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The team decide to drop the hot Petraeus story in favor of the Brody rape comments from 1990 thing because it might help some late voters in their decisions and that is the Right Thing to do. Plus, they're all trying to resign anyway, so who cares?
Except that they aren't resigning! Jane Fonda, who is still high, leaves the decision to her son, who takes an episode-long walk to think it over. In the meantime, Charlie decides that Dantana was the only thing that went wrong with that whole accusing-the-government-of-a-war-crime thing and ACN is still noble enough to toss aside juicy gossip stories about the DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY RESIGNING IN DISGRACE for important stories about something truly stupid a candidate said over 20 years ago and for that reason, they should stay forever. The rest of the staff who were so keen on quitting agree with him, as does Reese, but only after Charlie decides not to resign so poor Reese doesn't get to look like he cares about Doing the Right Thing after all.
Also, MacKenzie (whose Wikipedia problem is finally solved but it's so stupid that I'm just going to pretend it never happened) is not fired anymore because she is engaged to News Night's managing editor and anchor. Yes, that's right. Will decides that he should get over himself and forgive MacKenzie because he's happier with her than without her. Sane people would go out on a few dates. Will grabs that huge engagement ring from Season 1 and proposes to her. She says yes. The relationship we're all supposed to be waiting for is on!
And it's not the only one! Dr. Dr. Sloan finds out that Don bought her book, so she signs it and then makes out with him in the control room. He's pretty pleased with that, but doesn't propose to her, so whatever. I look forward to Marcia Gay Harden's return season to deal with all the lawsuits these office romances are sure to create.
Maggie and Jim get together (as friends!) when Hallie's nagging at Jim to check up on Maggie's crappy haircut (Hallie thinks that someone who cuts her own hair is someone in need of help) and Roommate Lisa makes her triumphant return as a caterer at Reese's big election night party. Jim goes up to make amends, which is easily done when he simply tells her that he doesn't think he's smarter than her. Also he thinks she should ask her roommate why her hair is so bad. Lisa and Maggie finally have a nice long talk and I'm guessing Maggie told her about Africa but it was during a music montage (to a very bad version of "Let My Love Open the Door," which, why? Did they run out of money in the music budget so they could only afford the rights to the song but not Townshend's performance of it?) so I couldn't hear what they were saying. Also, Maggie admits to Jim that she cut and dyed her hair because of the kid she killed in Africa. She does not explain why it took her ten months to do it.
Best of all, the D.C. bureau gets stroppy, with Jane "Wheel" Barrow getting all mad that the crappy reputation-ruining New York staff gets to call the election and not her and making fun of them for inaccurate reporting about sarin gas. Also, she says she's going to take all of their jobs. Jane Barrow rules. I've decided that Terry Smith proposed to her, too, finally putting their difficult past behind them and allowing them to move forward with their happy new lives!
Also, Obama won.
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As we open the conclusion to this suspenseful two-parter, Don talks to those Petraeus sources to try to nail the story down while Maggie, Charlie and MacKenzie listen in. He says the story is as confirmed as anything will ever be, which is kind of what they thought about Genoa, but whatever, and they have two on the record and two off the record sources.
Jim and his bad bad hair are called into the office. "I can explain," he says, assuming it's about his Michigan/Mississippi mistake. "Nope!" Maggie and her bad bad bad hair say immediately. Jim realizes that this meeting is not about him and shuts up.
MacKenzie and Charlie exposit what we just saw last week about Brody and his rape quote. Maggie reads the quote in order to kill three minutes. Jim is clearly annoyed that she found the story and he didn't, so good job with that, Taylor! Jim is asked to weigh in on which story they go with: Brody now and Petraeus when the official announcement that he's resigning comes in, or Petraeus now and Brody the day, after the election. Everyone says Brody except Don, who doesn't understand how these people are his co-workers or at all involved in the news business.
MacKenzie explains that it's 6 p.m. in Brody's constituency and polls are open, so there are some voters left to inform, which is the only purpose of the news ever. Don says if they break the Petraeus story then it'll really help their credibility. Yes, except no one is going to believe them about the story anyway. For that matter, I don't think anyone will believe them about the Brody thing. Since the Petraeus story doesn't include anything voters need to know before they make their decisions, they decide not to go with it. Meanwhile, if this Brody was THAT important that it's worth passing on a huge story to tell it, why did they just wait over an hour to report it in the first place? How many people voted for Brody without being fully informed in that time?
Charlie says they'll report Petraeus's resignation when it actually happens. That's great because it's not like the director of the CIA resigning or the events that lead up to it isn't a huge national story or anything like that. Don signs off on it and Charlie just stands around looking pretty pleased with himself.
Will continues being an anchor. There is a problem in Wisconsin! They ran out of ballots. But don't worry, guys. I have a good tip that Obama will win the presidential election. Don't ask me how I know.
MacKenzie tells Jane Barrow from ACN's awesome Washington D.C. bureau to start her report with the Colorado numbers. Jane refuses! She wants to open on Florida. Good for you, Jane Barrow. Stand up for yourself. New York sucks. Look what it did to Dantana.
The New York team gets a few minutes off, so Taylor asks Will how he's holding up. Will says lots of people want him to be fired. Like thousands of them. And no one trusts him. He's also afraid this could kill Charlie. Taylor is kind of sympathetic for a few seconds, then asks if she can hire Jim for her new media consulting firm. Taylor says she knows Jim hates her but she doesn't care, since he's good at his job and no one likes her anyway. Yeah, Jim hates her so much he got her this job at ACN, right? Or did she just stumble into it coincidentally? Also, hiring people who hate you isn't necessarily the best way to ensure employee loyalty.
Will's confused. He says Jim isn't leaving ACN anytime soon. Taylor says she heard the entire senior staff is resigning over Genoa. And she heard it from the senior staff, so, pretty good sources there. Will storms into the control room and demands a meeting with the senior staff right away.
Jim heads for the staircase of love-Skyping to talk to Hallie about the mood in the Romney room now that he thinks Romney's defeat is all but certain. Hallie says the Romney camp thinks everything is going awesomely. Also, people are getting sick of seeing her Skyping with the evil ACN, and the bloggers don't appreciate that she's helping "old media." Maggie suddenly runs into the frame to tell Jim about the senior staff meeting. Rude, but I guess that'll happen when you have private conversations at work on a stairwell in the middle of the office without even using headphones.
After Jim gets done extolling the virtues of old media to Hallie, he admits that he called the wrong race and doesn't want to retract it. Hallie is more concerned with Maggie and her haircut. "I think she cut her own hair," she says. Hallie, your boyfriend hasn't brushed or washed his hair in like a year. How do you not see this? "Cutting off your own hair. That's alarming," Hallie says. Or an affordable way to keep those bangs out of your eyes! Jim might want to try it!
While the senior staff, which somehow includes Maggie and Neal, wait for Jim, Dr. Dr. Sloan decides to wrap up her book storyline by announcing what happened and that she needs help tracking down its buyer. Or rather, Neal needs help since he's the one doing all the work. MacKenzie finds a way to sidetrack that conversation into something even less important – her Wikipedia page, and how it says she went to Oxford instead of Cambridge. MacKenzie pretends that she doesn't care about that anymore, except that she does.
Jim finally arrives, just in time for MacKenzie to leave to do real work. Will informs them that there will be no senior staff resignations from ACN and exposits about the status of his resignation. Once Jane Fonda lets him resign, he says, they'll all be able to continue their great news experiment without Genoa hanging over them. Elliot will be the new Will, Don will be the new MacKenzie, Dr. Dr. Sloan will be the new Elliot, and Jim will be the new Don, which is apparently news to Jim. Also, where does Terry Smith get to go? Or are they giving him or her the shaft again?
That's not good enough for Don, who says they will all resign if Will, Charlie, and MacKenzie do because apparently none of them have children or mortgages or student loans, so it's just that easy to stand up for your principles. Will says he won't get all choked up by their show of great newsmanship and sends them away. He sits down behind the desk with Dr. Dr. Sloan, who says she thinks the staff was insulted that Will didn't think they'd resign in solidarity. She says she certainly was. Well, I've been insulted by nearly every minute of this show, so I guess now Dr. Dr. Sloan knows how that feels.
Charlie heads up to Reese's party. Jane Fonda has arrived and is chatting with Marcia Gay Harden about a woman who ran over her husband because he didn't vote for Romney. "She's pregnant," MGH says. Ah yes, of course. Pregnant women are always having rage fits and attacking people. I mean, women who aren't pregnant physically assault people on this show all the time, so you can imagine!
Charlie tells MGH to go away so he can talk to Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda informs him first that she was high last night, got a good night's sleep, and then got high again. You guys, I'm concerned about Jane Fonda's drug problem. "I want to get the Allman Brothers back together," Jane Fonda says. This is going to make it difficult for Charlie to have a serious conversation with her.
He tries anyway, reminding her and all of us that people don't like him and want him to resign and he should, for the greater good of ACN and the good people who work there. Charlie says if they don't, then everyone will read the lawsuit and ACN will "look silly." Joke's on you, Charlie! ACN already looks silly. All the time. "I don't feel silly. Do you want to split a pizza?" Jane Fonda asks. Charlie does not. He says Reese is on board with letting Will, MacKenzie and Charlie resign. This leads into a conversation about how Charlie disrespects Reese, which Jane Fonda thinks he shouldn't and Charlie thinks he has every reason to. And he does, since Reese only has this job because of nepotism and also remember when he had the Evil Gossip People tap ACN staff phones? Jane Fonda says she actually told Reese he could make the decision on whether or not to allow them to resign. When he found out about that, he had to take a walk. I don't know why Charlie wouldn't respect that. "I want to see how Reese handles this," she says. Charlie has an idea.
He walks out of the party, only to smash right into a caterer holding a tray full of champagne glasses. It's LISA!!! Yes! Roommate Lisa is back! And really hoping Charlie doesn't recognize her, which he does. Which is kind of insane since it's been, what, two years since she was on Will's show for a few minutes? She asks Charlie not to tell anyone she's working up there. Especially not Jim.
Will calls Pennsylvania for Obama. The Intern hands a Will a note from Charlie telling him that Reese will decide their fates.
That Michigan race is nowhere near decided after all. Jim asks Cathy Ling to come out into the newsroom, even though she's not allowed to be out there. His fuck-up is ruining everything for Cathy Ling! Cathy Ling insists that the Republican candidate will win Michigan. But not by much. Maggie asks Cathy Ling for the abbreviations for Michigan and Mississippi. Cathy Ling knows them better than Jim does, and says she's "100 percent confident" about it. I enjoy watching Maggie and Cathy Ling gang up on Jim.
Uh oh! The Michigan first district Republican candidate's people are calling! Jim has to talk to them. "Congratulations!" he greets the campaign manager. She says she couldn't help but notice that no one but ACN has called the election yet. She asks if she should prep the victory speech or not. "I would!" Jim says, stupidly. Even Maggie is like "what are you doing right now?" The campaign manager says she's not going to rely on ACN after that whole Genoa thing. Which is a good idea. Jim hangs up on her and says he's offended now. Yes, he's offended that someone won't take his terrible news channel's word for it when that channel has a very recent history of getting a big story horribly wrong and also it's about a call said channel made by accident anyway.
Meanwhile, there's a crisis on Twitter! Neal has discovered that someone snuck a phone into Jane Fonda's party and is leaking photos from it on Twitter. Like this one of Charlie on the floor surrounded by broken champagne glasses. Also, Lisa. Jim is surprised to see her there. Maggie says Lisa didn't want Jim to know she was there, but she's apparently been working extra shifts as a caterer for extra cash. "Why didn't she want me to know she was here?" Jim asks cluelessly. Neal leaves, telling Jim that it's somehow now his job to monitor Jane Fonda's party guests.
ACN goes to a commercial, and Will and MacKenzie decide to "take care of things," a.k.a. Elliot takes over the main anchor chair from Will and Don takes over for MacKenzie. Both Elliot and Don refuse, but they have no choice, since MacKenzie and Will take off. "We just want to show Reese and Leona how good you guys are at this," MacKenzie says. Yeah, they can pretend they're doing this for the greater good all they want, but I bet they're just trying to get an extra 10 minute break. Will and MacKenzie watch the broadcast from the make-up room. Actually, only Will is watching. MacKenzie is doing girly stuff like looking at her hair in the mirror.
MacKenzie apologizes to Will for thinking he wasn't firing her because he didn't want to look bad. Also she would like to talk about their relationship again because she can't drop the fact that Will can't drop the fact that she cheated on him. She's now decided that it's totally fine that she did that because she only did it because her last boyfriend dumped her and she was trying to make him want her again. I can't do this conversation again, guys. Married people don't talk about their relationship as much as these two do.
MacKenzie says she never would have told Will about her cheating if she knew it would break them up. He thinks she only said it because she wanted to break up with him. "Fuck you," MacKenzie says, calling Will a "massive bag of douche."
And then she brings up the ring Will bought her and how he was apparently set to propose to her when he found out she was cheating on him, if not for no other reason than to give us all a giant heads up that said ring will be making its triumphant return to our television screens soon. Wasn't it Chekhov who wrote that if an engagement ring from the first season is mentioned 25 minutes into the season 2 finale, then someone must be proposed to with said ring like 20 minutes later, no matter how random and seemingly out of nowhere the proposal is?
Anyway, Will finally reveals that he never actually bought MacKenzie that ring – he had someone else buy it so he could use it against her when she found out he had considered an offer in Los Angeles to show that he was serious about her and make her feel bad. "I am really sorry," he says.
As I'm sure you can guess, MacKenzie reacts to this news calmly and reasonably. No she doesn't! She says she has to step way from Will before she physically attacks him and leaves a mark the viewers at home might see. "This is stupid," Will says. And it is. MacKenzie says that she hurt Will unintentionally. Will hurt her on purpose. I don't know how cheating on someone is unintentional. Maybe if you're running around naked and you trip and fall onto a man's erect penis? Otherwise I don't see it. Now I guess it's Will's turn to feel bad.
Update on the Dr. Dr. Sloan book signature forgery mystery! Neal found out it was purchased by an anonymous person using the name of Tony Curtis's character in Sweet Smell of Success. In fact, all the bids came from people named after movie characters. Dr. Dr. Sloan orders Neal to look for anagrams.
Don informs MGH that he is countersuing Dantana for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Don insists that what Dantana did fits all criteria for the lawsuit, and then goes off on a SorkinSpeech about how lawsuits are ridiculous and ruining America. I guess Sorkin got sued recently. MGH interrupts to inform him that Reese will decide whether or not to accept Will and Charlie's resignations. Don says all he wants is "to keep doing the news." Please stop saying "doing the news," Don.
Roommate Lisa takes a few drink orders from obnoxious people. Jim shows up. Lisa clearly doesn't want anything to do with him. She says she wishes she could "kick" Jim's "ass" but since everyone else is already piling on Jim and the rest of ACN, she just feels bad for him. Jim apologizes for being generally awful to Lisa. Wow, ACN really ruined Lisa's life a little bit, huh? And now her boss is telling her to stop fighting with the party guests so she'll probably get fired and that is also ACN's fault!
Jim tries to save Lisa by telling her boss that one of his servers is tweeting photos from the party and violating the confidentiality agreement so he might want to take care of that. Great, so now one of the other servers will get fired, too! With the boss gone, Jim tells Lisa that when he swore he wanted her and not Maggie, he meant it. She says she believes him, and that it's clear that he only rejected her after he got to know her. With that, she gives a guy the wrong drink order as she tells Jim that when he rejected her, her "worst fear was realized." And what was her worst fear? That some guy would think she was stupid. "I'm smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough," she says.
Jim insists that that's not true. Lisa says that Jim's current girlfriend is hanging out with a presidential candidate and she's serving drinks, so. "You're working two jobs! You're thoughtful and you're authentic," Jim says, because what girl doesn't want to be called "authentic," am I right? "There is, believe me, no one that you're not good enough for and there's hardly anyone who's good enough for you – including, it turned out, me," Jim says. Lisa sighs that she's about to turn 30. OH GOD NO. OLD MAID! DISGUSTING!
With that, Jim asks if Maggie cut her own hair. Good segue. Lisa informs him that she doesn't speak to Maggie. Huh? Then how did Maggie know that Lisa was catering now and working the ACN party and didn't want Jim to know? Sign language? "Maggie's in bad shape," Jim says. Lisa claims she doesn't care. She also has no idea why. Maggie didn't tell her about Africa. Lisa claims, again, that she doesn't care. But she does. Jim says she'll have to ask her herself. And that she should. Lisa says she did notice hair on the bathroom floor the night Maggie cut her hair, so, yes, she must have cut it herself.
MacKenzie tells Jane Barrow that if any important returns come in while she's on the air to send it back to the New York desk. Jane Barrow doesn't like that. "Send it back," MacKenzie says. "We'll try not to drop sarin gas on anyone while we do it," Jane Barrow says. TEN POINTS FOR JANE BARROW!! The entire control room goes "whaaaaaa?" and "no you di'int!" MacKenzie tells Jane to address her complaints to MacKenzie and not the rest of the control room, which did nothing wrong.
"I have people here who could live without Genoa on their résumé, so I'm not sure from where you get the nerve to insist that Will call the race," Jane says. I just realized that Jane is played by the woman from Eureka, that show I recapped on the Sci-Fi/SyFy channel! Good to see her getting work in this amazing role. I am not being sarcastic, by the way. Season 3 of this show needs to follow the awesome DC bureau and not these NY assholes. I want to know more about Terry Smith. Is Terry male? Female? What is his or her relationship with Jane Barrow? How is the DC team dealing with what happened to Dantana, which was clearly the fault of the evil New York team? They're probably pretty demoralized.
MacKenzie attempts to tell Jane off by reminding her that Dantana was a DC producer and the one who "committed journalistic malpractice," so maybe Jane should get someone to go through every story he ever produced for them to make sure he didn't cook any more footage. "Let me know if you have any recommendations for your job when I take Will's chair in New York," Jane says. Um, why would Jane get that chair? It clearly should go to Terry Smith. Hey, what if … Jane Barrow and Terry Smith are the same person??? Intrigue! The storyline possibilities are endless in DC, I'm telling you. Charlie ruins everything by showing up and telling Jane to go back to New York so Will can call the election. "Copy that," Jane says.
Dr. Dr. Sloan is trying to make an important point when Will interrupts her to call the Senate race in Ohio and Missouri, which means the Democrats will have control of the Senate. Will asks Taylor if they can thank the Tea Party for that, but Taylor says more credit can go to Chris Christie and the media. That means it's time for Will to pretend the media doesn't have a liberal bias (which they kinda do. Or at least, the people who make bad TV shows about the media do). Taylor says News Night ran 14 negative stories about Republicans for every one it ran about Democrats. Will says that's because Republicans are stupid and crazy. No liberal bias here! Dr. Dr. Sloan cuts in with another statistic viewers might find interesting. Nope! Will has to cut to Claire McCaskill victory party.
Neal asks Jim for a favor from Hallie. He wrote a story about the effect the debates had on the presidential race and quoted MacKenzie in it, while mentioning that she was the president of the Cambridge union. He needs Hallie to put her byline on it and post it on her blog so Wikipedia will change MacKenzie's stupid entry already. Jim thinks Hallie is too ethical to slap her byline on a story she didn't write for the sole purpose of someone's freaking Wikipedia page, but he'll try.
Will takes a second to make fun of OWS again. Also, he says Michele Bachmann is crazy. I hope she sues him for that. Asshole. I mean, maybe she is crazy, but that's not really for Will to decide or say.
MacKenzie tells Don that Reese is still wandering around NYC trying to decide what to do. Also, his girlfriend is a Rockette. Don asks MacKenzie if there's anything that will convince her that Genoa wasn't her fault. Probably not, since it was.
Dr. Dr. Sloan tries to make an important point, but Will cuts her off to go to Jane Barrow.
Skype stairs time! Hallie wants to know why Jim just sent her an article with her byline on it that she didn't write. And she couldn't email or call? This is ridiculous. Jim exposits why they need Hallie to do this. "What's the mood there?" he asks. "What's the mood there?" Hallie asks. She has to go, but Jim wants to ask her a question first. "Do I ever make you feel like you're dumb?" he asks, "I really like you and I don't want to blow it." "You're not smart enough to make me feel like I'm dumb," Hallie says. Jim "jokes" that she's ugly. What a great relationship. That's not hurtful at all. I can't imagine why Lisa thought Jim made her feel inferior when he says stuff like that.
In Don's office, Dr. Dr. Sloan tells Don about voting statistics and which income group is more likely to vote for which candidate. The Intern interrupts her to say they're about to call Ohio, so they have to get back into the studio. Don runs out, but Dr. Dr. Sloan stays behind. She notices that Don has a poster from Sweet Smell of Success. Which means that, to the surprise of just about no one, Don is the guy who bought her book.
Dr. Dr. Sloan walks into the control room, whips out a book, signs it, and makes out with Don. Then she gives him the book. So now he gets two books for the price of one! Also Dr. Dr. Sloan! Good deal. "What I have can't be taught," Don says once he's regained the power of speech.
And Jane Barrow is forced to throw to Will and the New York team so they can announce Obama's re-election. SHOCKING. I'm so glad they didn't leave this cliffhanger until season.
Meanwhile, that guy in Michigan is now losing, Maggie informs Jim. Instead of going off to retract the stupid call, he asks Maggie why she cut her hair. "I wanted a change," Maggie says, claiming that it's the work of a stylist. But Jim knows better! Although he doesn't understand why Maggie never told Lisa about her trip to Uganda. Maggie doesn't intend to. She tells Jim that dead kid liked her hair, so she cut it off like a year after he died.
Maggie needs to hear from a big strong man, so Jim tells her that Daniel would've died even harder if Maggie and Gary Cooper hadn't tried to save him. "What was your crime?" Jim asks, because we have to wrap this storyline up in the two minutes. Maggie says she only wants to be tough, but she isn't actually. Not like MacKenzie and Jim and Don. Yes. MacKenzie is so tough. Like the time that she lost her shit and physically attacked someone, which is every episode. Jim says Maggie is tough. Hangin' tough, even.
This leads Maggie to reminisce about when she first met Jim in the first episode. Let's flashback! It's not enough to exposit stuff that happened not too long ago in the series – now we're going to talk about it at length AND show it! Also, wow, Jim's hair was much better back then. Anyway, Maggie says she first noticed Jim when he clicked on that news alert. Whatever, Daniel is still dead and Maggie isn't. Good moment, guys.
Taylor asks Will who he voted for. He refuses to answer but admits that he is a Republican. Taylor reminds us that he called the Tea Party "the American Taliban." She asks him if he only calls himself a Republican so that he can criticize real Republicans. They realize that anyone who was watching ACN before this has certainly clicked away, right? No one cares! The president just got re-elected and these people are talking about themselves!
To the zero people watching, Will tells us all again why he doesn't like Republicans now-a-days. They all hate gays and science and facts and poor people. Okay, no. I mean, far be it from me to sit here and defend Republicans, but they aren't all like that. Saying that they are makes you sound just as stupid as you think every single Republican in the country is, Sorkin. Also, Will doesn't like that he's supposed to hate Democrats now and thinks that the Republicans' worst crime. Democrats all totally love and respect Republicans and never do things like write an entire series about how stupid they all are as a whole, so this is a fair criticism.
Dr. Dr. Sloan decides to speak up, only for Will to interrupt and go to Jane Barrow. "Come on!" Dr. Dr. Sloan cries. It's too bad no one is watching ACN with moments like that. Also, moments like that are where this show is the most fun and watchable. I hope there will be more.
Will finds Charlie sitting in his office, staring at the wall. Even we've only got five minutes left in this thing, he wastes more of them with a long-winded speech before getting to his point: it was awesome that they put aside the Petraeus story because getting information to Brody's voters that he wrote something really weird and awful about women and rape in 1990 was more important to society and democracy. Clearly, Charlie says, what they've done here is special and necessary, so he will not resign after all. Nor shall Will. Charlie has realized that this is all Dantana's fault and not an "institutional failure" (which it was) and that they actually showed remarkable restraint waiting 11 months to report that story that the United States was guilty of war crimes. Yes. Probably would've been better if they've waited a billion months to report that story, though.
Will agrees that they did everything right except for what they did wrong, but he's not willing to let MacKenzie take the fall for them even though this is her fault. While Charlie pontificates, Will stares into space and has A Realization. "Except for the things she did wrong, she did everything right, too. The rest was me." Charlie doesn't get it. Will grabs the engagement ring out of his desk drawer because, you know, Chekhov, and runs out of the room. Charlie reconsiders his decision not to resign.
Will frantically runs around ACN looking for MacKenzie. He finds her at the anchor desk and pulls her aside to tell her a long story about a kid who loved to shred paper. God, this is the worst proposal ever. How does Sorkin make a proposal boring? Oh, right – long-winded speeches and also we have no attachment to the couple getting engaged because they haven't so much as kissed in six years or ever that we've seen and finally this is coming out of nowhere. Who proposes marriage without even being in a relationship with someone?! Even those Duggars who never even kiss before marriage are allowed to exchange side-hugs. I have a feeling that Sorkin wrote this when he was afraid The Newsroom wouldn't be coming back season.
So Will finishes the story by saying he's realized that it's better to be happy by doing the thing that stops making you sad, so here is a giant ring and let's get married! "What in the fuck is happening right now?" MacKenzie says. What the fuck indeed. Will mansplains why she should say yes, and she does. Following this, their bodies mash together very awkwardly. That kiss should've been rehearsed a bit more, I think. Or maybe Will is trying to kiss her without activating her Avian Bone Syndrome (tm 30 Rock NEVER FORGET).
Reese, Reese's Rockette Girlfriend, Jane Fonda and Marcia Gay Harden wander into the newsroom for Reese's Decision. But first, Jane Fonda insults Rockette's choice of careers. Charlie walks in and Reese tells him that, after careful consideration and much walking, he's decided that ACN didn't do anything wrong on Genoa and he's not going to let anyone resign over it. Charlie says that doesn't matter since no one wants to resign anymore. Reese says he already took the high road here and did the right thing. Charlie says he did not, since the right thing was already done, by Charlie. "History should reflect that I acted admirably!" Reese says. Charlie says that's impossible to ever know for sure. "You're all idiots," Jane Fonda says.
Speaking of idiots, Will and MacKenzie walk in to inform the room that they're engaged. And also dating now, I guess. She's "the future Mrs. MacKenzie Morgan McHale McAvoy – no, that's not going to work … " Will says. Everyone smiles and cheers.
And we've really got to wrap this thing up, so – music montage!! I guess they ran out of the music budget for the season so we've got a terrible cover of Pete Townsend's "Let My Love Open the Door."
Good news! The Republican in Michigan won the election. By 27 votes, so I'm sure there won't be a recount or anything.
Dr. Dr. Sloan chats with Taylor instead of, oh I don't know, Don.
Lisa and Maggie finally talk. I guess they're friends again?
We get a look at Hallie's website and I can't believe she has an investor. It is so shitty. "The Blog," really? And did she actually pay someone to design that site? Was that person from 1997? And what are these categories? Home, Politics, National, World, Video (um, sure) and Books? So she just randomly reviews books, too? When? She's been stuck on the Romney bus this entire time! Why would anyone read this crappy site? And how? The words are so small. Anyway, Hallie wrote an article for her terrible site about debates and used a quote from MacKenzie, Cambridge union president. Yeah, I'm sure Wikipedia will see this site as a reliable source of information. It looks like a homework assignment from my interactive design class, not a professional news outlet. Hallie says she wrote the entry herself rather than using Neal's copy (good idea – those ACN people cannot be trusted! Remember Genoa?) as a thank you gift to Jim for giving her the interview with Romney.
Will and Taylor exchange fist bumps. I hope that embarrassing display wasn't on the air. Dr. Dr. Sloan and Don stare at each other.
MacKenzie wears her giant ring.
Maggie sees a new news alert on the monitor. It's something about China. She clicks on it, because that's how we do the news.
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