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That cliffhanger we ended on last week is solved in the first three minutes of tonight's episode, as MacKenzie makes a big inspiring speech about how they can put a broadcast on without electricity and then the power comes back. Will interviews Sandy and feels like a bad person but still thinks it's all worth it for the debate. And then, after all that compromising, the RNC representatives show up, watch like five minutes of nonsense, and tell Will there is no way they'll let him host the debate on his show with this new format because it is horrible and also all about Will, not the candidates. It's a crushing blow for everyone, especially because the mock debaters made their own special sweatshirts and everything. But at least now they don't have to cover the Casey Anthony trial or Anthony Weiner and can talk about Dr. Dr. Sloan's precious debt ceiling.
Before that happens, though, they're determined to get a Casey Anthony-related guest no one else has. Guess what? It turns out that Roommate Lisa went to high school with Casey Anthony! This makes her so desirable because apparently the high school they went to only had two students so it's really hard to get other classmates. Lisa doesn't want to do it, but Maggie and Jim are horrible people who go to her work and twist her arm. Then they leave a bunch of factoids about missing children in her dressing room so she'll go on the air and talk about Things That Matter. Except that Lisa decides instead to talk about how abortion is a good thing because then people don't have kids they'd end up murdering down the line anyway. That gets her place of work vandalized, so I'm sure she's really glad she went on NewsNight. At least the crew didn't have the utter and complete disdain for her they did for Sandy.
In the other plots, Neal continues on his quest to find the internet troll, only to wind up in a chat room with the guy who threatened Will. The payoff for this storyline better be that Will is shot at in the season finale. Nothing less will do. Hancock turns out to be a less than reliable source. And Don turns out to be a real man about town, going on dates with other women when he and Maggie were broken up. One of them sends him flowers. I'm not sure why a woman would send flowers to the office of a guy she hasn't seen in six months or so (unless Don and Maggie broken up more recently than we know), but she did, and now everyone knows about it. Including Maggie, who finds out from Don just as Jim is about to tell her how he really feels about her. Instead, Jim winds up with Lisa again.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Last week on Newsroom, the lights went out after MacKenzie asked God to do her a solid. This week, they're still off and the emergency generator hasn't kicked in and MacKenzie doesn't understand how they managed to lose power in the studio when she was told that was impossible. It ends up being the fault of budget cuts. The battery-powered backup lights finally turn on just as Will bursts in to inform the control room that there's no power. Even MacKenzie thinks that's a dumb thing to say.
The lights are out in the newsroom as well, but fortunately most people there have flashlights. I would be so screwed if the power went out at my office. I have no idea where the flashlights are. I don't think we even have any? I'd just have to use my too-bright iPhone screen to light the way. MacKenzie walks in and informs the group that maintenance is on the way upstairs to check the generator. Jim informs her that they'll have to make it up to the 25th floor -- without an elevator. MacKenzie figures it will probably take them a few hours to do that. She puts Neal on laptop battery conversation duty because he's the blog guy and that's all she can think of as being important at this point. Will asks about that thing they do every night at 8. You know, the news show? How can they do it without power? Surely MacKenzie has a contingency plan in place. " ... " Mackenzie says while opening and closing her mouth like a fish. Finally she comes up with: "A miracle happens." But she's serious.
MacKenzie gets her speech on and asks her minions how much they hate having to report the kind of news they think they're better than. Gary Cooper mutters something about hating that there's no air conditioning right now because Gary Cooper is awesome. Rodney Dangerfield is also awesome. Look at him, putting a flash-spotlight on MacKenzie like that. He's so selfless! MacKenzie insists that everyone hates covering Casey Anthony and Anthony Weiner instead of "important stories" just to get ratings. "We're starting to be not very pleasant people to be around," she says. Starting?
MacKenzie tells the kids a story about how she was in the control room prepping "for that idiot who is still in the studio." "Are you talking about me?" asks Sandy, who was apparently just left sitting there in the dark. "No!" MacKenzie says, then "whispers" to the others "Yes!" How is Sandy an idiot? She turned a few Twitter DMs into a gold mine! Her only stupid move was coming on NewsNight. MacKenzie continues that she asked God to show her a sign that she wasn't "doing a big thing badly" -- which I still don't know what that even means, by the way--- and then the power went out. Basically, MacKenzie thinks God is communicating with her... not unlike how Michele Bachmann thinks God speaks to her. Except we're all supposed to hate Bachmann for that and love MacKenzie.
Will asks for a show of hands on who is freaked out by MacKenzie's weirdness. Don throws his hand up high and keeps it there. No one else raises his hand because of Stockholm syndrome. MacKenzie insists that it was "God's plan" that they should be a team again to put on a broadcast despite the lack of electricity. They'll do it outside. "Yeah! We can do this!" Jim says. If they do it outside, they sure can. All they have to do is plug everything into an extension cord that runs into another building that actually has power. Will asks if the grips are willing to take everything down 25 flights of stairs. "You bet your ass they do!" says one of the control room guys who I'm pretty sure is not a grip. MacKenzie says this will be just like Apollo 13. Except not nearly as difficult or as important. Maggie suggests they buy a generator. MacKenzie bumps that up to two generators, one of which will go to the edit bay. I could be wrong, but don't generators usually run on gasoline and spit out all kinds of pollution? That poor woman in the edit bay is going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
MacKenzie asks what time the sun sets tonight. "8:37," Neal answers immediately. Will asks why he knows that. "One of those things," Neal shrugs, probably figuring the answer would take too long to explain and not make him look any better. MacKenzie keeps manically running around in circles and saying this will come down to trust, then asks if anyone thinks this isn't impossible. Of course, they all say they think this is possible.
Sandy asks if someone is going to help her out or what. MacKenzie talks down to her and says they can't do any pre-tape segments because of the power, so Sandy will have to wait until tonight if she wants to be on the show. Sandy says she's already going on Fox and that's "a bigger audience." I don't see how that is possible, what with NewsNight getting ready to do a broadcast outside using two cans tied together with string as a microphone or something. MacKenzie blows Sandy off and says that the power going out might be the best thing that could happen to NewsNight and may well save the show -- and oh, wait. The power just came back on. "SON OF A BITCH!" MacKenzie shrieks. She doesn't like God's timing so much this time. This would have been a funny scene if Emily Mortimer wasn't so freaking annoying and MacKenzie had some other kind of talent to fall back on when a scene like this made her look so goofy and stupid. Instead, she just stares at Will for a while before recommending that he use the word "bombshell" in his Casey Anthony broadcasts more often.
Will heads back into the studio. MacKenzie tells Sandy they'll need her again. "Great!" Sandy says, always willing to help out. Too bad these people all think she's human garbage.
"Bombshell after bombshell!" Will reports, taking MacKenzie's advice well. He shows Casey Anthony's brother testifying while Jim rolls his eyes in bored disgust. I mean, a child did still die, guys. I know the child wasn't named Gabrielle Giffords, but you could try to act like you give a shit. Brian, that guy who's trying to write a story about this terrible show for New York Magazine, asks MacKenzie how she feels right now. MacKenzie has nothing to say to him.
Will turns to Anthony Weiner. Jim leaves the control room in favor of the newsroom. Everyone looks bored while watching NewsNight, and if you can't keep the people who make the freaking show entertained then I don't think you have any hope of getting the masses to watch. Jim suggests doing more mock debate prep, because that's fun. "You don't have to watch this," he says. And you don't have to work on it. Quit.
Will throws to his pre-taped interview with Sandy, whose last name he is incapable of pronouncing correctly because she is so gross. As it plays, Will lights up a cigarette. I hope that makes it on TMI. Maybe he's just sad because his interview with Sandy is so damn boring. If you're going to go Nancy Grace with your show, you might want to really go there and put all the pundits and pretty pictures on the screen at the same time to keep people entertained.
Dr. Dr. Sloan complains to Neal that she only has a few minutes deep into the show to tell the world real important stuff. "We're committing journalistic malpractice!" says the woman who put off-the-record quotes on the air and got suspended. Neal says there's no such thing as journalistic malpractice. Dr. Dr. Sloan says it would be great if there were. Not for her, it wouldn't be! How quickly she forgets that she's one of the worst offenders on the ACN staff.
Dr. Dr Sloan finally asks Neal about his incredibly stupid story about Internet trolls. Neal recaps that he has to troll another message board in order to be accepted into the Elite Troll Club or whatever, but he doesn't want to do that by attacking an innocent person. He wants to attack Dr. Dr. Sloan. She asks which website he was thinking of trolling. He mentions some nerdy smarty pants economy website "that attracts an intelligent level of debate," according to Dr. Dr. Sloan. Neal says some of its members like Dr. Dr. Sloan for her "abilities." He's hoping that if he says nasty things about her, they'll get bent out of shape and scream and then the whole thing will get shut down by a moderator. I hope they all get banned, too!
Dr. Dr. Sloan says her father and his friends are also economists who apparently go to that website and will very much appreciate reading what Neal has to say about Dr. Dr. Sloan. I think it's kind of cute that Dr. Dr. Sloan's dad is an economist! No, wait -- the feminist in me thinks Sorkin is saying that Dr. Dr. Sloan is only an economist because her dad was and that a woman wouldn't choose this profession without some kind of male influence. I'm torn. Neal basically begs Dr. Dr. Sloan to let him make fun of her on the Internet because it'll give him his first story and he thinks it's a good one. Yeah, like, 20 years ago, maybe. But Dr. Dr. Sloan also thinks it's a great story and gives her consent. "You're the greatest," Neal says. "I really am," Dr. Dr. Sloan says. And she's right. On this show, she is definitely the greatest.
Over at Hang Chew's, a man is doing silent karaoke. MacKenzie, who is either drunk or having a stroke or just slurring her words because she's wacky like that, introduces Brian to Hang's (I'm just going to call it "Hang's" like all the cool kids do, okay?). He tries to have a conversation with her, but cannot because she's too busy making huge obvious gestures across the room at Dr. Dr. Sloan. Brian asks her if she could please stop treating him "like an asshole" when she broke up with him the second time around, so they're even. MacKenzie says that's not possible, since she didn't date him the second time -- just cheated on Will by sleeping with him. Oh, that makes it much better, then.
Brian gives up and says they should just stick to the story he's supposed to be reporting on. MacKenzie says it's very simple: Will is a "heavyweight" who pretended to be a "lightweight" for years in order to get higher ratings. Brian asks if Will's love of ratings is because he's lonely. Right... as opposed to all of those ratings-hating people who are surrounded by friends and family. Please. The question throws MacKenzie, who asks Brian what he's going to write about Will. Brian claims he doesn't know. MacKenzie goes to talk to Dr. Dr. Sloan, but not before saying that Brian is right about Will's loneliness. She's just not sure if that started before or after she cheated on him (and Brian).
The losers are still doing this mock debate thing. Somehow, they roped the usually way-too-cool-for-this Kendra into it. She clearly doesn't care about this though, and so doesn't know how Tim Pawlenty would answer a question about right-to-work issues. Maggie and Julie Cooper try to help, which somehow (yet not surprisingly) leads to Maggie pontificating about unions. MacKenzie gives her a verbal pat on the head for her answer impersonation of Pawlenty and Maggie beams. MacKenzie and Dr. Dr. Sloan walk away.
Dr. Dr. Sloan reminds us all that the debt ceiling stuff is Important Worthwhile News. MacKenzie claims she's "trying" to work it into the show, then says she's hoping that when she fails her assignment to book a Casey Anthony-related guest no one else has, it'll open up time for Dr. Dr. Sloan to talk about the economy. Dr. Dr. Sloan is so grateful that she offers to help MacKenzie deal with Brian if things get difficult. She's not sure what she'll do or how, but she'll do something.
The text on the screen tells us it's Thursday. MacKenzie is wearing yet another blouse with a contrasting trim around the collar and that front part where all the buttons are. (I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know it.) Did she -- or rather, this show's costume person who clearly doesn't give a shit -- buy like 10 of those on sale, all in different colors? Try wearing something a little different for a change. MacKenzie complains about ratings again. Will says they only have to do this for one more day before the RNC reps come to watch their mock debate, but MacKenzie says it'll be another month after that to protect Will from getting fired by Leona. Will thinks Brian's article will do that. He tells MacKenzie to worry about getting a guest who they can actually promote. Instead, MacKenzie gets distracted by the sight of flowers and tries to be all nonchalant when she asks Will about them. Can Emily Mortimer just TRY to not be so obvious and mannered with her acting? I am not watching a stage play. Settle down. Will refuses to give MacKenzie any details about the flowers or who sent them, saying they aren't for or from him and are just "living in [his] office" for now. "Can you be satisfied with that?" he asks. MacKenzie pauses, and then asks if the flowers are for her. Of course.
Even worse than that, it's the mock debate. Maggie plays Gingrich. She's more annoying than the real Gingrich, so congratulations Maggie. Will and MacKenzie walk in and Will reminds us YET AGAIN that this debate is really important and why they are lowering themselves to covering Casey Anthony. I don't understand how this show can only have 10 episodes that cover a year of time and yet still repeat itself over and over and over again.
Finally, MacKenzie brings up a topic that is sort of new: getting the Casey Anthony guest. Jim looks at Maggie as MacKenzie asks if anyone happens to know anyone with a connection to Casey Anthony, because that's how this show books its guests. You'll be SHOCKED to discover that Maggie, in fact, does have a connection to Casey Anthony! Yes, Roommate Lisa went to high school with Casey Anthony. Will seems to think this is a huge get for NewsNight. It's not! Hundreds of people probably went to high school with Casey Anthony. Are you telling me they're all highly sought-after guests? Apparently Lisa is, as Maggie says she's been approached by several people, including Dylan Kagan, Agent to the Stars, and turned them all down. Which means that Dylan Kagan and all those other people did a better job trying to find Casey Anthony connections than NewsNight.
Maggie says Lisa isn't going to talk. Will won't accept that as an answer. "Be a producer!" he orders. Maggie can't be a producer. She's not qualified. But she assures Will that she'll get it done. Why is no one yelling at Jim, by the way? He dated Lisa!
Ha ha ha, the store Lisa works for is called "Flounce." Sorkin knows all about flouncing. Some woman who probably likes to watch Casey Anthony stories on TV is trying to find a dress to wear to the Tonys. Lisa says the dress the woman is currently wearing looks "spectacular" on her. It doesn't. I am terrible at fashion (see my earlier comment about not knowing what the front part of a shirt with the buttons on it is called) and even I know that. Jim and Maggie ring the store's doorbell to be let in. The dress woman wants to try a dress by another designer, but Lisa says they don't carry him since he came out in favor of the Holocaust. The woman doesn't think that's that big of a deal because she is a horrible shallow crappy news-loving kind of woman.
Lisa turns to Maggie and Jim and says she already told them on the phone she wouldn't come on the show. They think they can change her mind even though she's in the middle of her workday with a customer and her salary is based on commission. Maggie and Jim are horrible people. Jim puts on what I believe is supposed to be his "gay voice" and tells the woman that he thinks the dress looks great on her (it doesn't) and she should buy it right now and leave. The woman ignores him and goes to the dressing room to try on something else and drink a glass of wine, which the store apparently provides its customers. Best store ever.
Maggie manics that Lisa would be a huge exclusive "get" for the show. Lisa doesn't care about any of that, of course. Lisa says what happened to Caylee Anthony was horrible and she's not about to join the cast of a television show because of it. Also, last she knew, Maggie and Jim were too good for this. Dress woman walks out wearing a dress that looks slightly better than the other one. Jim tells her it "screams Tonys" and she is sure to win while wearing it. The woman says she isn't nominated for any awards. I kind of liked how she said that with a disgusted look on her face, like only horrible people are nominated for Tonys. Jim says the dress is so awesome that she'll win Tonys anyway and that the dress is free if the woman takes it right now. Lisa says it is not free. Why does he think that will work? Is he trying to get Lisa fired and/or destroy her chances at getting this commission? Jim offers to pay for the dress himself. Lisa informs him that it costs $11,000. Jim is SHOCKED to find out that clothes can be expensive.
Lisa gives the woman another dress to try on. Maggie says they're "screwed" if Lisa doesn't go on the show (because their ratings depend on whether or not they book one of Casey Anthony's classmates? Okay) and promises that Will will be "gentle" with her. Lisa says all she knows about Casey Anthony is that they once "cut third period together." She doesn't think that's enough to provide any insight on what Casey Anthony turned into. This should really be enough for the people who are supposed to be her friends to let it go. Lisa heads into the woman's dressing room to help her with some buttons. Jim notes that his $30 pants are "just as good" as the $40 pants. Then he wonders if Lisa and the woman are making out in the dressing room right now. He says he'd spend the whole day kissing other women if he was a woman, and doesn't understand gay men and straight women. Thank you for your early '90s stand-up comedy stylings, Jim!
Lisa and the woman walk out. The woman is wearing another dress that looks pretty horrible, but she claims to love it. Afraid that Lisa will actually make a sale, Jim butts in once again and basically tells the woman to go look for her own stupid accessories while he talks to Lisa about something important. I would have called the police on those guys at this point to get them out of the store. The woman wanders off to look at jade earrings and Jim tells Lisa that this is really, really important because I don't know if you guys know about this, but there's a debate format they need ratings to air and the debate is a "good thing for everybody." Lisa interrupts him to ask Maggie if Will and MacKenzie are counting on her. Maggie says they are. Lisa agrees to do it. Maggie is very grateful. I don't think Maggie would ever do anything like that for Lisa. Maggie got what she wanted out of her roommate, so she leaves. Jim stays behind to remind Lisa that he has been "wooing" her via unreturned phone calls and emails. Lisa clearly isn't interested. Maggie gets impatient and starts banging on the window and yelling at Jim to leave. What a sweetheart.
Don walks into Will's office. He's wearing a heavy jacket despite the heat wave. They could have just had Don wear more weather-appropriate clothes, but instead we waste a few seconds listening to Don explain that the air conditioning makes his office really cold. Will points to the flowers and says Jim signed for them and looked at the card. They're for Don. And they're from a lady! Don sits down and says that he and Maggie have broken up a few times, and he dated other women when they did. "I'm not judging you," Will says judgmentally. Don never told the other women when he got back together with Maggie, so one of them seemed to think it was a good idea to send him flowers at his office. Men love getting flowers. Terry Crews pops his head in to tell Will they have to go. Will tells Don he'll "take care" of the flowers. He asks Don if he's doing the "right thing." Don says he is and asks Will if he, too, is doing the right thing. Will says he is not. I'm not exactly sure what Don is doing. Is he still seeing the other woman once he gets back together with Maggie?
Will sees Jack, who tells him that because his father was abusive, Will is "a thousand times more sensitive" to acts of betrayal. Will practices avoidance by praising Jack's set of encyclopedias and how much better they are than Internet searches. Sorkin will never not find a way to put the Internet down. Will segues into last night, when he found himself looking at a relationship advice site, where Rhonda told a woman whose husband was cheating on her that maybe it was partly her fault he strayed. Will finds that unbelievable. Jack doesn't see how Will could wander onto a relationship advice site. He thinks he went there on purpose. Will asks if he's at all to blame for MacKenzie cheating on him. Jack asks if Will thinks he is. Will, of course, does not and also thinks Rhonda is a moron.
Jack wonders if MacKenzie cheated on Will because she was reacting to Brian dumping her in the first place. Maybe she just wanted to be "un-rejected" and so hooked up with Brian again. Will asks if Jack remembers how he showed up yesterday without an appointment and interrupted Jack's session. Yes, Will, we do. We saw it just last week. And Jack saw it yesterday. Also... didn't Will say his appointments were on Wednesdays? But today is Thursday. Even the continuity on this show sucks. Anyway, Will says he "understands" that MacKenzie deserves to be forgiven, as Jack suggested yesterday, but he can't do it. "You were betrayed," Jack says. Too bad I just don't care enough about MacKenzie or Will and MacKenzie's relationship (or Will, really) for this to matter to me.
Dr. Dr. Sloan -- who also has a tendency to wear the same shirt all the time but in different colors -- asks Neal how his big story is going. Did Dr. Dr. Sloan just get out of the bathroom or something? Why is her shirt tucked in at just the front? Neal says the smart economist website is kind of hard to troll, due to everyone on it being very dignified. Neal didn't get anywhere making fun of Dr. Dr. Sloan, so he had to post something about the economy and how it should be easy to balance the country's budget if he can balance his checkbook. This gets Dr. Dr. Sloan all riled up, just like it did the people on the website. Then he made fun of Dr. Dr. Sloan again and I'm sorry you guys, I just don't care about this. I don't want to hear about Dr. Dr. Sloan's breasts or her slutty body movements or how Neal cleverly messed with her Wikipedia page to say she was a stripper. Neal proudly says the end result was people with Ph.Ds posted in all caps and then the mod came in and shut the thread down. Neal thinks that will be enough to get him into the beginning stages of entering the troll club. "You're gonna be a good reporter," Dr. Dr. Sloan lies. Or maybe she's telling the truth. I think people on this show have a very different definition of "reporter" than the rest of us. Dr. Dr. Sloan orders Neal to change her Wikipedia page back. She would do it herself, but she doesn't know how to use the Internet because she is noble and good.
Hey, remember that Solomon Hancock guy and his big scoop? Well, Jim informs Charlie, Will, and MacKenzie that he's shaky. He didn't do well on his latest psych assessment (he probably would have done better if Will hadn't interrupted his last session... ), his security clearance was lowered, and his ex-wife has a restraining order against him that he violated. Oh, and he was arrested for solicitation in 1979. MacKenzie doesn't think that's such a big deal. They didn't fire Hancock, after all. That's because he's a government employee. Those guys never get fired. None of Hancock's personal or work issues mean he's lying to them about the NSA, MacKenzie says. No, but people will think they do. Also, he might be a crazy person. Duh, MacKenzie.
Will and MacKenzie walk back to the newsroom, where Maggie dances around and speaks to them "in code" so she can tell Will what he should ask Lisa without actually telling him that. Because that would be ethically wrong. It is not ethically wrong, however, to tell Will what to say to his interview subject via code words. That's totally cool. Also, there are no ethical issues whatsoever about using your roommate as a source. MacKenzie asks Maggie to leave a bunch of missing children statistics in Lisa's dressing room and everyone thinks she's very clever. These are admirable journalists we're watching, you guys. Murrow did this kind of thing all the time, I'm sure. I once read that Cronkite's roommate assassinated JFK, so he was able to get the scoop on that.
Jim finds Lisa in the make-up chair. The make-up room has a poster for NewsNight and a poster for Elliot's crappy show, but nothing for that great Terry Smith show we never get to see. Lisa tells Jim that Maggie isn't just her "best friend" -- she's her "only friend." That is so sad for Lisa, considering how little Maggie seems to care about her. And how awful it must be to have any interaction with Maggie, let alone be best friends with her. Also, why doesn't Lisa have any other friends? She seems delightful. I'm extremely undelightful and even I have more than one friend. Lisa refuses to date Jim again because it will hurt Maggie, and she thinks it won't be long until Maggie realizes that Don doesn't love her and then it will be Jim's turn. Jim says he's waited a year for his turn. "I'm nobody's second choice," he says. "Neither am I," Lisa says. Good point.
Maggie walks in to ruin everything, as usual. She hands Lisa a list of factoids to study. Jim says she can even take the paper out with her and keep it on the desk to consult during the show. Such great journalism I am seeing here. What a return to civility. Maggie leaves, and Jim thanks Lisa more sincerely than Maggie ever did.
Lisa's moment finally arrives. Will asks if she knew Casey Anthony well. Lisa says she did not, and neither did anyone else who's been on TV saying he did. "Wow!" Brian says in the control room as Maggie and Jim exchange smug nods. Yes. What a powerful statement from Lisa, delivered as only a high school classmate of Casey Anthony's could. Will asks Lisa if Casey Anthony ever lost her temper in class. Lisa says she did and she lost it in a very baby-killing way. Jokes aside, Lisa wants to get serious and remind us that 80 million children were reported missing last year. Will (too quickly) says the number is actually 800,000. Way to suck at reading numbers, Lisa. What are you, MacKenzie? But Lisa continues, naming a few other dead children who don't get this kind of media attention because they weren't white or their mothers weren't pretty. OH, BURN ON YOU, DEADLY MOMS! YOU'RE UGLY! Will says this is a "very good point." Lisa says she has another point to make. Will was not expecting this because it wasn't in the script. Lisa's gone rogue! She wonders if Casey Anthony should have gotten an abortion. Maggie starts to freak out. Lisa says an embryo is much better to kill than a two-year-old. These are the kinds of things you can think but shouldn't say on national television.
MacKenzie tells Will to "help" Lisa get out of this. Will tells Lisa he just wants to clear up that she's not saying that Casey Anthony's only two options were abortion or child murder. Lisa clarifies that she thinks it's "cruel" to force a child to be born to a mother who doesn't want it. But abortion is legal in this country so I'm not sure what her point is. Doesn't seem like anyone is forced to do anything. Except for Lisa, who was basically forced to be on this show. Will changes the subject.
That night, Jim gets a phone call. He cabs it to Flounce, which has been vandalized and had the words "Baby Killer" spray-painted all over its doors. Looks like the one person who still watches NewsNight went to a lot of effort there. I bet if NewsNight's comments were anonymous again, he could have just blown off some steam there and this wouldn't have happened. This also wouldn't have happened if Lisa's only friend didn't twist her arm into appearing on her stupid show. Jim asks Lisa (who is there with Maggie, as she apparently thought it was a great idea to get to her workplace ASAP in the middle of the night after finding out it was vandalized?) how the vandals knew where she worked. Maggie says they must have used Lisa's Facebook page. The evil Internet strikes again! Maggie says she'll shut Lisa's Facebook page down for her and that should solve everything. No need to shell out for a bodyguard like they did for Will! And still do, despite no other death threats in the last month!
And then Will shows up! Yes, here he comes, walking towards them through the fog like a Hero. He doesn't have Terry Crews with him, because he doesn't need him and also because Terry Crew doesn't work for Will 24 hours a day. Will asks Lisa if she's okay. Lisa says she is, and then asks Will if he's mad at her for springing the abortion thing on him during the show. Will assures her that he wasn't, because that's all that's important. He says he is pro-life, but not "pro-throwing a brick through a window." Will tells Jim to get Lisa out of here before the local news trucks show up. Jim says Will might want to make himself scarce, too. Will says he'll talk to Lisa's boss. "This should've been me and not you," he says. Wrong! It should've been MacKenzie. Because I don't like her. Actually, maybe MacKenzie was the one who did this. She seems stupid enough to mistake Flounce for her apartment and then try her usual methods of attempting to gain access.
The day, Will asks wardrobe guy Teddy if a certain suit's pants have a trick to them, because every time he tries to put that one pair on, he always puts both legs in one leg hole. Teddy doesn't know what the hell to say to that except to suggest that perhaps there's something wrong with Will, not the pants. Kendra pokes her head in to tell Will that the RNC reps have arrived. In walks Adam Roth, played by Adam Arkin, and Tate Brady, a young smarmy douchebag. Charlie and MacKenzie wander in, and Adam exposits that he and Will are old friends, having met when they both worked for the first President Bush.
Everyone takes a seat, and Tate says he's happy that NewsNight's ratings are back up to acceptable debate-hosting levels. He wants to offer the debate to Will, but says the rules and the format are pretty set. Charlie says they want to try something a little different. Will says he and Adam used to talk a lot about how flawed the debate format was. Now they can change it. He heads out to the newsroom to show them... THE MOCK DEBATE!!!!
Yes, it's the all-important mock debate we've been waiting for. It will make all this horrible Casey Anthony shit worthwhile. It will change the game. It's the most important thing that has even happened in the entire world. Will says they need to ask the candidates tough questions and hold them accountable to what they're claiming in their campaigns. He wants to "put the candidates on the witness stand." With that, the mock debate begins! The candidates wear sweatshirts with the names of whoever they're supposed to be printed on them. Yes, you heard me right -- someone went and had ugly sweatshirts made just for this. They look ridiculous.
Someone turns the lights down as Charlie welcomes us to Princeton for the fifth debate of the 2012 Republican primaries. Will says the rules are as follows: "I will question a candidate until I'm done." They each get an opening statement. Jim, as Michele Bachmann, goes first. Tate cuts him off to criticize his Bachmann impression. Will says this isn't an SNL sketch. Too bad. Will cuts the opening introductions short and asks Don Santorum about his statement that he wanted America to be about freedom and didn't want to have to tell his grandchildren that America used to be free. Will asks him for three freedoms he no longer has since Obama took office.
This is a terrible question, by the way. It's so simplistic. Santorum isn't necessarily saying that Obama has already taken those freedoms away -- he's saying that Obama and the Democratic Party are trying to change America and strip freedoms away over time. Don says Obamacare. Will asks how Obamacare has affected his freedom, since no one in Santorum's family has had to change doctors. Not the point! First of all, the ACA doesn't totally go into effect until 2014. Second of all, it will take away the freedom not to have health insurance. You have to either get insurance or you pay a fine. I'm not saying I agree with Santorum (ew) or that I'm against Obamacare. Just that Will is distorting the facts as much if not more than the candidates do.
Mock debate montage time. Shockingly enough, the mock debate appears to be Will yelling at the candidates and giving them all of two seconds to try to speak. Tate finally tells them to stop and asks to speak to Adam privately. Will points them to his office. Tate seems mad. I don't think he liked the mock debate. After all that! Will turns to his crap team and says they did a good job. Then he heads into his office. He doesn't close the door behind him, so everyone (especially Brian, probably) can hear all the shouting. Tate shouts that Will is trying to embarrass all the Republican candidates. Will shouts that they wouldn't be embarrassed if they could defend their claims. "Nobody could stand up to that kind of questioning!" Tate shouts. Will shouts that that was far from brutal questioning. Adam just mutters his support of Will, then says a debate like this will make the bad candidates drop out and leave the serious candidates in the race. "This is about him," Tate says, nodding at Will; "he wants to look tough by making the candidates look like idiots." Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner! This debate is All About Will. It's pretty freaking obvious.
Adam says he's known Will for 25 years and "vouches" for him. That means nothing to Tate. He puts his foot down. Adam says he'll remember this the time Tate bitches about how the press went too easy on Obama. I'll remember that the time we see a scene on this show that proposes to interrogate Democratic candidates. Which will be never. Even though Adam is like 20 years older than Tate, Tate is the boss. He tells Will there will be no format changes. Also, he doesn't want MacKenzie McHale to produce the debates. You guys, this Tate guy is a freaking genius! He is the smartest person on the show!
Will lights a cigarette and blows a cloud of smoke in Tate's face. "Get out," he orders. Adam tells him not to be so hasty. He "needs" the debate. Will says his team compromised all week (WOW a whole WEEK? SACRIFICE) to get ratings to land this debate, like it's Tate's fault that no one watches NewsNight unless it features toddler murderers. "We need ACN!" Adam says. "No, we don't!" Tate says. Why does Adam still have a job? Dude is useless and stupid. Tate reminds him that ACN has other anchors. He runs out and offers Don one of the debates. "Eat me," Don replies. That was stupid. Tate asks Dr. Dr. Sloan if she would like to monitor a debate. "Fuck you," Dr. Dr. Sloan says. Just go find Terry Smith and offer the debate to him. He'll take it and he'll do a great job. Instead, Tate tells Adam that he "hates" everyone at ACN, doesn't understand why Adam doesn't feel the same way, and will wait for him in the car. He walks out. Adam apologizes to Will and says he can't quit his job for moral reasons because he has a kid in college. Will says it's cool. "Don't let 'em push you around," he says. Adam will let them push him around because he is useless. Adam leaves, and everyone waits for Will to make a speech. He just says they lost the debate, which I think they already knew. On the plus side, they did get those sweet new sweatshirts.
Brian talks to MacKenzie. He seems to feel much like Tate did about the mock debate -- that it made Will look good at the expense of the candidates. He doesn't see how anyone could have thought there was any shot that the RNC would approve the new format. He calls the rejection "hubris." MacKenzie calls him jealous. Brian asks her what he's supposed to be jealous of. Before she can answer, he says "fuck you, Mack" and that she was "embarrassed" in front of him when the debate didn't work out. Also, "He doesn't want you." "Please don't talk about my personal life," says the woman who kind of constantly talks about her personal life. Brian says he can just talk about his own personal life then, since it's the same thing. He broke up with MacKenzie, but he came back. Will didn't. "I don't know yet," MacKenzie mutters. She's pathetic. Brian says even Helen Hunt in Cast Away got over Tom Hanks and married Chris Noth in less time than it's taken Will to go back to MacKenzie. He says if Will caved on the Casey Anthony stuff, he'll cave on the debate, too. Brian is "absolutely sure" of it. MacKenzie says one thing that is so awesome about Will is that he's never absolutely sure about anything. "He struggles with things," MacKenzie says. And then Will hops out into the middle of the newsroom with his pants half-off and falls over. Ah, yes. As Chekhov once wrote: If there's a pair of pants in the first act, Will must fail to put them on correctly in the third.
MacKenzie asks Will, who is still trying to put his pants on, if he can't get someone else to write the story instead of Brian. Will's not going for it. MacKenzie calls him an idiot. She says she's compromised all week with Brian, looking over her shoulder because Will can't handle rejection and then Will passed on the debate because Tate "insulted" MacKenzie. He also passed on it because he couldn't do his special format, MacKenzie. It's not all about you. "Who ARE YOU?!?!?!" she shrieks; "I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOUR HEAD IS AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. I AM THIS CLOSE TO LOSING IT! I THINK I HAVE! I THINK IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!" So much shrieking in this episode. Will tells the hysterical woman to settle down. He asks her if she thought it was "cool" when he threw out the rundown in the pilot episode. "Yeah," MacKenzie says. He decides to throw it out again. He'll talk to Dr. Dr. Sloan about the debt ceiling instead. Dr. Dr. Sloan is thrilled! Too bad none of it mattered, since the debt ceiling stuff still sank the stock market and lowered our national credit rating.
Will asks MacKenzie if she can "handle" Brian being here "a little longer." "I can handle anything," says the woman who was just screaming about how she's losing it. Also, she can't "handle" jellyfish. No one can! They're all jelly and stingers. Will then orders Brian to "just write the truth, okay? Just write. The. Truth." Brian's all, "Shut up." MacKenzie announces that they are throwing out the rundown and boring the audience to tears with the debt ceiling story instead. The newsroom cheer and fist pump and applaud. Ugh.
Also, the Neal troll subplot. Dr. Dr. Sloan checks in. Neal says the troll club doesn't think trolling an economics forum is that great. "It's too bad you're not the guy who left the death threat for Will," Dr. Dr. Sloan says. Neal's eye bug out with ideas. Dr. Dr. Sloan warns him not to go to whatever "dangerous area" she thinks this is.
And then MacKenzie just watches her newsroom buzz with activity and happiness while violins play on the soundtrack. Twenty seconds later, she calls Jim over and asks him about Lisa, because Jim's personal life is not off-limits like MacKenzie's is. Jim says he "gave it a try" but Lisa isn't interested in him anymore. MacKenzie tells him to gather ye rosebuds while ye may. I guess she's better at old English poems than she was at Don Quixote. Jim says he will. And then MacKenzie just recites the rest of the poem. I'm not going to.
Lisa seems to have recovered from her workplace being vandalized and has a beer with her insufferable roommate, who urges her to get back with Jim, insisting that her crush on him ended a long time ago. With that, Don emerges from wherever he was and says the air conditioner is broken, so it will either be too cold in the apartment or too hot. I'm sorry, but no. When does an air conditioner ever break so that it makes the place too cold? Especially when it's 90 degrees outside. Also, why does Don make rooms so cold everywhere he goes? Is he a super villain?
And then the doorbell rings. It's midnight, which is a perfect time for Jim to stop by. Maggie and Lisa giggle and assume he's there to see Lisa. Don just makes fun of Maggie's debate question for Bachmann about God, which Maggie still thinks was a great idea. Lisa opens the door. Jim says he wants to talk to -- and then Don steps up and says hello. Before Jim can say much of anything, Lisa informs him that Maggie talked her into agreeing to date him again. OOPS. Jim was about to gather his rosebuds and tell Maggie how he really feels about her. Now he's stuck with Lisa again and too chickenshit to speak up. They go off together, leaving Maggie and Don. Don thinks Jim came to talk to Maggie to tell her about those flowers, so he decides to tell Maggie about them first.
Montage!! A moderator who isn't half as good as Will McAvoy asks Michele Bachmann who she likes better: Elvis or Johnny Cash? Bachmann says that is a really tough question and she's going to have to go with "both." Adam shows it to Tate, who probably thinks this is an example of some great debating.
Charlie reads over Hancock's psychiatric assessment. You know he's upset because his bowtie is untied.
Neal is in a chat room full of trolls. His screen name is "blue jewel." That is a callback to what Will told him his name means. So clever. "Dhcx" praises his trolling skills, saying "those brainiac twerps need a good chain yank every once in awhile!" No one has ever said that. Neal claims that he also figured out how to bypass the ACN commenter identity requirements, which "Charizma" calls "totl BULLSHIT" on. How does Charizma know? Because Charizma is the one who bypassed it and left the death threat. What a coincidence. Also, Internet people are even worse than previously suspected. Neal immediately calls Terry Crews to report that some guy in a chat room still wants to kill Will.
Don tries to explain himself to Maggie. She looks catatonic so I have no idea if she's going for it or not.
Will is back at the Ask Rhonda site.
And on that note, we are so close to being done with this season! Just one more episode left! I'm sure it will all come together in the finale and the last nine hours will suddenly make sense.
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