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After some pushback from Don and Jim, News Night airs its Operation Genoa special and it gets amazing ratings, much to Charlie and Will's joy. But then General Stomtonovich calls Charlie to categorically deny what the footage showed him saying and threatens to kill Charlie. Then the government categorically denies ACN's report and threatens all kinds of legal action. And Elliot interviews Eric Sweeney on his show the night, and Sweeney reveals that he once sustained a traumatic brain injury in combat. He lied to MacKenzie and Dantana about that because he was afraid it would ruin his credibility. And the Operation Genoa story begins to unravel …
MacKenzie wonders if she asked Valenzuela leading questions and if he didn't confirm ACN's report so much as he restated what she told him about it. OOPS.
Will's secret source turns out to be the same person as Charlie's – Shep, who, it turns out, has a son who was an intern at ACN. And ACN fired him on his 90th day of sobriety for talking shit about News Night on the evil evil internet. And that crushed Shep's son so much that he either relapsed and overdosed or he killed himself. Either way, he died and Shep vowed to get his revenge. I guess Charlie should've asked Shep about his family when Shep asked him all those questions about his. But he didn't, and Shep gave him a fake manifest with "fuck you, Charlie" written on it in invisible ink. OOPS.
And then MacKenzie learns about American sports for seemingly the first time in her life, and that basketball games have shot clocks – like the one in the corner of the screen during Stomtonovich's interview that MacKenzie realizes way too late is skipping around during the "raw footage." OOPS.
And MacKenzie cries in front of all of her employees. OOPS. I mean, that's not a huge career-ending mistake like the Operation Genoa stuff really should be, but, still. Control yourself in a professional setting.
Will, MacKenzie, and Charlie offer to resign, which they absolutely should. Really, they should have been fired as soon as they had to retract the story. Instead, Jane Fonda, who may or may not be high, refuses to accept their resignations because she just loves ACN so damn much. She tells them to get the trust of the American people back. I'm sure they will. -- Sara M
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Boy, I haven't done a recap since May and I am rusty! Luckily, my triumphant return is subbing for the awesome Sara M on a show I love to hate, so sit back and relax while Will mansplains American history to us all.
So we're back in the conference room with Marcia Gay Harden, Lady Lawyer, who is still doing discovery for the lawsuit against the network. What lawsuit, you may ask? Oh, let Don tell you all about it as he faces the panel. Now, I assume Marcia Gay Harden is trying to get all the facts straight so that they can determine whether it's in the network's best interest to go to trial or to settle, but c'mon. The big guys always settle in these cases. No one ever goes to trial.
Anyway, Don is being all Don about the whole thing, wondering why he seems to be the only sane one in a world of craziness, because he thinks the whole lawsuit is insane. Marcia Gay Harden purrs at him some more while Don wonders why they're wasting everyone's time and money on investigating this debacle when everyone knows it was Jerry's fault and Jerry's fault alone. And because it's Sorkin, Don expresses this by repeating the same line multiple times but changing the emphasis: "Why do we need lawyers? Why do we need lawyers?"
Don kindly summarizes the season so far, in case you were sleeping or are a woman or just tripped over something/hit your head on something/ran your car into something (or more likely did all of those things): Jerry came up from D.C. and wanted to make a name for himself so he pursued a story about the US using sarin gas, and then he edited the raw footage of an interview with a retired general to make his case. The story was aired and then fell apart, so Jerry was immediately found out and fired and ACN lost all credibility with the public. And instead of apologizing, now Jerry's suing them for wrongful termination. So Don's like, "Why isn't this an open and shut case? That dude violated every journalistic ethical standard, so we fired him."
Marcia Gay Harden doesn't disagree, but she tells Don that it is more nuanced, because Jerry claims he was made to be a scapegoat. Here's what I don't get. Jerry wasn't in a union, was he? He's not a member of a protected class (although that might have made this storyline more -- to use one of Sorkin's favorite words in this scene -- nuanced). Presumably he is, like most Americans, an at-will employee, which means he can be fired at any time for any reason or for no reason. Anyway.
Marcia Gay Harden purrs some more that Jerry's claim is that it wasn't ENTIRELY his fault that the story aired, and that it was the result of institutional failure at the network news division. Don is, as you might imagine, annoyed and outraged, since that's what Don is most of the time unless he's talking to Sloan, and sometimes even then. Don claims that this is going forward because the public loves to see big-shots falling down, namely Charlie, Will and Mac. Seriously. No one knows who the fuck Charlie and Mac are. Will, okay, they know Will and people probably would love to see him fall down, but that's mostly because he's a pompous windbag and a bully.
But let's get back to lawyering, shall we? Marcia Gay Harden wants to know why it's called a red team. Presumably she knows this, but she wants to hear Don's explanation and also to make him stop talking about whether or not they even need to be there, since that's her job. Shut it, Don. Anyway, clearly Sorkin toured a newsroom at some point and heard about the whole white team/red team thing and that's where this storyline came from because it's exactly the type of workplace minutia porn that he loves. And I kind of do also, so I can't complain. Don explains that the teams are named after the blood cells: the white team (like white blood cells) does the investigating and the red team (like the red blood cells) cleans up afterwards. And having just read a lift-the-flap book about the human body with my preschoolers, I don't think that's exactly how blood cells work, but its close enough. So the role of the red team is to poke holes in the white team's investigation.
So did the Red Team, which consisted of Don, Sloan and Jim, find any holes? Don says that they didn't because, other than the made-up interview, it was a solid story. Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Marcia Gay Harden knows that there were a ton of holes in the story. Don says that they would have found them if not for the made-up interview and Marcia Gay Harden tells him that he just defined institutional failure, so maybe he shouldn't answer that question anymore.
And now Marcia Gay Harden goes through the timeline. At the first Red Team meeting, Charlie wanted more evidence. At the second meeting, even with the interview with Retired General Jimmy Johnson, Charlie still wanted more evidence. And at the third meeting, they had Valenzuela, the other Marine who confirmed the first marine's story, and Charlie greenlighted the story. Don still insists that none of this would have happened without the altered tape, and I tend to agree with him at this point, but I'm sure the rest of the episode will prove me wrong. Don goes into a reverie about the third meeting, which happened in that very conference room. I'm surprised they don't do the wavy screen effect to indicate a flashback.
And they do flash back to Jerry walking the Red Team through the evidence again, but then we flash forward (sideways?) to Jim talking to the lawyers. Jim's hair is ridiculous. I mean, it's been ridiculous all season, to the point where I couldn't believe the network would let him report on Romney on air with that dead cat on his head, but now it's even worse if that's possible. I know everyone's talking about Maggie's butcher job, but Jim's hair isn't any better. Anyway, Jim tells the lawyers that the story began when Jerry got a tip from Cyrus West, who had just appeared on Newsnight. Jim chuckles that West is known as "a guy with ambition" and while Jim can't name what kind of ambition, it's clear that West just wants to be famous and doesn't really care how it happens. And then they run through everything we already know: Jim wasn't around to offer up his opinion on West because he was covering the Romney campaign, and also recovering from Maggie moving in with Don. The lawyers already know all this. Marcia Gay Harden says that's why Jim wasn't there to do his job. I think he was doing his job? It's a little weird to claim that Jim should be responsible for covering the Romney campaign and then also serving as Mac's conscience or whatever? Yes, if Jim had been there he would have said something. But he wasn't there, so someone else should have said something. Is Jim the only one who knows the scuttlebutt on various talking heads at the entire network?
But now Marcia Gay Harden wants to go back to what happened in Red Team III, which is good, since that's the title of the episode. Jim relays that the tip was the first step and then the second was an interview with Eric Sweeney. Cut to Jerry presenting the Sweeney interview at Red Team III, where Sweeney tells the story about how sarin gas was used by the US.
But instead of seeing the actual evidence, let's hear it third-hand from someone who's not even a journalist, okay? So Neal is now talking to the lawyers. Don't get me wrong; Neal is one of my favorite characters on the show. But I don't see why it's his job, as webmaster, to adhere to journalistic ethics. Then again, Sorkin fears/hates the Internet so I guess to him guys like Neal have all of the power in the world. Neal explains what Sweeney said in the interview: Intel learned that two Marine POWs had been smuggled into Pakistan for a public beheading. The first rescue unit was overwhelmed and the second unit dropped sarin. We see Sweeney explain how he saw civilians reacting (choking, screaming) and asked later why they reacted that way to white phosphorus. That's when he was told, "It wasn't the Willie Pete. It was sarin." Another example of Sorkin loving job-specific terminology: Willie Pete. Neal says that they'd all seen the tape many times, but Will hadn't seen it until now, so they all looked for his reaction and he was stone-faced. Because Will is a PROFESSIONAL. Also, he was probably on pain medication or maybe calculating various baseball statistics in his head because he is a MAN who loves SPORTS and is also a GENIUS.
Neal goes on to explain that the random Twitter user he found was the third step (and I don't even see how that counts as a step because it's so shaky) and the story about the NGO shutting down was the fourth step (again, shaky). And finally, the helo manifest that Charlie got from an anonymous source was the fifth step. They all seem really confident that, just because there was something in the payload that was classified, it must have been sarin. And that the helo manifest is legit. And that Charlie's source is legit. Man, Marcia Gay Harden is right. There are a ton of holes in this story. Marcia Gay Harden asks Neal how he felt about the evidence thus far and Neal demurs, claiming that he's not an investigative journalist so he's not qualified to make that judgment. See? I'm saying. Anyway, Marcia Gay Harden gets pissed because if he's on the team, he's qualified and he can't state that he's not in court. Are they prepping for court now or still doing discovery? Does she want him to tell her the truth or spin it? She needs to make up her mind. Anyway, Neal says he was qualified to "chase the tweets" (which isn't even a thing that people do) and that's it.
Marcia Gay Harden wants to move on to the interview with Ret. General Stomtonovich (a.k.a. Jimmy Johnson). So we're back in Red Team III, watching the interview with everyone else and being incredibly distracted by the TV screen behind the blacked-out general, which is showing a basketball game. Stomtonovich is confirming that the US missed the deadline for getting rid of chemical weapons (and how do you get rid of them? You can't even pour leftover prescription pills in the toilet for fear of creating a school of stoner fish). The distracting basketball annoys Don, so he speaks up and Jerry says he'll blur it out, and he didn't have a choice if he also wanted the medals and whatnot in the shot. You couldn't move them? That seems pretty lame for a news organization of this magnitude. Do a little set dressing, dude. The guy agreed to wear his uniform; he obviously understands the importance of a visual. Also, gee, I wonder if the basketball will be important later.
And now the final piece of the puzzle is the previously-thought-dead Herman Valenzuela, who was the crew chief on the mission. Mac interviewed him and he confirms pretty much every thing Sweeney said. And now Sloan is talking to the lawyers. It's weird how they all state everything in the current tense: "The presentation is over and Will's just heard everything for the first time." Anyway, Will, having heard all of the evidence, says that he had a hunch. Everyone is like, "WHUH?" Will says he heard the same story, because he has a source who is "reliable" and "in a position to know." If Will heard this story, why didn't HE bring it to the news division and suggest they start investigating it. It kind of seems like he was keeping this information in reserve, just so he could seem like a cool guy when someone else brought it up like, "Oh, I already knew that." Great journalism, dude. Marcia Gay Harden wants to know if anyone in the room thought to ask if Charlie's source and Will's source was the same person, because they are. Sloan tries to say it didn't matter because the story was a go without it, but Marcia Gay Harden gets her to admit that it made her more confident in the story.
They went through the evidence four more times or so (and why the change to past tense now? Why not, "We go through the evidence about four more times"? I guess I just don't understand script writing. I mean, I am a woman and all.) Anyway, Charlie says he's ready to run the story, Jerry obviously agrees and Mac agrees too. Jim doesn't think it feels right and Jerry gets all penis-y about it. Like did sarin gas steal your baby, Jerry? Why do you care so MUCH about this story? Especially since YOU KNOW you cooked the evidence, and the general will watch it and he will out you. Right? I will save that rant for later.
Sloan and Neal quickly take Jim's side. Jerry protests that Neal should be a fan of logic, and Neal says he doesn't think this many people could keep this secret. This is why I think nearly all conspiracies are bullshit. People are so quick to ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity (or random chance) as the saying goes. Although I prefer the British "cock-up before conspiracy" phrase because it sounds racy. Anyway, Jim says that he knows "these guys," I guess meaning that "these guys" wouldn't gas civilians, and he has to give them some moral credit for volunteering to fight a war he himself wouldn't do, and neither would Jerry. So Jerry has to drag Lynndie England into the whole thing (but doesn't know her name because he's a dummy) (although she is also a dummy) to validate his point that some soldiers are bad people. Like some random soldier made the decision to use sarin, if it was used? Um, I think you might want to go up a few levels, dude. Anyway, Jerry brings up all of the other awful things our military has done and accuses Jim of being "one of the Andrews sisters." Seriously? That's a reference that Aaron Sorkin thinks that a maybe 40-year-old male would make in 2013? The ANDREWS FUCKING SISTERS? Oh, Lord have mercy.
Anyway, Jim tries to explain why it doesn't feel right, but Jerry keeps interrupting, probably because he doesn't want his stupid ruse to be discovered before the story airs… because it's better if it's discovered after the story airs? I mean, what is Jerry's end game exactly? Jerry thinks Jim's making it personal. Jim says it is actually personal; he doesn't know Jerry, so he doesn't trust him. Jerry runs through his bona fides. Oh, Jerry. You're so desperate for approval.
Mac wants to know what Don thinks, and Don says he trusts Jim's gut, but he has another concern, which he has already addressed with Mac. Don is worried that running this story might put troops in danger and even extend the war. Jerry points out that Don is proposing they shelve a story about chemical weapons because it might be dangerous, like chemical weapons aren't. Don says, "The needs of the many." It does kind of feel like Jerry is trying to bully everyone into compliance; I don't know how these Red Teams are supposed to work, but I'm guessing this isn't it. Sloan mentions the upcoming election, which is dumb. Of all the myriad reasons to shelve the story, I don't think the election should be one.
Jim reads the federal law about chemical weapons, and adds that the punishment is death or life imprisonment. He wants everyone to realize the consequences of running this story. Don adds that there might be riots in the US as well. Aw, Don. It's so cute that you think the American public gives a shit about… well, anything that's not a football game. Jerry's solution for potential riots is for Don to just stay in his house. Seriously, why are Mac and Charlie letting this guy act like such a douchebag? Wouldn't this storyline have been more interesting if you empathized with Jerry at all? If you were totally sure that sarin had been used and better understood why Jerry was so desperate to get this story on the air? If Jerry were a nice guy who just needed a break? Instead, we've got a quirky general and a shady source, and Jerry is an asshole cartoon villain. Bleh.
Everyone looks to Will, who sits there a long time and then says, "I trust Charlie and Mac." Charlie says they're going to run the story. Wasn't this really Charlie and Mac's decision to start out with? Why go through the whole Red Team charade if they were just going to let Jerry bully everyone into seeing his point of view? Ugh, this storyline.
And now it's time for the story to air. We're in the control room watching with Mac, Jerry and Jim as the opening music swells. Will gives a speech about how we've been at war for a long time and that it's difficult to uphold the principles we're fighting for? Or something like that. And then they launch into the story we already know about Operation Genoa, showing off the evidence that we've already seen. Luckily, we see this in montage fashion so that we don't have to relive every moment of the broadcast. Of course, Jerry (excuse me, he's credited as Jerome) does the voiceover because he's a glory hound. I'm a little surprised that Sloan does so many of the interviews of the key figures. When did she get a promotion? When the retired general says they used sarin (the line that Jerry edited), Mac nods to herself, while Jerry looks a little shifty and Jim casually leans on a console and twiddle his thumbs or something.
Charlie watches the report from his office. Everyone else watches from various places in the newsroom or control room as really dramatic music plays. Are we supposed to be in suspense about whether or not the show will go off? Is the retired general going to burst into the newsroom, yelling wildly that his words were edited? Because that would actually be interesting. Instead, everyone just looks nervous until Will finally signs off, noting that the Pentagon denied their request for an interview.
As the show ends, Charlie starts to pour himself (another?) drink but his assistant interrupts and says that there's a phone call from the general. Cut to Charlie in Will's office, telling Will and Mac that the general is claiming that his words were edited, but Charlie isn't worried, because lots of people get cold feet after interviews. Mac reminds everyone in the room that they have it on film, and asks Charlie to tell the general that she's going to go look at the raw footage again and the general can watch it too, if he wants. Charlie leaves Will's office, still trying to convince himself that they expected pushback like this after the report aired.
Mac doesn't get right on looking at that raw footage, because first she's going to banter with Will as well as demonstrate that she knows nothing about sports. Will's watching a college football game and Mac asks about the play clock. Will takes the chance to get a shot in at soccer, which Mac would rightly call football but then this conversation would be confusing. Mac asks the most unlikely question ever: she asks if any other sports enforce the rate of play. This allows Will to lecture her on all of the sports that have shot clocks, including basketball. Gee, do you think that might come up later? Good thing Mac asked that question that seemed weird and out-of-context and clunky. Then Mac continues to act dumb about sports because girls couldn't possibly and I'm out. But not before Will asks for more reassurance that their reporting was good.
Back to the conference room with the lawyers. Don tells them that he thought the DOD would have a response on their website by midnight, but they didn't. Before that can be pursued further, Maggie interrupts to give Don some papers. This is the version of Maggie that looks like PaRappa the Rapper. Once she's out of the room, Marcia Gay Harden asks Don if Maggie's testimony can be trusted, given her condition. Don assures her that Maggie doesn't have a condition, and she'd say she wasn't sure if she wasn't sure. Marcia Gay Harden gets in a poke about Don and Maggie's relationship and she sure seems interested in that business, which I don't know would be ruled relevant in a court of law. Anyway, Don changes the subject to say that the president will be re-elected the day, according to the poll data Maggie just gave him. Then Don shows off his big brains by talking about some of the smaller races and reciting one guy's long-winded resignation statement. Man, Don's almost as much of a windbag as Will.
They get back to the story, which resumes on September 10th. Marcia Gay Harden reminds Don that they had another story creeping up on them, which seems like a weird thing to say except to give the audience a sneak peek of what's ahead and is one of the annoying things about setting this show in the recent past. Anyway, Don explains that every staff member below producer takes a turn going through the overnight book, which is a giant stack of papers (papers? Really? In this day and age?) with everything that happened overnight. I guess the person is supposed to go through it and pull out anything that might be interesting or relevant for their own broadcast that night. Seems like a pretty important job. It's Neal's turn to do it. I am so confused about Neal's role in this organization. It seems that Neal is too, because after he reluctantly accepts the giant stack of papers (which isn't even rubber banded together), he quickly passes the task off to the intern. You know, the one intern? The one who asked Will the question that started off the entire series? That one. Anyway, Neal tells her to go through the stack and separate it into four piles: "Knew that, didn't know that, don't care and Shakira. That last one's just for me." Jeez, Neal. Jerk off on your own time. Also, is it a normal thing to pass this task off on an intern? She doesn't seem to have done it before; on the other hand, Maggie's sitting right there and she doesn't even blink so who knows?
Mac calls Neal over and it's time for the "Mac is a ditzy lady who doesn't understand the Internet despite having reached a high level in her profession" segment of the evening. Mac is concerned that the Pentagon hasn't responded to their story yet, and she asks Neal if it's possible they did it as a wizard or something? Yes, the Pentagon is going to start releasing official statements on Steam. I don't know why the show insists on making Mac look like a fool. If she were really this dumb/technophobic, she could never have become the executive producer of the network's main news show, and yet… there you are. Mac tells Neal to do the book and not farm it out to an intern, but Neal says he's delegating. She doesn't seem too upset; I'm sure it's fine.
Will pops his head into Charlie's office to find out the ratings for the special. They're like twice what Will expected and his response is, "Shut the fuck up." I really loved Jeff Daniels's line reading on that. I like him as an actor. I just hate his character. Will and Charlie congratulate one another. Will is giggling with joy; Charlie is not so happy, because he's worried about the call from the general. Will assures him that it happened fast, and the general's not a young guy and besides, they've got the raw footage. And it's not like anyone would ever edit that, RIGHT JERRY??
Now Maggie's talking to the lawyers, and they lead her into a discussion of the big story that happened the day after the Genoa report aired: Benghazi. Flashback to the newsroom where Neal gets the report from the intern on the book. She runs down what she's found, and it's mostly nonsense about Piers Morgan and Lady Gaga because interns -- especially female ones -- are dumb and only want to hear celebrity gossip. Except the last item, which is about a wacky pastor in Florida (where else?) (sorry, Floridians but you know it's true) named Terry Jones who is planning to air the trailer to a movie called The Innocence of Muslims.
Back to Maggie and the lawyers. Maggie's talking about the statement from the DOD. They were expecting something vague. Marcia Gay Harden tells Maggie that it took a long time for the Pentagon to respond, because they were consulting with two lawyers. Maggie guesses that one of them was Matlock. Again with the references that no one under the age of 35 is going to know. Anyway, the two lawyers were Pentagon counsel and the Attorney General. Which would be a lot more dramatic if we didn't already know that the story was cooked and the network got in trouble.
Mac is busy in her office highlighting news stories in a newspaper, which is, again, something no journalist in 2013 would do except to purposely be a Luddite. There's a chime on her computer and she reads from the screen. Apparently, her monitor is so huge that she has to move her head back and forth to see the whole thing. Who does that? She goes into Will's office and tells her grave face, "We knew there'd be pushback."
Sloan fills the lawyers and us in on what in the hell Mackenzie is talking about. Sloan has memorized the DOD's response, which seems a bit excessive. The people who work at ACN sure do love memorizing shit for no reason. Anyway, the DOD's response was basically like, "These people are full of shit and we will prove it and also sue their pants off." Sloan explains that the team met in the conference room again and Charlie polled everyone. Everyone claimed to still stand behind the story, although you can tell Sloan, Don and Jim still have their doubts. Sloan explains that they were circling the wagons. In their own conference room and in their own meeting? I can understand having a public show of solidarity, but why is it, as Sloan explains, Jim's job to back up Mac, his boss? I think Marcia Gay Harden is right. This is institutional failure. But mostly because they all deserve to be institutionalized.
That takes us to Elliott's show that night. Remember Elliott? The guy whose show comes on after Will's? Don's his producer? Anyway, Sloan says that Elliott was the only one who hadn't gotten "dirty with Genoa yet." So they don't want Elliott to have plausible deniability when the story falls apart? Even though they're sure that’s not going to happen, per the scene? This makes no sense to me. Anyway, Elliott interviews Sweeney, the guy who started this whole rigmarole. As we watch the interview, Don and Sloan watch from the control room. Why is Sloan there? To watch Don work? Sloan is worried about the DOD's statement and jokes that she'd do well in jail and Don wouldn't, because she has a marketable skill (accounting) and Don doesn't. She's not wrong. In fact, I wish Olivia Munn was on Orange is the New Black instead of this dumb show. Sloan wants to continue parsing the DOD's statement and Don accuses her of acting like a teenager decoding a note from a boy. And while yes, teenage girls do spend a lot of time decoding notes from boys, it's quite condescending for Don to talk to Sloan that way and I wish JUST ONCE one of the women on this show would call out the male characters for their smarmy sexism. Just once, can't Sloan tell Don, "Look, I have more degrees than you have chest hairs so please don't talk to me like I'm an adolescent with more hormones than brain cells." Just once.
Anyway, that's not going to happen due to one Aaron Benjamin Sorkin so let's get back to Elliott's show. Sweeney is talking about this one time? In Afghanistan? When his Humvee got blown apart and he sustained a traumatic brain injury or TBI? Cue record scratch. WHUH? So their whole report hinged on the testimony of a dude with a banged-up brain? Don panics and orders Elliott to dump out of the interview, so he does.
Will's at home, sitting at his dining room table, staring off into space. Who relaxes at home at their dining room table? Weird. Anyway, Mac calls and says there's a problem with the story and Will says that he knows. So does everyone else, since Charlie has called them all in the middle of the night to assemble in the conference room again. Charlie enters late and goes into this long story about how there was a deer in the road. This is such a weird detail that you'd think it would come up later. Nope.
Mac starts interrogating Jerry to find out why they didn't know about the TBI. Jerry keeps talking over her, but Mac doesn't give an inch and Jerry admits that Sweeney got two purple hearts, but he lied about the origins of the second one and military medical records are sealed, so they couldn't verify. Sweeney said he lied because he worried that they wouldn't believe him if they knew about his brain injury. You think? Also, why would he just pop out with it on Elliott's show then? Does he figure that now that the story has aired, he can just go back to the truth? Or did he forget he lied in the first place due to his TBI? Don harangues Jerry about the fact that the number one symptom of TBI is memory loss. Will offers to talk to Sweeney alone and then question him on air to clean it up. Thanks, Father Will. To the rescue, once again. Maybe you could have interviewed him a week ago? Everyone's in a tizzy, so Jerry reminds them that they still have the other two witnesses, but Jim says that one of them is recanting. Mac counters that they have the raw footage as well as Jerry and Maggie's word that the general said they used sarin. Maggie decides that now would be a good idea to tell everyone that she wasn't actually there for the interview, at the general's request. Oh Maggie. Go give yourself a bad haircut. I swear to God, if it turns out that she gave herself the haircut because she got raped or assaulted by one of the tricks she picked up in a bar, I am going to riot. And also flip a table.
Anyway, Sloan wants to talk about how they aborted the interview with Sweeney. Don takes responsibility but Sloan doesn't think it made them look great. Charlie yells at everyone to shut it and insists that they aren't in that much trouble. Charlie thinks that the general is just getting shit from his friends, and a concussion is no big deal. Hey, Charlie could be the NFL commissioner! Anyway, both Charlie and Will are going to talk to their secret sources. Charlie has to talk to him in person. Will has already talked to his guy, and his guy said to stand by the story. Well, then. Done and done, secret guy who definitely isn't also Charlie's secret guy! Mackenzie tells the troops that they need to go back over every inch of the story AGAIN so that Will can say on air that they stand by it and they are all behind him. Then Mackenzie, Will and Charlie leave. Shouldn't they stay? Nice leadership.
Back with the lawyers. Jim and his awful hair and Marcia Gay Harden (whose hair is lovely) argue over when Mac knew that the story was shit, and whether or not it was her fault. Jim says no. Marcia Gay Harden points out that they didn't go to air until they had Valenzuela, thus he was an important witness. Cut to Mac in Will's office, worrying that she led Valenzuela in their interview. She keeps pointing out spots in the interview transcript where she gave Valenzuela information and he parroted it back to her. Will tells her that his source is better than POTUS and his source says they should stand by the story, and adds that you have to ask leading questions when dealing with reluctant interviewees. Mac posits that Sweeney's got problems and Valenzuela's his only friend, so Valenzuela just backed up whatever Sweeney said so his friend wouldn't look bad. Okay, maybe that works if Sweeney is accusing someone of stealing a cupcake out of the work fridge, but is Valenzuela really going to do that over international crimes that could be punished by death? I doubt it.
Charlie takes the fastest shuttle ever to DC and meets with his source. Charlie says they're having trouble with the story and wants reassurance that they got it right. But the weirdo source just wants to show Charlie pictures of his son, David. Turns out that David was hired as an intern at ACN when he had ninety days sobriety. And then David started posting shit about working at ACN on a blog and Neal told him to cut it out, but David didn't cut it out and they fired him. And then David went back to heroin and died. Charlie says that David deserved to be fired and the source slaps Charlie across the face. Whoa. So this source was so mad about his son's drug problem (not Charlie's fault) and justified firing that he cooked up this fake story just to shame Charlie? That's some serious fucked-up behavior, right there. I almost admire it, although this does seem more like a storyline for Revenge or Scandal. The source tells Charlie to hold the helo manifest over a light. Back in his office, Charlie does and it spells out, "Fuck you, Charlie." Ah, the old lemon juice on the paper trick.
Ugh, then Will talks to the lawyers. Oh, did I say talk? Will gives a history lesson to the lawyers who could give zero fucks because they're billing by the hour so if they have to sit through Will's masturbatory lecture, so be it. Meanwhile, the newsroom is abuzz on September 11, 2012 about riots and demonstrations in Egypt potentially over a movie about Muslims. Neal catches his snap (with an assist from the intern) and remembers the Terry Jones item in the book. The newsroom comes to life. This is the part of the show I like; when they actually show how the newsroom works during a story. They're all trading information and doing research and trying to get enough information to go to air about these demonstrations. Meanwhile, Will is still lecturing about Rosa Parks, FDR and the Challenger disaster. No, that's seriously what he's telling the lawyers about.
Cut back to the newsroom. Mac and Sloan are out there gathering information as well, and in the middle of watching the video that generated the demonstrations, Mac is interrupted by a maintenance type, who is delivering a clock that she plans to use to get Will to end his segments on time. They… don't already have something like that? Anyway, as everyone else huddles around a monitor, Mac is entranced by the clock. It's like she was having a conversation about clocks earlier and this is sparking something in her brain. If only I were a man, I'm sure I would be able to figure out what it is. Instead, I'm trying to decipher a note from a boy.
Will is fah-hinally wrapping up his lecture, and I guess it was all to prove that huge events can be sparked by one small thing going wrong. Meanwhile, Mac heads to the editing bay and checks out Jerry's footage. Remember the shot clock? On basketball game? You see, basketball as a sport was invented by James Naismith in Massachusetts when he nailed peach baskets to poles and had his players try to toss a ball in there. Sorry, I turned into Will for a second. Anyway, Mac notices that the time on the shot clock on the basketball game over the general's shoulder jumps around. In the raw footage. Of course, the show doesn't trust the viewers to make the connection despite the big, booming hints that have been dropped and they have to zoom way in on the shot clock. Ooh, Jerry. You busted.
Mac runs into Jerry as he's exiting the elevator and tells him that he forgot about the shot clock, and that it jumped around in the so-called raw footage. Jerry ponders his options and then his defense is that the general said it before the cameras rolled. Did this guy go to journalism school or even take Journalism 101? And in all the time he's had since the interview, he couldn't come up with a better excuse for when he did inevitably get busted? Anyway, Jerry yells about it for a while and Mac says that no one will believe them again. Jerry lawyers up because he knows he's fired.
The entire staff is standing in Will's office to pitch him on the idea that the demonstrations in Benghazi are not because of a movie, but they are, in fact, a terrorist attack. They lay out the evidence for Will. Of course, we know that they're right but that's irrelevant. Will takes the opportunity to take a cheap shot at the intern for no reason because he's a dick and she's a girl and has to take it. Mac walks in and Will starts to summarize their discussion until he realizes that she's barely holding back tears. She says that they have to retract Genoa, the whole story. Then she starts quietly crying and wiggling around like she's going to pee her pants while the whole staff just looks down, probably embarrassed for her.
Will tells the lawyers that they retracted the story that night instead of reporting on Benghazi, because they no longer trusted themselves or their sources. Will and Marcia Gay Harden wrap up the loose ends: the marines were wearing MOPP suits in case the enemy used biological weapons, the white phosphorus was just marking targets and Hamni8 didn't die, unless you consider losing your cell phone akin to death. Will says that it was institutional failure, and he and Mac and Charlie are going to resign after their election coverage the night. Marcia Gay Harden is sad but doesn’t try to talk him out of it. She's probably worried that he'll start giving her another history lecture.
Charlie, Will, and Mac are waiting for Leona in a restaurant? Her office? Her office restaurant? I don't know where the hell they are. Anyway, Leona makes a grand entrance in an evening gown and says that she just spent a ton of money on a movie premiere to try to meet Daniel Craig, but it didn't work. Anyway, Jane Fonda continues to think she's in a completely different show, perhaps something from the '40s. She's obviously a fine actress but she's chewing the scenery in a big way in this scene.
Charlie says they're going to resign because their network's trust numbers are fatal, and firing Jerry clearly wasn't enough. Then Jane Fonda calls Mac "McMac" a bunch of times and says that this was all Jerry's fault, not their. She's mad that Jerry came into her "hizzy" (no, she really says that) and cooked footage, and then she tells Will to shut the fuck up which I enjoyed greatly. I mean, I love Jane Fonda and this character, but she just seems out of place. Anyway, Charlie accuses Leona of being stoned, which seems like a weird thing to say to your boss, but I guess he's resigning anyway.
Then Leona gives a big speech about how she loves ACN and they make her really proud. She does and they do? I thought she hated them? Anyway, she's pissed that Jerry fucked them and now they have to give him five million dollars and her best people are resigning. So she vows that they won't resign and she won't settle because fuck that guy. Then Marcia Gay Harden shows up and says that "Lee" shouldn't accept their resignations and are these two besties? Because I think I'd rather watch the show where they have girls' night with some wine and Daniel Craig movies in Leona's beautiful UES apartment. I smell a spinoff!
Anyway, Leona is still babbling on and Charlie YELLS, "LEONA! WE DON'T HAVE THE TRUST OF THE PUBLIC ANYMORE!" Geez, take it down a notch, Charlie. She may be stoned but she's not deaf. Leona yells, "THEN GET IT BACK!!!" And then cut to black. What just happened? The scene was kind of funny and lightly emotional and then there was a bunch of yelling and it just ended? The first time I watched this, I said out loud in my empty living room, "What the fuuuuuuuuuuuck was that?" I stand by that statement just like the ACN staffers stand by their story.
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