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Will sulks over not being on the 9/11 broadcast and all the Will McAvoy hate sites he is only now aware of. Ten years as a news anchor and he's never had to deal with audience hate before? Sure.
Maggie moves out of Don's place and back to Lisa's apartment. But first, she tries to get that YouTube video removed by stalking the person who posted it. She and Dr. Dr. Sloan confront the poster in a Laundromat and get her to agree to take it down. Except she doesn't. Ha ha ha! Lisa finally sees it and she is really, really, really mad at Maggie. And when Lisa gets mad, she gives hugs of viciousness and speeches of rightful rage about how selfish Maggie is. It's pretty great and it gives Maggie the drive to get sent to Africa to report on something, anything.
Lisa breaks up with Jim (I didn't realize they were still together) and he seems pretty done with Maggie, too, no longer taking her calls. Also, he's found a new girl named Hallie on the campaign bus who keeps asking him about his life and then pretending she doesn't want to know the answer.
Occupy Wall Street happens. Neal covers it the day it begins, but there are only 300 people there and so MacKenzie laughs at him in front of the entire morning meeting. Neal admits it's a "non-story," but then on September 21, it quickly becomes a story when the NYPD arrest several occupiers for wearing masks on city streets. And then they arrest Neal for filming them doing it. Will bails him out and gets the charges dropped, going only slightly crazy in the police station while doing so.
Don is suddenly obsessed with the Troy Davis case, begging Will to do something and say something on the air about it before Davis is executed for a crime Don doesn't believe he committed. Will refuses, saying it's not his place to do that. Because Will refuses to step up and do advocacy journalism, Davis is executed.
And Anwar al-Awlaki is killed by a drone strike nine days before he was actually killed in real life but just in time to rev up that dramatic tension. Also, everyone acts surprised that an American was on the drone kill list even though that was widely reported back in 2010 and a drone attempted to kill him in May 2011. You can't base this show on real-life events and then fudge them. But it is enough to convince Will to start demanding information from the government about its counter-terrorism methods. Also, MacKenzie throws a drink in his face. I thought we stopped doing that last season.
Jerry Dantana tells MacKenzie about Cyrus West's Genoa operation tip: the Marines used sarin gas on Taliban forces and also a village full of civilians. MacKenzie doesn't believe any of it, but starts to come around when Dantana finds an ex-Marine who says he was there and it's true. Except we already know it isn't.
Finally and most importantly: Charlie demands that Elliot's show gets a Twitter scroll.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Do you guys think this show will get a third season? I do. I can't believe it's already lasted longer than Luck.
Jim tries to get on the campaign bus again. And again, the guy in charge, "Cameron," refuses to let him on. Jim threatens to file a story all about how Romney's campaign won't let him on the bus, and Cameron says that can only help Romney's chances. I do thoroughly enjoy this show when other characters are telling ACN people that no one likes them. A blonde reporter whose first and last names probably start with the same initial peaks out and tells Cameron to just let Jim on. So he does.
The bus is full of reporters who are somehow both overeager and jaded at the same time. Jim takes a seat across from the woman who got him on the bus and thanks her, but she doesn't seem interested in anything he has to say.
"August 25, 2011" pops up on the screen. Which means it's the day after where we left off last week. Those journalists in Libya were just freed, the campaign pool's designated douchebag, "Stillman," announces. Even though everyone else on the bus is reading the same article he is, Stillman just has to read it out loud despite frequent protests from the others. Oh, hi, Stillman. You are sixty percent of my journalism school class. Seventy-five percent if you just saw the headline on Twitter and started talking about it without even bothering to read the article. But guys – that means twenty-five percent of my class was pretty awesome. So there is hope.
The TVs are all on in Dr. Dr. Sloan's office even though she isn't there. It's like 4 in the morning at ACN when she arrives at work. It's still dark outside, which is weird when you consider that it was a beautiful bright morning in New Hampshire. I did not know New York City was in a different timezone. Dr. Dr. Sloan finds Maggie sleeping on the floor of her office. What's Maggie doing? Well, she packed up her stuff and moved out of Don's apartment and wants to keep her luggage in Dr. Dr. Sloan's office for the day so no one will see it and know what happened. Another way to do this would've been for Maggie to keep the bags at Don's apartment, go to work, and then, after work, pick them up and bring them to Lisa's apartment. Special bonus: not having to impose all her crap on Dr. Dr. Sloan's office.
Instead, Maggie apparently spent the night calling Don over and over again (he wouldn't take her calls, which Maggie knows because they went to voicemail on the second ring. That means Don saw who was calling and directed it to voicemail, rather than letting it ring four times and then going to voicemail. Or something. Like most things Maggie, it's unnecessarily complicated and dramatic). She says she'd rather not discuss this with Dr. Dr. Sloan anymore. Yes, Maggie wants to use her office as a storage facility. No, Dr. Dr. Sloan doesn't get to find out why.
MacKenzie is highlighting various sections of the New York Times when Jerry Dantana comes in to tell her that Cyrus West told him something very important last night. But first, MacKenzie makes fun of Cyrus and his love of punctuation. "How long do you guys give people shit in New York?" Dantana moans. Um, it's only been, like 12 hours, Dantana. Please don't stop MacKenzie from saying lines that are actually funny.
Dantana asks if MacKenzie has ever heard of "Operation Genoa," which is named after the sail on a boat rather than the salami. MacKenzie, of course, has not heard of it because, as we all know, it's not real. Which kind of takes out a lot of the suspense here, doesn't it? There's no mystery to this now except for how badly they'll screw it up. Meh. Dantana says that Cyrus West told him that there was MARSOC extraction in Pakistan. Why does this show spend ten minutes an episode telling me things I already know over and over again and then doesn't explain what a MARSOC is?! I had to look it up, and that's annoying. Also it means Marine Special Operations Command. Anyway, MARSOC raided a village where two American troops were being held hostage and used Sarin gas on a bunch of civilians. Except that it didn't because this story is fake.
MacKenzie is reluctant to believe that something so illegal and so huge could have been kept secret. Dantana asks if she would be taking this more seriously if he was Jim. "JD, you don't have to feel competitive with Jim," MacKenzie says, calling Dantana by a nickname we've never heard before or since. Dantana whines that no one takes him seriously after he's been at NewsNight for all of one day. MacKenzie tells him to check into the fake story and also to lighten up.
"On the off-chance that it turns out to be true, people are gonna have to resign," Dantana says. "On the off-chance it turns out to be true, people would have to go to prison," MacKenzie says. Lighten up, MacKenzie.
And then Maggie walks in looking like a hot mess. Dantana doesn't want to talk about Genoa in front of her because he's smart, but MacKenzie says he can discuss this stuff in front of anyone at ACN. And really, if he was that concerned about keeping this under wraps, he wouldn't have told MacKenzie, who can't operate a speaker phone or email.
He leaves, and MacKenzie asks Maggie why she came to work with wet hair. "They don't have blow dryers in the gym," Maggie says. She takes this time when she's looking her professional best to ask Maggie for a minute so she and Gary Cooper can pitch "Africa." "Be specific," MacKenzie says, reminding Maggie that Africa is a "huge place." MacKenzie runs away from her and into Will's office, where Elliot and Dr. Dr. Sloan are waiting.
Before they can get down to business, Elliot tells us that his wife wants a really nice closet, so he hired someone to make one for her. "Is it going to be great?" Dr. Dr. Sloan asks, even though Will just said they've been discussing this for six minutes and you'd think that question would have already come up.
"Women and closets!" Elliot exclaims. OMG I know right? CLOSETS!!!!! LOVE EM.
Dr. Dr. Sloan says men love showers, so there. SO TRUE. As a woman, I'm usually like I HATE SHOWERS but then one day I decided to think of my shower as a closet but with water in it and now I LOVE SHOWERS.
"I've got an awesome shower. I love my shower," Will says. I hope we never ever see it. Elliot admits that while his wife's closet is being built, her clothes are in his closet and his clothes are in his shower. Will is disgusted with him.
Finally, Will tells them why they've been summoned to his office: they're going to anchor the 9/11 special, not Will. Elliot: "oh FUCK THAT." Dr. Dr. Sloan: "no way." Will claims it was his decision and his alone; he's about to be condemned on the House floor. "We," MacKenzie says. "We did the broadcast." Stop trying to horn in on Will's Congressional condemning. "I'm bad news right now," Will says. "I'm not who I used to be right now." Whatever that means. Sounds a bit over dramatic to me. "It's not right that I inflict myself on a profound national day of mourning," he says. That is somehow so self-important. With that, Elliot and Dr. Dr. Sloan leave the office.
MacKenzie asks Will why he claimed this was his decision. She thinks he's protecting Charlie. Will says he was protecting himself from being embarrassed. Duh.
Jim prepares to do his report from Romney's latest stop. He sets up the camera, then asks that blonde woman, who says her name is "Hallie," to make sure he's in the frame. She proceeds to line the camera up so he's not in frame at all. "We're competitors," she says. Yes. Definitely try to fuck over the guy who could be your boss week to make sure you get that amazing Romney scoop first. So worth it. Also, Jim? Just flip your playback screen on the camera around so you can see yourself on it. That's a lot easier.
Don arrives at work and, despite spending most of last night dealing with Maggie, he's got a pile of papers to toss on Will's desk. It's about Troy Davis, who will be executed if Don can't save him. Except that we know he's going to get executed. So. There goes that dramatic tension. Also, it's supposed to be August 25 but Davis's execution date wasn't set until September 7. Don is apparently big on this cause, saying he's been following the case for nine years, he visits Davis every six months and he knows him. And thinks he's innocent. Don wants Will to talk about the case on his newscast and go through everything that's gone wrong with it. Will refuses. He says he'll leave the justice to the justice system.
Don protests, citing all kinds of reasons why the justice system didn't work this time and why Will, as a former prosecutor, is the best man to take this on as a news anchor. Will admits he sees reasonable doubt in the case but doesn't want anything to do with it.
In the control room, those two guys we always see but whose names we don't know are going over ACN footage from 9/11. Turns out that Will covered all of it for ACN because even though he was just a legal analyst and not an anchor, he was the only person there to do it. So he bravely stepped up and – actually, no. I can't bring myself to recap Sorkin's version of Will's 9/11. Sorry.
That night, Maggie heads for Dr. Dr. Sloan's office to get her stuff. Dr. Dr. Sloan demands to know what happened between her and Don. Maggie explains the YouTube video. Dr. Dr. Sloan's biggest question is why Jim was on a Sex and the City tour bus. Maggie's trying to get the video taken down, but evil YouTube is making her wait five days.
Suddenly Maggie has an idea! She'll find the person who posted the video by stalking her Foursquare account! And lo and behold: the poster just checked into a Laundromat in Astoria. Oooh, is she the mayor of the Laundromat? That would make Maggie's search good political journalism if so! Dr. Dr. Sloan offers to join her on her quest.
Up in New Hampshire, Stillman annoys everyone by telling them what's going on in the broadcast everyone is currently watching. Why do people even sit to Stillman? This is their own fault. Anyway, Hallie is soooo smart because she knows that Perry won't beat Romney to get the nomination because eventually Perry will have to speak, and Texas governors who aren't so good at public speaking NEVER do well in elections.
Maggie calls Jim to tell him about the YouTube video. Jim can't hear her. "I can't really shout right now," Maggie says, finally having learned her lesson about shouting things. Jim goes to a quieter spot. Hallie watches him. Maggie tells Jim about the YouTube video. He asks if Lisa saw it. Maggie says no, although how would she know? She didn't even know that Don saw it or that it existed 24 hours ago. It's a safe bet that Maggie's evil cousin sent the link to Lisa, too, is it not? Jim sounds upset when Maggie tells him that Don saw the video and that they are over. I'm not sure why. Oh: "he's a really good guy and I screwed him," Jim says. "I screwed him," Maggie says. "You were on a bus." True. And then she hangs up on him.
Dr. Dr. Sloan and Maggie head for darkest Astoria, looking through a Laundromat to find the YouTuber. Everyone looks middle-aged, normal, or male, ruling them out immediately. But then! They happen upon a lonely, pale woman staring at her iphone and they pounce.
Her name is Erica. She's kind of freaked out to be approached by two women holding many bags who know her name. Also, she recognizes Maggie. "You don't have to be scared!" Maggie says. This scares Erica even more. "I'm feeling a little ambushed," she says. Hmm … yes. Maggie could have tried sending her an email or something first. Instead she says every thing possible to seem like a crazy stalker. And then asks Erica to take the YouTube video down.
Instead, Erica wants to know what happened between Maggie and her best friend. Maggie claims they made up. Erica wonders how that could happen when Maggie likes her boyfriend. Are Jim and Lisa even still together? "It's like I'm in this now," Erica says. I'm surprised she isn't wearing her pajamas and/or a muumuu. Maybe those are all in the wash? Dr. Dr. Sloan finally tires of these humans and their speech and asks Erica "how far up [Maggie's] ass do you need to crawl?" And now Erica is Offended. Also, she has a Sex and the City blog and writes Sex and the City fanfiction even though that show is not on anymore and hasn't been for years.
Erica doesn't want to take the video down because it's gotten over 1,000 views (99 percent of which are most likely Maggie's cousin, but whatever) and that's getting her precious blog a lot of traffic. Dr. Dr. Sloan asks Erica how many Twitter followers she has. "Over 300," Erica boasts. Dr. Dr. Sloan's all "I have 450 … thousand." She offers to RT something Erica tweets if she takes the video down. Except that she wants Erica to say something about investing and Erica just wants to know what Dr. Dr. Sloan is famous for.
For some reason, Dr. Dr. Sloan likes Maggie enough to let Erica type a message from Dr. Dr. Sloan's Twitter account: "Check out this blog. Best SatC fan fic ever! Like a real-life Carrie Bradshaw." "Can I say Charlotte?!!?" Erica asks. "You know what? You can NOT say Charlotte," Dr. Dr. Sloan snaps. "You can say Charlotte," Maggie says. Wow, Maggie, pushing it much? Dr. Dr. Sloan just tanked her entire Twitter account's credibility right there and that's still not good enough for you?
The day, Jim asks Cameron for 30 minutes with Romney. Cameron says no. And Jim does a Romney campaign coverage montage.
Dantana looks for a military vet.
And Gary Cooper and Maggie focus on the Nuba Mountains as a place in Africa they can go to do the news.
Jim is getting sick of the Romney campaign and all the speeches about how Romney will fix the stalled economy. He asks Cameron if he can have thirty minutes with him. He cannot.
And Will makes productive use of his time by Googling "Will McAvoy Hate." He gets a ton of results. I tried it and got over 600,000. I also tried "Aaron Sorkin hate" and got over 800,000. "Sara Morrison Hate" got … um … almost 50 million. To be fair, most of them looked like tweets from my own account. And, at some point in the very near future, this very recap.
Oh, and the www.whywehatewillmcavoy.com page that comes up doesn't even exist. I thought about buying it. But I didn't. Because I just don't care. And neither should Will. Hate makes us stronger. Will even has his own hate page! One recent post calls the show "SNOOZE NIGHT" which I am totally stealing. I'm jealous of Will's hate page. The best I could do was a hate Livejournal group which was AWESOME but only had seven members. I thought about joining it. But I didn't. Because I just didn't care enough to create a livejournal account. Anyway, while I thrive off of other people's hate, it makes Aaron Sorkin – er, I mean, "Will" – very sad.
Dantana is still looking for the vet.
Maggie pitches the Nuba Mountains genocide to MacKenzie, who is sitting in her bed watching two news stations and a laptop. MacKenzie doesn't see think American audiences will care about people in the Nuba Mountains. Oh. I thought NewsNight was about what we should know; not what we want to know.
Will is obsessed with his hate sites. He even skims them while he's in the writer's room. I mean "on the air." We're talking about Will here, of course. Not Aaron Sorkin. I'm sure Sorkin doesn't obsessively visit websites that criticize him. But if he's reading this recap right now, I'd like to suggest that he get this show off of HBO. It doesn't belong there. Go to basic cable. There's nothing on this show that can't be shown on basic cable and expectations will be lower. AHAHAHAHA! Someone made a site called "I fucking hate Will McAdouche." That's definitely someone you should be taking to heart, Will.
Jim gets a call from Maggie. For some reason, he answers it. Maggie wants his help pitching her story to MacKenzie. This might sound crazy, but MacKenzie wants Maggie's pitch to be "more specific" before she spends a lot of ACN money sending Maggie and Co. to "Africa." "Give me advice," she demands. But Jim doesn't have much to say to her. "I just want things to be back to normal," she says. "I'm normal," Jim says. "You're lost," says Maggie, like, not your place to say that, but, whatever. "Look who's talking," Jim snaps. End of conversation. Hallie, of course, listened to the whole thing and asks what's going on. "I didn't like normal," Jim says. Then: "she's someone in my newsroom." Nice titular line, Jim! "I didn't ask," says Hallie, who totally did ask.
Maggie is desperate. She asks Dantana "Can you think of anything about Africa that's relevant to Americans?" Um. What. No. I mean, I know international news is generally a hard sell to American audiences, but come on. It's an entire CONTINENT and you can't think of one thing that American audiences might want to know about it? Stupid. Dantana says something about drones or whatever, I don't know.
Don puts articles about Troy Davis on his wall of Davis obsession that we are only now seeing for the first time because only in this episode does he have any connection to the case. He takes the photo of Maggie down.
Will watches Elliot and Dr. Dr. Sloan read the 9/11 broadcast he wrote for them. So, that's that.
Suddenly, it's September 19. In the morning rundown meeting, a plate full of delicious pastries sits uneaten. Instead, MacKenzie turns to Neal and asks him how that little Occupy Wall Street thing turned out. He thought there would be 20,000 protestors; there were only 300 people. MacKenzie has finally learned how to use email, so she pulls up the Occupy Wall Street email blast and shows it to the newsroom. It's a video from Anonymous, they're all wearing Guy Fawkes masks, and it looks ridiculous. Everyone laughs at Neal. He is humiliated. Thanks, boss! Great morale booster!
And then Charlie and Elliot walk in with news of their own: Charlie went to some conference and learned about Twitter. He wants a Twitter feed to scroll at the bottom of the screen on Elliot's broadcast. Normally I think Sorkin is lame for making fun of the internets but he's kind of right here. Twitter can be a useful tool, especially in journalism, but it is also ridiculous. And people who preach about its benefits while ignoring the fact that only 16 percent of American adults bother to use it are also ridiculous. And usually paid a lot of money by people like Charlie. What I don't understand is why Elliot thinks it'll be too distracting to have a scroll of words on the bottom of his newscast. Don't all cable news channels have a scroll of headlines? It'll be just like that, except stupider.
Don takes a phone call while Charlie attempts to convince the newsroom that Twitter is great. He's not having much luck. Shouldn't these people all be using Twitter, though? Surely by 2011 it had become fairly essential. Don runs back into the room and says an "off the record source" told him that there was outside lobbying of the Georgia parole board that was to decide Troy Davis's fate. For some reason, they lobbied the parole board to deny Davis's bid for clemency. What kind of lobby is that? Evil! Charlie says it's illegal for professional lobbyists to do that. Don wants to go on the air with it ASAP but Charlie points out that one off the record source isn't good enough. Don doesn't care! He is Emotionally Invested in this story and therefore a Loose Cannon! He threatens to call the parole board member who the lobbyists convinced to deny Davis's clemency and tell him that he'll tell the world who killed Davis if Davis is executed. His name, address, and a photo of his house.
Don calls Jim for advice. Jim says he has to wait for the Supreme Court's decision on Davis's case. Also, Jim would like to talk to him about that YouTube video, but it's not really a good time for Don. In fact, it's kind of the worst possible time. I'm not sure why Jim doesn't get that. He gets off the phone, only to find Hallie sitting nearby once again. And she listened to his phone conversation while pretending she was listening to her headphones. Wow. So slick. She wants information on Troy Davis. Jim doesn't give it to her. Some reporters try to be charming and friendly to get information out of people. Hallie is going with "anti-social and creepy," which is an interesting approach, I guess.
Will finds Don pouting in his office. He and Don rehash the specifics of the case and how unfair it was to Davis. I think it's also unfair to Davis to use him as a plot point in a stupid TV show, but that's just me! Don is certain Davis is innocent. "I'm not allowed to get involved in advocacy and neither are you," Will reminds him. He pointedly says he's sure Don's threat to expose the parole board guy was a joke and leaves. Don picks up his phone and starts to dial but then decides he doesn't want to get fired and hangs up. Not getting fired > Troy Davis's life. There are limits, you know.
Maggie returns home. Lisa's waiting for her and offers to give her a hug. Maggie accepts, and then everything becomes awesome. Lisa is the best. I'm so glad she's back. "You're so full of shit, Maggie," she whispers into Maggie's ear. Maggie is confused. Lisa shows her this YouTube video she found. Man, that is one of the lamest things I've ever seen go viral.
While Lisa pours herself a glass of wine (probably not her first of the night) Maggie stammers that she had the video taken down and even went all the way to a Laundromat in Queens to protect Lisa from this. Lisa says she knows, as she read it on Erica's blog. Turns out that bringing Dr. Dr. Sloan was Maggie's undoing, as Erica thought she was mean to her and wrote all about it and kept the video up.
Lisa coldly says that she couldn't help but notice that the first thing Maggie said to her was that she put a lot of effort into getting the video removed, rather than an apology or any sign that Maggie felt bad for anyone but Maggie. "Don't misunderstand. I was moved that by the fact that your first instinct was to impress upon me how hard you tried to lie. But Maggie just can't get the breaks. A minute ago, I was kinda furious, but now that I know you went all the way to Queens to lie to me, well, I just can't stay mad at you," Lisa says. Maggie's all "please let me speak." No, Maggie. You spoke plenty.
In fact, Maggie's speaking right now, on the video, screaming about how things "get really bad" when you fall for your best friend's boyfriend. Lisa asks Maggie who she meant things get bad for. Lisa's pretty sure Maggie means things get bad for Maggie. "Fuck Don. Fuck Lisa." She asks what happened after Jim ran after Maggie. Maggie says that doesn't matter. Lisa says it kind of does.
Maggie admits, very reluctantly, that she and Jim kissed. Lisa reminds her of all those times when she confided in Maggie about how Jim sounded weird on the phone and Maggie told her she was imagining it. Wow, Maggie, really? You are awful. Now Maggie admits that she was wrong. Now that she's been caught. Lisa's final question is why Maggie set her up with Jim in the first place? "I didn't. Don did," Maggie says. "And in fairness, I told you about my feelings – " Lisa interrupts to remind Maggie about how she "turned into eHarmony" and told her to keep getting back with Jim and pursue the relationship for over a year and also wouldn't let her date people of her own gender. Oh, sorry. That last one was the actual eHarmony.
"You didn't want him to pick you. You wanted him to pick you instead of me," Lisa says. Maggie asks how Lisa could possibly think that, based on the overwhelming evidence that suggests that that's pretty much what happened. "One of us is going to say something we can't walk back," Maggie warns. "I think it's gonna be me! What do you think?" Lisa says. Why can't this show just leave the newsroom and ACN entirely and just be about Lisa and her job at the boutique?
Maggie, still not getting it, says she did "one thing wrong." And that thing was not being upfront with Lisa about her feelings for Jim. Really? That's the one thing? Not the lying or the kissing of the boyfriend? That? Lisa says Maggie wanted her to date Jim so that he'd be available when Maggie needed him, because Maggie had no confidence that Lisa would be the kind of person Jim would want to have a meaningful relationship with. Ouch.
But Maggie still doesn't think she did much of anything wrong here, saying she never thought Lisa wasn't good girlfriend material but that Lisa does tend to date the wrong guys. "I'm used to being humiliated by guys," Lisa agrees. "I'm not used to being humiliated by my best friend." She won't have to worry about that anymore – Lisa announces that they are no longer friends. Lisa is the landlord and Maggie is her tenant. With that, she emails the YouTube link to Jim to end their relationship that I thought was over months ago anyway.
I don't recall Maggie saying she was sorry. Do you? Instead, she looks down at the book about Africa she brought home from the library. Also, I'm going to overlook the fact that Lisa's speech in no way reflected the way someone her age would actually talk because it was just so great to see Maggie get called out for what she truly is.
In a New Hampshire Sheraton, Jim gets an email from Lisa with a link to the video. He watches it for a long time for whatever reason. It's not like he didn't see it in person. Hallie, of course, is right there watching him.
Kendra sees a news alert: a drone strike just killed Anwar al-Awlaki. She and Gary Cooper inform Will and MacKenzie about this development: a suspected terrorist and American citizen was murdered by his own government. On purpose. "An American was on the kill list?" Will gasps. I'm not sure why he's so surprised. Maybe he doesn't read The New York Times? Because it reported that Al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was on the kill list in 2010. And then there was that whole thing in 2011 when al-Awlaki was nearly killed by an American drone in an assassination attempt. But what's really crazy is that al-Awlaki was killed on September 30, 2011 and it's September 21, 2011 on the show. Is Kendra getting news alerts from the future? That would be an interesting new direction. Note to Sorkin: if you're going to base this show in (and exploit) real-life events, you have to get them right. You don't get to tell us how past events should've been covered and also fudge their details for dramatic purposes.
Neal meets Shelly at Zucotti Park. She told him Radiohead was playing to lure him down there. He's annoyed with her until he sees the police pull up in riot gear.
Charlie has been called into Will's office to discuss how to approach this al-Awlaki thing. Everyone except Will thinks that Will should put the government on blast for this. Will doesn't really feel like standing up for the rights of a terrorist, even though what America did to him was wrong. Also, he doesn't understand why being a Republican automatically makes him a bad person. Which is a good point but not really relevant right now.
Will says the president is allowed to authorize these strikes according to a memorandum. MacKenzie thinks they should demand to see it. Will says he doesn't feel like defending the rights of an al-Qaeda leader right now. Charlie asks who cares if they get some blowback. Will says he cares. And, yeah. You can't pull the guy off the 9/11 special one minute for what he says on the air and then tell him to say whatever he wants the . "When I took you off the anniversary coverage, I wasn't telling you to change your clothes. It was about that particular day," Charlie says. Will facepalms and points to Kendra and Gary Cooper. They didn't know he was pulled off, he says. They thought he stepped down voluntarily. Kendra and Gary Cooper say no one believed that, anyway.
Tamara butts in to tell everyone that Neal spent his lunch break getting arrested. He's on the phone, so MacKenzie asks Maggie to put it on speaker. Phew!! Good thing MacKenzie learned how speaker phones work. And good thing Maggie was able to put the call on speaker without accidentally hanging up on Neal or spilling coffee on the phone. I see progress for these characters. Neal exposits that the police arrested a bunch of protestors for wearing masks, which is illegal in New York City according to some random very old law no one ever cared about until they needed an excuse to arrest a bunch of hippies. Neal wasn't wearing a mask and identified himself as a reporter but the police arrested him and destroyed his phone/video camera anyway.
But don't worry! Neal was Ustreaming the footage the whole time so it's still on the Internet. "Good job, man," MacKenzie says, mystified by all this technology. "I'm gonna come bail you out," Maggie says. Will immediately says he'll do it instead. Yes. I wouldn't trust Maggie with that either. Or anything. She can't even get a YouTube video taken down. "Send the film to my phone!" Will asks. LOL, "film."
At the police station, Will whips out his business card and demands that Neal's arrest be voided. He says he's Neal's lawyer. The police officer recognizes him as Will McAvoy but amazingly doesn't make any comments about how he doesn't help news anchors who call the Tea Party the American Taliban. I guess everyone is cool with Will again now that 9/11 is over. He does say he won't void the arrest; his co-worker told him Neal was "creating a hazardous or physically offensive condition." Will says that's allowed as long as Neal had a legitimate purpose, and since he was reporting, he did.
When the officer doesn't immediately void the arrest, Will says he'll have the man who arrested Neal brought up on civil rights violations and those always end with police officers getting fired. Uh. Okay. Pretty sure there are plenty of cops out there with plenty of complaints against them who are still very much employed. But at least that argument was rational; now Will is frustrated and strange and having a Dramatic Moment about how one American citizen was murdered by the government (in the future) and another one is on death row and a bunch of other people are in jail for wearing Halloween masks. Neal is the only thing he has any control over, he screams.
"Are you feeling all right?" the cop asks. Will collects himself and says he's getting over the flu (that he had ten days ago but not really) and shows the cop Neal's footage. In it, Neal asks the cop why he's arresting people. The cop tells him to go away. Neal says he's on a public sidewalk. The cop arrests him and the video shuts off. Will asks the cop who he thinks is in more trouble. I'd say Neal. It's never the cop. In TV land, though, Neal's arrest is voided.
Maggie finds MacKenzie in the ACN gym. She says she finally found her reason to cover all of Africa: "national security!" "Do you ever think Will might just be a douchebag?" MacKenzie asks. Nice to see all of Africa means so much to you, MacKenzie. Your generosity of spirit is truly astonishing. Then she asks Maggie to be more specific than "Africa." Maggie says the war on terror is moving there . "Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" she asks. MacKenzie says she's been shot at by both of them. And yet, cannot operate a phone or remember to bring her purse home from work.
"What is it with you and Africa?" MacKenzie finally asks. "I want to be the go-to person on something," Maggie says. So, yes, that should definitely be the continent it took you a month to find a good news hook in. Sounds like you've got Africa covered, Maggie. She says she and Gary Cooper want to go to Kampala and tour and talk to joint task force people and then talk to counter terrorism experts when they return to America. Oh, shit. We know Maggie comes back. WHAT ABOUT GARY COOPER?!!?! Don't you dare kill Gary Cooper, Sorkin. I will leave. I will LEAVE.
"You're green and it's dangerous," MacKenzie says. Yeah. Maybe you don't make your first reporting trip one to a terrorism hotbed in Africa. That's a great way to be the go-to person on really bad decisions based in ignorance, selfishness, and desperation. But Maggie insists that she can handle it and Kampala isn't dangerous. After she correctly answers a short quiz about Uganda, MacKenzie tells her to book the trip. Maggie's thrilled. She runs over to Gary Cooper to give him the good news, but he tells her that he just saw a wire report that there was a deadly protest in Kampala. Maggie says they just won't show it to MacKenzie. Seems like they're doing all the right things, here.
Neal is out of jail and at the bar. His co-workers toast to him.
Will's drink arrives just in time for MacKenzie to walk in and pour it on him. Ugh. I thought we stopped doing that last season. "Use your words!" Will begs. MacKenzie asks him why he can't be content with the love of his employees. "They'd walk through fire for you," she says. "For you," Will says. "I'm usually the one setting the fire," MacKenzie says. True. Before MacKenzie can say another word, Will listens to a cover of "You Were Always on My Mind" because Sorkin's on a '70s music kick this season.
MacKenzie tries again, saying they have to investigate the government's counter-terrorism plans. Lo and behold, Will already wrote his script for tomorrow night where he demands to see the memorandum. He should now pour alcohol on MacKenzie. Instead, they just stare at each other for a while.
Elliot finishes up reporting on Anwar al-Awlaki's death. Dr. Dr. Sloan heads into the control room and tries to have a casual conversation with Don, who points out that he's kind of busy. "I'm sorry about what happened with Maggie. You didn't deserve that," Dr. Dr. Sloan says. She leaves, and an anonymous staffer enters with a report. Guess who's dead? Yes, as we all already knew, Troy Davis was executed. Don tells Elliot what to report as Charlie disgustedly tells the graphics guy to turn the Twitter feed off. The Twitter feed is okay for droned American citizens. It is not cool for executed ones.
Don is very sad. But he should be proud of the graphics team, which just put up a photo of Davis with a quote from the Supreme Court's denial of his last appeal. They are on it tonight!
MacKenzie returns to the control room to check on Don, I guess.
Dr. Dr. Sloan congratulates Maggie on getting an awesome Africa vacay!!! And recommends she call Jim to tell him the news.
She does. Jim doesn't answer. It rings twice and goes to voicemail. Someone just got avoided.
Dantana calls MacKenzie into his office. He finally found that Marine, Eric Sweeney. He puts him on speakerphone and asks him who he is. He's a retired gunnery sergeant in the Marines. And Operation Genoa is real. MacKenzie asks him if he's aware that he's telling the press classified information. He is.
He says that Genoa was "an extraction" and they used gas on civilians. Sarin gas. "They're all dead," he says. MacKenzie asks who he heard that from. Sweeney says he saw it with his own two eyes. He was there. Wow! What a scoop! Oh no wait it's not. We know it's not real already. So now we're just going to spend the season watching a long slow fuck up.
Also, Troy Davis is still dead. Elliot reads his last words.
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