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Will and Jim try dating this week, as even though Will was supposedly very good at dating just last episode, he is now bad at it and requires assistance from Dr. Dr. Sloan Sabbith (she has two Ph.D.s now!) to set him up with a woman at the ACN New Year's Eve party. Because who doesn't want to go to work on New Year's Eve? Jim loves it, because he gets to do actual work there until Don decides to set him up with Maggie's roommate, Lisa. Dr. Dr. Sloan fixes Will up with a woman who is a writer for a gossip magazine called TMI, and Will can't help but get on his News High Horse and tell her that she's worse than a heroin dealer because people like to read about The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Needless to say, she does not appreciate this, and a few days later, a slightly fictitious account of the night and Will's behavior appears in Page Six.
Dr. Dr. Sloan then sets Will up with a woman who loves guns and drugs, thus earning her a very special Willecture. And Date #3 talks about how much she loves The Real Housewives of New Jersey, so she also gets a Willecture. Willectures for all women! And then it all makes it into the gossip columns, with Date #2 getting the front page of TMI and Will looking like a gun-loving drug addict. That's when Charlie realizes that this is the work of Jane Fonda, who is using her other AWM outlets to take Will down so she'll look justified in firing him, just like she promised last episode. Charlie didn't tell Will about that meeting. Now they have to figure out what to do about it. Also, MacKenzie is very sad to find out that Will's non-compete clause is only in his contract because he had to put it there to have the ability to fire MacKenzie.
Jim's date with Lisa goes much better than any of Will's. Though he tells Maggie that they didn't really hit it off, he sleeps with Lisa and Maggie finds out, thanks to Don, who isn't stupid and therefore can see (as can Lisa, although I guess she didn't really care) that Maggie has feelings for Jim. The whole gang end up at work on a Saturday – Charlie, MacKenzie, Don, and Will to deal with the TMI story and everyone else to listen to Neal's lecture on the existence of Bigfoot, which he's been weirdly obsessed with all episode. Maggie takes this opportunity to yell at Jim for sleeping with her roommate and lying to her about it in front of everyone, so he makes her sit at the assignment desk for the rest of the day as punishment.
And that's when we realize why everyone had to be in the office in the first place: because this is the day Representative Gabrielle Giffords (and 18 other people) was shot, and now they can all cover it with much gusto, ignoring all of their now-insignificant-seeming problems to cover this breaking news in fantastic, truth-telling, civilized fashion. When the other outlets start reporting that Giffords is dead but there hasn't been any official confirmation, Will has to decide if he should join them and risk being wrong or hold off and risk being the last news outlet to report Giffords' death. Of course, we all know that she survived, and Will's decision to wait is the right one, even though Reese is screaming at him to join in and pronounce her dead. Reese is the Bad Guy. Charlie, Will, and his staff and even Don are the Good Guys, so they realize that Giffords is a person and shouldn't just be used for news ratings or as part of a race to report the news first. No, although apparently it's totally cool to use her for an HBO show's sleazy and hypocritical attempt to elicit an emotional response from the viewers, titular Coldplay songs and all.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's party time in the newsroom, as Will dons a tuxedo and smokes in his office while the rest of the staff spend their New Year's Eve at work for reasons I do not understand and are not explained except for MacKenzie saying something about how Will is spending time with his "NewsNight family." Even if you did work with a bunch of people who couldn't come up with their own plans for New Year's Eve, why would you have the party in the office? How lame is that? No wonder Will doesn't want to be near them. Eternally not getting the hint, MacKenzie asks Will if he wouldn't mind giving her boyfriend a few minutes of his time so he can "share some facts" that could make for a good news story. Will agrees. MacKenzie lets Wade into the office and leaves them alone together. It turns out that Wade is an assistant US attorney focusing on financial crime. Will points out that Wade isn't doing a very good job at that. Wade says there's a reason for that.
Hey, remember when we liked Neal because he didn't talk very much, but when he did it wasn't annoying and he seemed like a semi-relatable human being? Well, now he wants everyone to know that Bigfoot is real. All the randoms we usually see in meeting room (sans the Rodney Dangerfield guy) roll their eyes and laugh at Neal. Meanwhile, they're all decked out in sequins and ties while Jim is wearing his usual work clothes and sitting at his desk, working. The randoms leave so that Maggie can come in, order Neal to stop talking, and then angrily ask Jim why he's working in the middle of a party.
Neal's new girlfriend (or not, as he says "girlfriend's a strong word" when asked because I'm sure attractive young women like this Kaylee are just lining up to date a blogger who thinks Bigfoot is real). "Get me drunk," Kaylee asks. "Done. Boom!" Neal says, quite pleased with himself. This leaves Maggie and Jim alone. Maggie offers to help Jim with his assignment but then Don arrives and Maggie has to go pretend she doesn't have feelings for her boss to the guy who used to be the boss she had feelings for.
Don claims that tonight he's going to be "Fun Don." "I love Fun Don!" Maggie says. And yet, she wants to be with Jim, whose version of Fun Jim is probably fantasizing about how he would have reported the Kennedy assassination. Maggie says she borrowed her dress from Roommate Lisa, which gives Don the idea to fix Roommate Lisa up with Jim. "Why would you unleash Lisa on Jim?" Maggie asks, not even being subtle in her desire not to share Jim with anyone else. You can bet Allison Pill does this with her usual over-acted aplomb.
Roommate Lisa, who, if you'll recall, usually dates men who steal drugs out of medicine cabinets, walks into the party and seems to be friendly with Maggie's co-workers (or at least with the one who looks like Melinda Clarke). Maybe she's a frequent guest? It seems like ACN will let anyone in to watch broadcasts from anywhere (boyfriends, dates, etc.), so why not? Roommate Lisa is sad to be single on New Year's Eve, but Maggie tells her not to worry, as the dress she's wearing "sends a message loud and clear." "I look slutty?" Lisa asks. Maggie says no even though that's obviously what she meant. Don says Lisa does look slutty, but "in the best way." And then Lisa's phone rings and we find out that her ringtone is "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" "I like Rod Stewart," Lisa explains. No, Lisa, you don't. No one under the age of 45 does.
Don tells Lisa that her problems are over because he found her a date. "Is it another loser that doesn't have a date on New Year's Eve?" Lisa asks. No, it's a winner with four dates on New Year's Eve. "He's a huge loser!" Maggie screams. Both Roommate Lisa and Don find Maggie's insistence that some guy is a huge loser to be interesting and weird. "She works in fashion, Don," Maggie insult-explains; "no offense, Lis." Lisa claims she isn't offended, but she probably is because the actress playing Lisa is not playing her as stupid as I guess she's supposed to be. In fact, Lisa seems smarter, more fun to hang out with, and much more interesting than Maggie. Then again, she might just be high on all of Maggie's Xanax that she regularly steals from the medicine cabinet. Lisa appears to know something about the Greek debt crisis (that there is a country named Greece and it's in so much debt that there is a crisis) when asked, so Don deems her suitable for Jim's great intellect. He points Jim out to Lisa, who wonders why Jim is working in the middle of a party. "He has a job," Maggie snaps. Don says that's a plus compared to the men Lisa usually dates.
Okay, let's look at how much Lisa's life sucks right now. She lives with a woman who clearly thinks she's an idiot because she doesn't watch the NEWS all the time and has a job in fashion instead of working as an associate producer of a crappy cable news show, a position she only got because one boss forgot who she was and her other boss promoted her before she realized how terribly unqualified and bad at her job Maggie is. Her roommate's boyfriend constantly makes references to her sexual promiscuity and choice of boyfriends. And just when she's trying to relax and have a nice evening at home, her roommate calls her from work in the middle of a panic attack so Lisa can calm her down while at the same time listen to accusations that her boyfriends steal Xanax. Lisa is the tragic figure of The Newsroom.
Don tells Lisa what Jim's name is, which causes Lisa to stare at Maggie, having heard Jim's name before and clearly having some idea that Maggie would not want her to date him and why. Lisa kindly defers, saying she doesn't really want to be fixed up right now and that she's not Jim's type anyway. Don is determined to make this work and drags her over to Jim. Don calls Jim by the nickname he gave him at some point in the last six months we didn't get to see because this show went through them in one episode: Jimmy Olsen. Jim is so lame that his only problem with being called Jimmy Olsen is that the Jimmy Olsen of Superman fame was a photojournalist and Jim is a senior producer of television news. Don shushes him and introduces him to Lisa, saying she went to Parsons and works in a "very high-end boutique." Sounds to me like Lisa is a great catch! Much better than Maggie. Don leaves them alone and drags Maggie away. Maggie manages to grab Tess as she walks past, whisper-shouting at her to "kill me, kill me now, do it now!" because apparently the idea of having to be with her boyfriend of ten months on New Year's Eve is that painful to her. "Huh?" Tess asks, then just shrugs and walks away because she's probably used to Maggie's insanity by now.
Wade tells Will about how the new GOP-led Congress slashed his office's budget, making it difficult to investigate financial evil-doers. MacKenzie walks in with flutes of champagne for everyone and tells us what we just heard from Wade. Wade whines that for every one of him, the banks have 20 lawyers and a lot more money they can use to drag any litigation out. MacKenzie then calls Wade "honey." Big mistake. Will objects and sends Wade away so he can talk to MacKenzie alone.
As soon as Wade is gone, Will accuses MacKenzie of trying to help her boyfriend persuade Will to lay off him and his ineffective co-workers. MacKenzie denies this, of course, innocently claiming that Wade was just giving Will a good idea for a story. "I've got a staff of paid professionals," Will says. Yeah, they're awesome. Maggie should have been fired eight times by now and Jim can't get a scoop unless his roommate and his sister happen to work for the companies being reported on. Will clearly has a problem with Wade's current status as MacKenzie's boyfriend, which MacKenzie tries to turn back on Will by accusing him of having a "Netflix queue" of ladies who are divorced and have fake boobs. Way to judge, MacKenzie. I didn't hear Will insulting your stupid boyfriend.
MacKenzie says she's not going to keep herself in "jail" anymore. She's going to date a guy and stop feeling bad about cheating on Will three years ago. "He's my boyfriend, we're serious, I want a partner," she says. Emily Mortimer just does not know how to deliver this dialogue. She's especially bad at doing that interrupting-shouting thing Sorkin makes every character do all the time. Please spare her and us and re-cast this role. MacKenzie realizes this conversation isn't going anywhere good and urges Will to make an appearance at the party. Who did Emily Mortimer piss off in make-up, by the way? The foundation on her face is noticeably darker than the rest of her body. She looks nice in that dress, at least.
Will mutters a "fuck" (this is the episode where Sorkin sort of realized that he's on HBO now so his characters can swear) and heads out to the party. Oh! Check out the Rodney Dangerfield guy in his power blue suit! He's the best. Sloan Sabbith, because she is supposedly a lead character on this show even though she's had less screentime and fewer lines than Tess at this point, glides over to Will and compliments him on the tux. He says he just came here from a different, clearly better, New Year's Eve party. But, Will sighs, he's never enjoys New Year's Eve parties. Sloan says she doesn't either, and starts reminiscing about bad New Year's Eve parties past until Will tells her that this is his sad moment, not hers. No walks down memory lane for you, Sabbith! Probably because Sloan doesn't want Will to talk to her anymore, she encourages him to walk up to a woman and start a conversation with her. Will doesn't seem to understand how these things work, even though just LAST WEEK, he was seemingly good enough at flirting to date a bevy of attractive ladies. A Netflix queue of them, one might say! And now he has no clue what he's doing and needs Sloan to point out an available-looking woman wearing a gold dress. Will gets nervous at the prospect of talking to her, admitting to Sloan that he's "not good at this." Except that he is, and we've seen that before. Sloan thinks he's "sweet" and says he should open up to more people. Will tells her to shut up. They have a cute little moment of shared social awkwardness that is kind of ruined when you remember that it's pretty inconsistent with what we saw of Will last week.
Will finally gets the nerve to talk to the woman, who introduces herself as Nina Howard because, yet again, Sorkin can't think of a name that wasn't popular in the '50s. Will shakes her hand and then: "I don't ... know what ... to do." He goes with a "How'd you get in here?" Nina is obviously only still talking to this weirdo because she knows him from TV. She says she's friends with one of ACN's morning show producers. What? Morning show? Blech! They don't do serious news over there, so they should all die! Will clearly looks down on them. He says the day team and the primetime team are like the "Jets and the Sharks." "Maybe we could be like Tony and Maria," Nina says, and we realize that she's still talking to Will because she's just as weird and cheesy as he is.
MacKenzie walks up and asks Sloan why Will is talking to Nina Howard, TMI magazine's gossip columnist. "Oh, he shouldn't be talking to her," Sloan says, then downs the rest of her champagne. When Olivia Munn is the best thing about your TV show, you know you have a bad TV show. I really thought she would be the worst thing about this show. I'm still amazed that it's the opposite.
MacKenzie rushes over to take Will away from Nina and warn him about her. Will doesn't think he has anything to worry about: "She writes features," he says. MacKenzie says TMI is the kind of magazine that puts Jennifer Aniston on the cover every issue. Are we still doing that? Were we all the way back in 2010? Probably. I still can't figure out why. I don't think Jennifer Aniston knows, either. As Sloan walks up, Will notes that MacKenzie seems very familiar with TMI. "They have it at my nail place," says the woman we're supposed to believe was embedded in a bunch of nail salon-free war zones for the past two and half years. Lo and behold, it turns out that Sloan goes to the same nail salon, because it's the only nail salon in the largest city in the United States that carries TMI magazine. The women bond over their nails (fuck you, Sorkin) and Will, exasperated over all this talk of trivial women things, tries to leave. He says it's New Year's Eve so he doesn't care if Nina wrote Mein Kampf. He's going to talk to her because he's desperate for a date. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that Nina writes for something much worse than Adolf fucking Hitler's autobiography.
This leaves Sloan and MacKenzie alone. "Really? You're setting up my boyfriend? Well, not my boyfriend, just - whuuuhhaaa!" MacKenzie says, getting cut off at the end by the presence of her actual boyfriend. "Nice," Sloan says, looking disgusted by the whole thing, as she should.
While Kendra parties awesomely in the background (and shows us why one shouldn't go to office New Year's Eve parties, should one ever work in an office that has New Year's Eve parties, which is no office ever), Nina tells Will to kiss her at midnight and then they'll go from there. I guess his inability to maintain any sort of conversation with Nina really turned her on just now. "I've got to start to walk up to people more" says the guy who was dating a cheerleader and a neurosurgeon last week. "You seem lonely and broken to me," Nina says; "but don't worry. I can fix you." That line was amazingly, painfully lame, so Will changes the subject to work. Nina says she's currently writing about Brittany Giancarlo from The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Will has never heard of her, probably because she's not a real person. I don't understand why this show chooses fictional names sometimes and real ones other times. Like, we can namedrop Erin Andrews as Will's St. Lucia vacation-mate but we can't use a real reality show star? We can use real news events but not always real congresspeople? And then there's what comes at the end of this episode, where Sorkin uses a real person and a real tragedy and the deaths of real people to make us give a shit about a bunch of fake people. But more on that later.
Will doesn't understand why Brittany Giancarlo's cheating and gold-digging ways are worth writing about. "It's just a take-down piece," Nina shrugs. Will has never heard of such a thing because he's all about Integrity even though this time last year he was telling his audience about the best thing on YouTube.
As 2010 comes to a close, Nina moves in to kiss Will and ring in the new year. Melinda Clarke makes out with a guy with Russell Brand hair. Good for her? Sloan drinks more and stares at her BlackBerry, because beautiful women have such a hard time finding dates. And Will puts his hand over Nina's mouth as she approaches so as not to catch her nasty gossip cooties. "You're just setting out to be mean to someone?" he asks, still somehow not understanding how gossip magazines work. Nina says she doesn't need a lecture. Well, she picked the wrong guy to try to kiss, then, because it's happening!
Nina points out that Will spent the last six months trying to take the Tea Party down. Will says it's not the same because he didn't succeed since they all got voted into Congress and also because the Tea Party is Evil and Wrong and Will is Good and Right. "These are people who are asking for our votes," he says. Wait, so does that mean Nina's hit piece would be okay if it was about a contestant on Big Brother or American Idol? By the way -- you know who doesn't ask to be on television all the time? The majority of the people Will has reported on in his career, I'd bet. You know who does? Reality show contestants. Will says he tries to report about things that "are of national importance." Nina says the world should know the truth about Brittany's secret daughter. "It's entertainment," Nina says. Will says it's wrong, but there's hope for Nina. "You can be part of the change. You don't have to write gossip," Will says; "I'm not putting you down. I'm just saying that what you do is a really bad form of pollution. It makes us dumber and meaner and is destroying civilization." Because no one ever gossiped before gossip magazines were created. "I would have more respect for you if you were a heroin dealer," Will says. "Fuck you," Nina says, showing admirable restraint. "You just passed up a sure thing," she adds, because she is on the side of Evil and Wrong and therefore is also slutty. She tries to walk away, but Will grabs her arm. This show gets more and more like 7th Heaven every week. Jeff Daniels is even starting to look like RevCam. My recapping life is coming full circle.
While Will and poor Nina bicker, Wade, MacKenzie, and Sloan watch from afar. MacKenzie says Will is "trying to civilize" Nina like she's a feral child. "That's not gonna work out well," Sloan says. Nina throws her drink in Will's face. No one ever does this. No one. It only happens on TV shows written by people who aren't as clever as they think they are or that one episode of 30 Rock that was an episode of Queen of Jordan.
Even though Will is covered in champagne, Neal thinks this is a good time to introduce him to Keylee. He then tries to convince Will that Bigfoot is real. "Get the hell away from me," Will asks.
The day or the day after or maybe it's March at this point since this show does like to skip around, Charlie calls Will into his office to show him the latest Page Six column in the New York Post. Will says he hasn't seen today's issue yet since he's too good for that kind of thing, but Charlie thinks he might want to make an exception today. Headline: "Anchor Rancor: Will McAvoy Gropes in the New Year." Yes, Will's non-dalliance with Nina Howard was reported to Page Six, including how she threw champagne all over the nuevo-liberal's $4,000 custom-made tuxedo. Will is quick to clear up the inaccuracies in the article: he still thinks he's a Republican but acknowledges that the fact that he's cool with the gays might make people think he's liberal. The fact that he knows his party has a problem with gays and doesn't himself but still prefers to be in the same company of people who do makes him an asshole, by the way. Will didn't grope Nina, and his tuxedo wasn't custom made. He says this all happened because he was trying to "fight the good fight." Charlie asks why he was fighting any fight. "I'm on a mission to civilize!" Will says; "progress is slow."
Charlie is happy to hear that Will is dating again. Apparently he was drunk the last six months that Will was also dating. He wonders if Will might not want to try dating a woman who isn't just good for sex. "You're asking out the wrong women," Charlie says, his head shaking furiously. I'm starting to worry that Sam Waterston has Parkinson's. I am not even joking, by the way. I love Sam Waterston (or I did until this show came into my life) and I hope he's okay. It doesn't seem healthy to me that he constantly impersonating a bobblehead doll. Will doesn't want to talk to Charlie about any of this. He asks Charlie to figure out who leaked that information to Page Six (apparently Nina the GOSSIP COLUMNIST is not a suspect, although I can't imagine why she didn't just put this in her own column and get her own scoop). Charlie doesn't really care. Will admits that his tuxedo did, in fact, cost $4,000.
Will then heads to the meeting room, where his staff, cued by MacKenzie, throw cups of water at his face. They all laugh as if this were funny and not a great way to get fired and also surely this kind of frivolity is not appropriate for a place where such serious business as The News is done. Will asks why that just happened. MacKenzie says the staff thought it would be funny. They're still cracking themselves up as they take their seats. Even Jim, who managed to fill up his cup with water and throw it at Will while also calling a few sources. MacKenzie hands Will a towel, and he tries to explain himself and the Page Six article by saying he was on a mission to civilize because he's Don Quixote. "I'm Don Quixote!" MacKenzie says. Oh, Christ, not this shit again. Will asks if she's even read it. "In the original French," she says. Will notes that it was originally written in Spanish, which everyone knows. EVERYONE. Surely a Peabody-award winning producer would know this. This show is terrible.
MacKenzie calls the group's attention to the Whiteboard O'News and a list Jim compiled of stories the show either missed or didn't cover enough last year. Maggie angrily says that Jim didn't spend his entire New Year's Eve on the list, because she's mad at him for talking to her roommate. Meanwhile, Will is having trouble with continuity, since his shirt can't possibly maintain the same water stains across several takes and probably hours of filming. It's kind of fun to watch how it keeps changing. MacKenzie kicks off the list with the Chilean miners. Oh, seriously? We're actually going to do this? So now this show, which takes place IN THE PAST, is now covering news stories IN THE PAST PAST. I hope they cover a news story about themselves covering a news story!
Will and his quick-drying (except in the takes where it's drenched again) shirt quickly shoot down several ideas. Tess decides she'd rather not tell them hers. Will orders her to. "The iPad was released," Tess says. "Get the hell out of the meeting," Will says. "Yeah," Tess says, and tries to leave. Sadly for her, MacKenzie makes her come back. Tess rules. Spin-off for Tess, please. Ideally written by someone else. Will demands that they do stories about people who lied because the News never calls people out for lying. Jim has a story for Will: when the right wing claimed that Obama was spending $200 million a day on a trip to India. Will likes this. Maggie suggests they talk about how all the right wingers kept saying that Obama was going to take their guns away, even though he never said he would and never made any effort to do so. Apparently, liberals never lie or exaggerate. Only conservatives. Then again, Fox News exists, so it's hard to blame the liberals with that big white elephant in the room. All eyes turn to Neal for his input. "Bigfoot -- " he begins. The meeting is over.
Sarah Palin is back on NewsNight! This time, however, Will is not defending her. He's lumping her in with Glenn Beck, an NRA guy (who MacKenzie notes is probably one of the craziest people in politics before reminding Will to "let the facts speak for themselves"), and Rush Limbaugh because they all warned that Obama would try to take our guns away from us. This lead to an increase in gun sales despite the fact that an anti-gun lobby gave Obama all Fs on its Gun Control Report Card. Will says Palin, Beck, the NRA, and Limbaugh are lying to the American public and he, sadly, doesn't know why. Well, how about because one of Obama's campaign promises was to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment? Maggie wanders into the control room and listens as Will reads what I'm guessing is her copy, based on the use of the word "freaking" in it. You know who never said "freaking?" Murrow. Cronkite. Dan Rather might have, but he's clearly insane, as he's writing those ridiculously positive reviews of this show.
Roommate Lisa gets ready for her hot date with Jim. Maggie assures her that she's fine with Lisa dating Jim because she loves Don. Lisa doesn't believe her, and her nervousness about the date isn't about Maggie anyway -- she's worried Jim will think she's dumb. Maggie seems horrified that Lisa would ever think such a thing even though she's partially responsible for why Lisa feels this way in the first place. "You're not dumb. You go out with guys who make you feel dumb," Maggie says. She also lives with women who make her feel dumb. "Jim's not like that," Maggie says. Except that he is. He's smug and horrible just like everyone else on this show. Just when we think that Lisa maybe isn't dumb, it turns out that her skirt is on backwards. By the way, Lisa and Maggie's apartment is really nice and new and spacious and has central air, so that explains why Maggie can only just barely afford to share a one bedroom on an associate producer's salary.
Will is also on a date, although he and Kathryn Hahn, who should have known better, are now at his apartment. Kathryn Hahn leaves to change out of her wet clothes, telling Will he can get a joint out of her pocketbook. Will decides that that sounds like a good idea and does so, only to find a small handgun. Wow, her purse must be heavy with that thing in there. Will takes it out and asks Carrie (for this is finally revealed to be her name) why she's carrying a gun. "I'm a Southern liberal, dude," Carrie says. Will removes the bullets and hands it back to her. "Here's the thing," he starts. Uh oh. Carrie already knows what's coming and says she supports guns because they will defend her from being raped. She points the gun at Will to make that point. Will knocks the handle out of her hand, flips the gun, catches it, and points it at her. Jeff Daniels hasn't been this macho since he blow-torched a bunch of spiders in Arachnophobia. Carrie says she's kind of turned on right now.
It turns out that Sloan set Will up with Carrie. She asks Will how the date went as they prepare for broadcast the night. MacKenzie expresses an interest as well, and Will covers the mic so she can't hear about how Carrie brought a loaded gun into Will's apartment. "Are you going out with her again?" Sloan asks, dreading all the phone calls Carrie is going to make to her asking why Will hasn't called. She begs Will to at least stay out of Page Six for a while. "She's super-jealous. You haven't seen the crazy side of her," Sloan says. I don't think it's possible that we haven't seen the crazy side of a woman who's had more than five seconds of airtime on this show. Will is annoyed that someone as supposedly smart as Sloan could have made such a stupid matchmaking choice. "You have two Ph.D.s!" he says. The hell? Two Ph.D.s? Isn't she 32? And both Ph.D.s are in economics? Why? How? Ugh.
The show ends, and Jim tells Maggie he feels like they're still "nibbling around the edges" when it comes to reporting on the economy. I don't understand. Surely Dr. Dr. Sloan should be able to get right in there. But we're probably just going to have to wait until NewsNight tackles Occupy Wall Street and we all get lectured on how the media is ignoring this righteous cause except for the geniuses at NewsNight. Episode Six, y'all! Maggie asks Jim how his date with Lisa went. "Fine," Jim shrugs. But he "doesn't think" there will be a second date. Maggie is happy about this.
Will has yet another date, who wants to know what the deal was with Will and Nina in that Page Six article. Will tries to explain his mission to civilize and how Nina is a horrible person for writing about a real housewife. It turns out that Will's date is a big fan of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and therefore can't wait to read Nina's article. "Brittany's a bitch!" Date No. 3 concludes. "No, you are," Will says. And it's time for another lecture. You see, Brittany may have signed up to be on a reality show (or not, since she's not a real person unlike most of the other people this show mentions), but the rest of us are "being turned into a bunch of old ladies with hairdryers on our heads" by subjecting ourselves to these reality shows and gossip about said reality shows. That's right: society will be ruined and not civilized if we all turn into old ladies with hairdryers. It's the worst thing that could possibly happen. Thank god Will is here to save us from this.
"It's called a guilty pleasure," Date No. 3 says. Will says chocolate soufflé is a guilty pleasure. WHOA, THERE! Be careful with all that sugar. You don't want to turn into a fat woman under a hairdryer. Will likens a reality show to "human cockfighting" and a "smart, accomplished woman" like Date No. 3 is being turned "mean and insensitive" by watching such filth. "Thank goodness you met me in time," Will begins. Date No. 3 throws her drink in Will's face to shut him up. Even Glee is better at throwing drinks at people.
Maggie tells Don that Jim and Lisa's date didn't go well and there will not be another. "Jim's lying to you," Don smirks. It seems that Lisa the blabbermouth told Don of all people that she was going out with Jim again tonight. Maggie refuses to believe that Jim would lie to her. Maybe he accidentally watched a reality show and became a bitter lying mean old lady. Maggie needs an excuse to call Jim, and Don gives her one: an article on Politico about how Republican representative Spencer Bachus told The Birmingham News that "Washington is there to serve the banks." Actually, he said "my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks" and he said it in December. Nice scoop there, ACN. Maggie calls Jim immediately. While she's directing him to the month-old Politico article, Don calls Lisa. Maggie hears "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"
In Jim's apartment, Jim and Lisa leap out of bed, half-dressed. Okay, why on earth would Jim answer his phone if he's in the middle of fun times with Lisa? What an idiot. Lisa grabs her phone and turns the ringer off, but it's too late. Maggie says she'll talk to Jim in the morning. I guess this old news about Bachus wasn't so important after all. "She should really change her ringtone," Don smirks, as if he should be proud of the fact that his girlfriend clearly has feelings for someone else and isn't even really trying to hide it from him. "I can't believe what you just did," Maggie says. Don refuses to be the bad guy in this situation. "At worst, I'm in fourth place," he says. I would put Jim in fourth place, since there's nothing wrong with him dating Maggie's roommate. Lisa shouldn't have gone on a second date with him knowing how Maggie feels about him (although I can understand why she'd want to, at the very least, make Maggie feel bad after how Maggie's behaved towards her) and Maggie has no right to mad at anyone except herself. And yet, she asks Don if she's "done something wrong." "No," Don says, obviously meaning "yes" but refusing to say it for some reason.
The morning, Will is back in Page Six and therefore Charlie's office. Doesn't Charlie have actual work to do? Anyway, the story of Will's short date with No. 3 is told, ending in Will not leaving a tip. Will protests that he left plenty of money on the table and that this can all be explained by the fact that No. 3 is a fan of The Real Housewives. Charlie thinks it's time to issue a statement. That's only going to give more weight to Page Six. Best to ignore it, especially since a story about a drink being thrown in your face is pretty tame. Will just wants everyone to know that he tips people well.
Charlie changes the subject to Will's dating life. Will asks Charlie how many women he dated before he found "the one" (I'm assuming that's Charlie's wife, considering that he's wearing a ring). Charlie says that doesn't matter. He didn't date anyone after. Will says that's easy when "the one" doesn't cheat on you. Charlie doesn't understand why it's taking Will so long to get over MacKenzie. I'm sure the fact that he has to work with her every day now doesn't help matters. "On the off-chance that you're not going to live forever, why not take a shot at being happy now?" Charlie asks. Because MacKenzie has a boyfriend? And doesn't deserve a second chance with the guy she cheated on? And they have to work together? So many reasons.
Will tries to escape to his office, but Dr. Dr. Sloan got a copy of today's Page Six column and she is not happy to see that Will did the one thing she asked him not to. Will says he has no control over whether or not he appears in Page Six. I guess he can't stop himself from dating a different woman every night and being such a dick to them that they throw alcohol at his face? "Carrie is freaking out!" Dr. Dr. Sloan says. "Who's Carrie?" Will asks. Asshole. "She has a gun and she's going to shoot you," Dr. Dr. Sloan says. I hope she learned from her mistakes last time, then, and doesn't let Will disarm her so easily. There is then some confusion over whether or not gun-toting Carrie is like Annie Oakley or Ado Annie (Will, of course, is correct).
Will isn't done having women yell at him. MacKenzie, in the control room, asks Will to try not to date anyone in the 15 seconds before airtime. "Try not to sleep with your ex-boyfriend," Will shoots back. "He got the better of that exchange," MacKenzie admits.
And Will begins another "Stories We Missed" segment. This time it's Jim's suggestion about Obama's trip to India. Will makes sure to point out that Obama's trip to India ended up giving American $10 billion in export deals and 50,000 jobs. Any time this show wants to admit that it's a Keith Olbermann rip-off and not centrist and simply reporting the facts would be good. Will attacks the Drudge Report, Limbaugh, Beck, and Bachmann for spreading the obvious lie that Obama spent $200 million a day on his trip to India. For this, Will says they are no better than sex offenders and should be labeled as liars for the rest of their lives. Okay.
For some reason, after publically calling for liars to be punished like sex offenders, Will has trouble sleeping. His phone rings in the morning. It's Charlie, asking him to come to work at 11:00 even though it's a Saturday. He won't say what's going on, but something obviously is.
You'll be disgusted to know that ACN airs a "Red Carpet Roundup" on Saturday mornings. Why, that's women's news! It only belongs underneath hair-dryers! The stupid lady anchor throws the segment to another stupid lady anchor in Los Angeles and takes a seat with her Diet Coke and latest copy of TMI Magazine. The cover story? "My Night with Will McAvoy: Sex, Drugs, and Guns!!"
Jim is also at work, as are most of the rest of the NewsNight staff, having been called in by Neal for a special presentation. Yes, it turns out that Neal thought it would be a great idea to essentially trick his easily-deceived co-workers into coming to work on a Saturday morning to listen to him talk about how Bigfoot might be real. Melinda Clarke checks her phone, bored. Not bored enough to leave or better yet, not come in at all, like I see the Rodney Dangerfield guy did.
Jim speaks up to say, simply, "No." "Sometimes when Jim says 'no' what he really means is 'I'm sleeping with your roommate,'" Maggie snaps. That's awkward, but Will arrives to change the subject. Neal is surprised and, it seems, appropriately embarrassed to see him. Charlie walks in and tells Will the real meeting is in his office. He hands Will a copy of TMI as they walk in, where MacKenzie and Don are waiting. "Don's a good advisor on damage control," Charlie says. Really? ACN doesn't have its own PR team to do this kind of stuff? No one on the writing staff could think of more plausible explanations for people to be in the office on a Saturday morning than Bigfoot lectures and magazine covers? Come on.
Neal is still going on about Bigfoot. I'm guessing everyone is staying around for the free doughnuts? Or to observe whatever drama is going down between Jim and Maggie, which is heightened when Maggie accuses Jim of being a liar and he jumps up and calls her out of the room. She does, with the most petulant and childish expression on her face. Also, why does she walk like a Muppet? Grover, to be specific. With her arms hanging down and loose and her lower jaw jutting out. Maybe she's the Bigfoot Neal is convinced exists.
Jim tells whoever is on the assignment desk to go home for the day because Maggie is taking over. "Sit your ass at that desk until four o'clock," he orders. Good. She deserves that. She also deserves to get fired. What she does not deserve is the apology that follows. Jim says he only lied because he didn't want to upset Maggie. Maggie says she wouldn't have been upset. Jim says that's obviously not true, seeing as how she's upset now. Maggie claims she's only mad because Jim lied. She's screaming at this point, so Neal interrupts to inform them that everyone in the meeting room can hear this and it's interrupting/significantly improving his Bigfoot lecture.
Jim drags Maggie away. She continues that Jim never lied to her in the whole time they've been working together. Yeah, and? He didn't lie to her about anything work-related. Jim thinks that should be a "good feeling" for Maggie that she's upset that he lied to her, and that he lied to her about this in the first place. Maggie claims she has no idea what he's talking about. Jim says Don sure seems to.
It turns out that Carrie is married (though she's been separated for a year) and she and Will smoked pot together. When? The subject didn't come up until they got back to Will's apartment. Are we to assume that they smoked up AFTER Will was repulsed by Carrie's gun-toting ways? Will says that Carrie was just jealous because Will dated someone else the day after her, and went to Nina Howard who had her own axe to grind. Don and Charlie seem to find this all entertaining, so it falls to MacKenzie to be serious and not fun, as usual. She says Will's behavior could undermine everything they've accomplished so far, which is nothing.
Charlie says Will is going to go on ACN's crappy morning show full of lady news. Will refuses, saying they shouldn't humor News Corp., which is obviously out to get him. Charlie points out that News Corp. doesn't own TMI -- AWM does. And then he has a brainstorm! He asks Will about his $4,000 tuxedo. Will says he didn't actually buy it off the rack. He just said he did because he's uncomfortable about the fact that he makes more money than Charlie does. The tuxedo was actually custom-made for him. So why would Will making more money than Charlie even come into it, since he didn't pay for the tuxedo at all? Charlie says he has one of those, too -- it was a Christmas gift from Leona. Leona knew that Will's tuxedo was custom-made and cost $4,000 because she's the one who gave it to him and therefore she's the one who planted it in Page Six. Leona is trying to make Will look bad.
Will asks why she'd do that. Charlie has to inform him that Leona told him she would do this if Will continued to rant about the Tea Party. And then we get a flashback to the scene that happened all of one episode ago, because this show knows that we're either asleep now or were then, so it might as well repeat itself. Needless to say, Will does not appreciate being left in the dark about this. Charlie says he should have told him, but he's been drunk since February so he kept forgetting to. Charlie says Will has "clay feet" and he was afraid Will would bow under Leona's pressure. So he just set him up to be publically humiliated instead. Nice, Charlie.
MacKenzie would rather discuss something much more important: MacKenzie. She wants to know why Will had that non-compete clause in his contract in the first place. Will admits that he had to agree to it when he re-negotiated his contract. MacKenzie storms out. Will follows her, because it's all about her and not, you know, the fact that Will is on the cover of TMI and NewsNight's morals or whatever the hell have been compromised and that the CEO of the channel's owning company is actively campaigning to have Will fired.
MacKenzie leaves the privacy of Will's office to yell, in front of everyone, "Jesus CHRIST how much do you hate me?!" She says that she has moved on since she cheated on him and she'll move on from this show if need be. Will shrugs and says that's fine with him. They go back into Will's office to discuss it. Why discuss it in Will's office? Surely something this personal is best taken care of in earshot of as many people as possible.
Maggie sees something on the news alert screen. As Jim watches, her eyes bug out and she runs into Will's office while freaking Coldplay starts up. At least "Fix You" is a slightly more modern song than Radiohead, but still so overused. Although I guess this show has to resort to it because it doesn't seem capable of getting an emotional reaction from its audience otherwise. MacKenzie runs out of the office after MacKenzie, and Jim gives his co-workers a "heads up!" Thus ends Neal's presentation. And the rest of the crew must be just thrilled that they came in to work on a weekend and are now forced to pull serious overtime working on a breaking news story: Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head.
Everyone picks up a phone (in some cases, more than one) and furiously calls around to find out information. Except for Neal, who turns off his Bigfoot PowerPoint presentation because it just doesn't seem that important anymore. And then Sloan wanders into work because, again, these people apparently have nothing better to do with their weekends. Neal announces that the shooter is in custody. Charlie stares out into space.
Horrible women's news gets interrupted for something substantial and important.
MacKenzie walks into the control room as the horrible women's news monitors switch over to coverage of the shooting. MacKenzie gasp-sobs.
A random woman we've never seen before hands Will his latest wardrobe, fresh from the dry cleaner. Will does not drama out on opening it (unlike he did in the pilot) and takes his seat behind the desk, only to find a copy of TMI magazine. He violently tosses it away and goes on the air. Such things are no longer meaningful now that Real News is happening.
Maggie interrupts Jim's phone call to tell him that those disreputable jokers at NPR just announced that Giffords is dead. But no one else has, yet. Jim doesn't think they should go on the air with it. Then Don (who is in the control room because why not) tells MacKenzie that Fox, MSNBC and CNN just announced Giffords' death based on that same NPR report. The graphics guy gets the death screen ready and everyone looks very sad. Okay, you know what? I'm going to call bullshit on this. If this were a real newsroom, most of these people would be happy about getting to cover an exciting breaking news event like this. I once rode in an elevator with a professor (not one of my professors) at my journalism school and listened to him tell another professor about how awesome it was that an elderly husband killed his wife of several decades because now two of his students were at the scene trying to put together a story about it that would surely bring many hits to their class's news website. The professor was absolutely giddy about this. Like, the fact that a grandmother was just murdered by her own husband was the best thing that happened to him all week. That's disgusting, but that's the way a lot of journalists are. I think that's the kind of journalist the people on this show are because that's the kind of person Sorkin is. Sorkin wants us to think that people who write mean things about reality show contestants are worse than heroin dealers. He makes up a reality show contestant for his show that is supposed to be based on real events and real people. He tells us that it's wrong to exploit people for financial and professional gain. And then, 40 minutes later, he's using the shooting of a real person (and the murder of six other real people and the shooting of 12 others) for his crappy show's emotional climax. So to all the people who thought that the last ten minutes of this episode redeemed the sucky 50 minutes that came before it, I would argue that they are actually much worse.
But anyway! MacKenzie says she won't call Giffords' death until she gets some kind of official confirmation because MacKenzie has the power of hindsight and therefore knows that Giffords did not, in fact, die. Six other people did, but they aren't congresswomen so no one cares, much like no one on this show cared about the people who died when that oil rig exploded.
And then Reese runs in, also at work on a Saturday, demanding that ACN announce that Giffords is dead. Will's staff ignore him, so he marches onto the set to talk to Will during a 30 second break. "I'll call security!" MacKenzie offers weakly. Yeah, go ahead and call security on your boss's boss, MacKenzie. That should go over well. Reese ignores her and tells Will that every second they don't announce that Giffords is dead they lose 1,000 viewers who would apparently hate Giffords and want to watch a news show that says she's dead. "Don, tell him," Reese orders. "It's a person. A doctor pronounces her dead, not the news," Don says. There is no suspense here about which side Will is going to choose, of course, since we all know that Giffords did not die and so Will and his team are on the side of good and Reese is evil and wants congresswomen to die. Will goes back on the air and does not announce that Giffords is dead. And then Maggie talks to a real doctor at the hospital who tells her that Giffords is alive. Will tells the audience that Giffords is alive and being prepped for surgery and Charlie either nods in self-righteousness or just can't stop his head from moving. Will throws it to a reporter in Tucson and screams for MacKenzie and Charlie.
Maggie and Jim see each other across the room and smile. Happy times! Personal issues are worked out somewhat and they got it right that Giffords was alive and everyone else was wrong. Also, Giffords was shot in the head and is still, to this day, recovering (as are, probably, the other survivors) and also six other people died. SMILE!
Will tells Charlie and MacKenzie that Leona is going to have to pry this job out of his cold, dead fingers. "I'll fucking tell her!" Charlie says. "I'M NOT FUCKING AROUND, CHARLIE!" Will screams. Charlie screams something back. I can't make it out but it had the word "fuck" in it. MacKenzie, too, would like to swear now. "I'm sorry," she starts because women do horrible things like gossip and cheat and sit under hairdryers. "I FUCKED EVERYTHING UP!" she suddenly screams. "IT'S GONNA BE ALL RIGHT!" Will tells her. Thank god she has a man around to reassure her. Don walks in. "What the fuck is going on?" he wonders. "YOU'RE A FUCKING NEWSMAN, DON! I EVER TELL YOU OTHERWISE, YOU PUNCH ME IN THE FACE!!!" I feel like this is what Sorkin's writers' room looked and sounded like when he was in his heavy coke use days. "We go back in 30," Don shrugs. "Back in 30!" MacKenzie sobs because she has womanly emotions.
The graphics guy takes away the Giffords death screen and exhales in relief. Giffords is still alive. Six other people are not. They don't get death screens.
Neal hands a note to Will, who says he wants to check out Neal's stupid Bigfoot presentation. Because believing in things like Bigfoot and forcing everyone else to listen to it is totally cool but talking shit about reality show contestants is wrong.
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.
Click here to see our tips to Aaron Sorkin on how the make The Newsroom even worse.