because he apparently hates himself.
MacKenzie asks Will to take his BlackBerry off the desk. Will accomplishes this by whipping it at the camera and BlackBerry #2 bites the dust. "That wouldn't have happened if he'd had one of those rubber protectors," MacKenzie says. If only Will's heart had a rubber protector.
The broadcast begins well enough. There's some more bickering between Gary Cooper and Kendra over Barack Obama, because Sorkin isn't giving up on this yet. "I miss my BlackBerry," Gary Cooper sighs, which was funny if not the way he lost it in the first place.
Will welcomes some guy from La Raza who will be speaking out against the Arizona bill and able to handle everything Will throws at him in a calm and knowledgeable way, because his side is the side of what is right and just as opposed to the other side, which is evil and crazy. No shades of gray here, folks! Sorkin is just that brilliant of a writer than he is apparently incapable of subtlety. During the commercial, MacKenzie tries to psyche Will up for the segment. "Make sure everybody knows this is what blowing it looks like," Will growls. "They know!" MacKenzie smiles, before realizing this is not something to smile about.
So, coming up after the commercial break, News Night (2.0) will bring us a beauty queen, a Ph.D. who thinks immigrants shouldn't be allowed in this country if they test positive for "gayness," and a guy who refuses to go on the air without his rifle (named Jenny) firmly in hand. MacKenzie scolds Jim for covering for Maggie because he has a crush on her. MacKenzie thinks Jim has a crush on everyone. Jim says he does not have a crush on Maggie, but if he did it would be because MacKenzie told him to. They have conversations like this and then wonder why their news show is so terrible.
Anyway, it's time for News Night to get awesome while at the same time not do much to inform the public at all. Professor Weirdo, who sits in his dark office with the blinds shut, says the new law is "absolutely" and rightly targeting certain nationalities and ethnicities unfairly. Specifically, Mexicans. Prof. Weirdo says we wouldn't have to do this if they didn't exist. Will quickly goes to Gwen, another popular name in the '50s, to ask her about state's rights to create foreign policy laws. But Gwen is a blonde female college student and therefore stupid, and thus doesn't say much, forcing Will to make all possible pro-immigration law arguments for her. So now he kind of looks like he's on the side of the law. In the control room, MacKenzie finally realizes that this segment should never have gone to air and tells Will to dump out of it. He pointedly ignores her and talks to the third guy, Ross, who doesn't have much to say besides "Yes, sir" and suggest that we build a giant wall to keep the immigrants out. Ross and Will fight over how high a wall has to be before there are no ladders high enough to climb over it, and then Gwen asks if she can "jump in." "She cannot jump in!" MacKenzie says. "Jump on in, Gwen!" Will says. She does, with her best impersonation of that stupid Miss Teen South Carolina from 2007, saying that beauty pageant contestants should be able to express their opinions without losing out on the coveted first runner-up place. Will gives up and goes to a commercial, promising news about the exciting oil spill when the show returns.
In an attempt to win those precious conservative ratings, Will starts talking about Sarah Palin's Norway/Holland (not The Netherlands?) gaffe, shows a clip of it and then tries to tell us what Sarah Palin really meant to say and that Norway and The Netherlands are easy to mix up and Will manages to look even stupider now than he did in the segment. But I would totally watch that show.
Immediately following the show, Will goes to Charlie's office to apologize for it. "It was my fault," he says. I guess he's right in that he didn't fire Maggie and MacKenzie before it began. Charlie would rather talk about the email he got from MacKenzie, along with the 178,000 other people who work for ACN's parent company. I'm not sure if that was MacKenzie's error or Martin's. So now Will gets to watch as whatever tabloid AWN owns -- whose reporters also got the email -- runs with the story and the whole world talks about how Will's girlfriend who can't even use email cheated on him. "I wish you had told me," Charlie says; "I'd have made you feel better." It's been three years and Will still doesn't seem to feel better about it. But now that Charlie went and hired the woman who hurt him, I'm sure Will is feeling great. Thanks, Charlie! He lets Will go with a warning to "get it together down there" and an order to stop talking to Reese. Will doesn't look ready to obey it.
Neal invites Jim out to the crew's favorite post-show hangout, the only place nearby, he says, that "stays open late." In New York City. Doubt it. Jim accepts.
That leaves just MacKenzie and Will in the office to have yet another confrontation. "Are you in or are you out?" MacKenzie asks, suddenly deciding she has a right to be mad at Will. She's the one who ruined his show. He tried to save it with a ratings grab because his "best EP in the business" sucked out. But now he's the bad guy for not respecting MacKenzie's vision. MacKenzie does an impression of Will trying to defend Sarah Palin that is not accurate because I don't remember Will have problem controlling the volume of his voice and bouncing around when he was talking about Sarah Palin.
Will tells MacKenzie to can it with the holier-than-thou act when she's the one who invited "Victoria's Secret," a.k.a. Sloan Sabbith, to be his show's financial analyst. MacKenzie informs us that Sloan has a Ph.D. in economics from Duke and is an "adjunct professor at Columbia." Big deal. Professor Weirdo was an adjunct professor too, if I recall correctly. Also, why doesn't Sloan Sabbith get to be referred to as Dr. Sloan Sabbith? I should think she deserves the title more than Dr. Phil. MacKenzie says that her team may have "fucked up," but they made a mistake. Will put Sarah Palin on his show on purpose. I'm sorry, but Maggie didn't "make a mistake" when she didn't tell anyone that the guy she was pre-interviewing had sex on top of her once, and not in the good way. She deliberately didn't tell her boss. "Be the moral center of this show," MacKenzie half-cries; "be the integrity." Oh, like the integrity Maggie had when she didn't tell anyone that she knew Glen Fisher? FIRE HER! Also, what's with the "moral center" crap? I thought we only needed our old white men to tell us the facts. We don't need them to be upstanding citizens behind the scenes too. "By Monday, I want to know: are you in or are you out?" MacKenzie asks.
At the only place that stays open late, Gary Cooper says he and the staff are excited about being a part of the news News Night, because MacKenzie's words and the broadcast that resulted from them were somehow inspirational. Maggie is absent from the meeting because she's at the bar, looking miserable and inebriated. Jim heads over to check on her, but then Don takes a seat to her and Jim just has to stand there in the shadows and stare at them with his mouth hanging open.
Maggie is somehow ridiculously wasted after less than one drink. I'm pretty sure there are actual babies out there with a better tolerance than Maggie. She just can't not suck at anything, can she? Nevertheless, Don thinks this is a good time to urge her to join his new show. Maggie says she thinks he's only offering her the job because they're dating. Don doesn't deny that, saying she's "inexperienced" but he's willing to make her better. Which, by the way, is something she could really use and what Jim should have done before. Or just fired her. Maggie says she really believes in what Will and MacKenzie are trying to do. "Nobody's gonna watch a classroom," Don says. "They'll either be bored or infuriated." He's right. Does Sorkin know he's right? He wrote the line so he must know he's right and yet, I think we are supposed to like Will and MacKenzie and not like Don. "Let's break up," Maggie says. Then she launches into how much her life sucks because she somehow spends three week's salary on rent for half a one-bedroom apartment and can't pay back her $45,000 student loans and I'm sorry, but I'm sure I earn less than an associate producer does and I have an apartment in Manhattan with my very own bedroom that costs way less than three week's pay. So Maggie also sucks at real estate. And it seems that she's not too drunk not to go all manic-angry on us one more time. She goes on and on about what a hero to the news Will is and how awful people like Reese and Don are until Don cuts her off with a "Yeah. Let's break up." and takes off. Maggie wasn't expecting that one. If Don stays broken up with her he will permanently cement his spot in my favorite characters on this show list.
Will returns home. Manny the doorman says something about "We know how to live with our neighbors here," referring to the show, but I'm not exactly sure what he's trying to say and if he's mad at Will or not. Nor do I care.
In 2010, Radiohead's "High and Dry" was 15 years old. Now it's 17 years old, but that won't stop Sorkin from ramming it into his show to try to make us Feel Something. Will finds a fruit basket from his upstairs neighbors Bernie and Betsy Shapiro, whose names indicate that they are 70 years old and yet they were making all that noise and destroying Will's ceiling this morning, so I have no idea. Anyway, they apologize for being the worst neighbors ever and say they'll "take care of the damage."
Still-drunk Maggie demands to speak to Jim "right here and right now." He walks her away from the group as if it's even possible for her to embarrass herself more than she already has at this point and guess what? She's angry with him for taking the fall for her and trying to protect her. Why, she asks, do Jim and Don seem to feel the need to protect her all the time? Because you're on a Sorkin show and thus have been written like crazy infant, Maggie.
Maggie doesn't understand why no one is yelling at her. Probably because everyone realizes that Maggie can't learn anything from what she did so lecturing her about it is pointless. Jim offers to give her money for a cab home. Maggie says she has to go to Don's apartment to apologize to him, though she's not sure for what. "I'll make it work, through sheer force of will," she says. Because that's the attitude you want to have four months into a relationship. Also, "you should shut up more than you do, do people tell you that?" Maggie says to her boss. "No," Jim says, smiling as if Maggie is somehow charming. She isn't. Jim calls Tess over to deal with Maggie and then decides to warn the staff: "Fuck up again like this? I'm gonna get mad." Two random women congratulate him on taking a stand.
And Will gives Neal a call to ask him if he can find that illegal immigrant from the Spokane alt-weekly and offer to pay for a cab to take him to and from work. Will will foot the bill, but doesn't want anyone else to know. Neal's first thought: "Let me post this on your blog!" Yes, because Will cares so much about that blog. "No," Will says, "keep my name out of it." So Neal just has to tell MacKenzie about it and she'll have accidentally emailed the entire world with the news by noon tomorrow.
Speaking of MacKenzie, she's at the bar too, off in a dark corner getting drunk. Neal hands her the phone upon Will's request. It's bad enough that people keep having personal conversations to this guy's desk, now they're using his phone to do it? The alcohol seems to have calmed MacKenzie down somewhat, and she starts to apologize sincerely to Will for everything until he cuts her off to say that he is "in." He hangs up and admires the view from his balcony. Which is, of course, the Statue of Liberty. You know, just in case you couldn't tell that tonight's episode was brought to you by America and freedom and immigration and cheese.
To read more from Sara Morrison, you can follow her on Twitter, subscribe to her on Facebook or you can just email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.
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