The Newsroom - Recap: Am I About To Be Murdered?
Recap video and review of The Newsroom - Season 2 Episode 3 - Willie Pete:
It's easy to forget, but The Newsroom frequently has highly-comedic overtones woven into its intellectualist fabric. In short, though the ACN staff is largely business-oriented, you still have silly moments such as Maggie (Alison Pill) freaking out about the effects of her malaria medication for her impending Africa trip, or Don (Thomas Sadoski) doing two pratfalls involving an office chair he failed to properly fix. And then you have Sloan (Olivia Munn), who fears she's the leak responsible for inadvertently revealing that Will (Jeff Daniels) wasn't sick when he was taken off the network's 9/11 coverage, he was removed outright. There's even a brief, terrific little scene in which Neal (Dev Patel) gets Mackenzie (Emily Mortimer) to agree to an on-air segment by insulting her shoes.
Naturally, these are all smaller stories set within the larger framework of the more serious exploration of what constitutes a news story. The veracity of the Operation Genoa story is still far from concrete, and there are internal issues within the organization, as Will and Charlie (Sam Waterston) continue to face opposition from Atlantis World Media president Reese Lansing (Chris Messina), who is revealed to have been the actual leak for the 9/11 coverage story. And throughout all of this, we have Will contending with the very real power that Nina Howard (Hope Davis) wields with her tabloid rag, TMI. There are a host of factors in play that make "Willie Pete" an engaging episode of TV, but it's how those various working parts interact with one another that takes something engaging and makes it compelling.
Credit: HBO
There is no real central story to "Willie Pete" other than Will's dealings with Nina Howard, and even those moments don't take up large chunks of the episode. For the most part, Will attempts to court Nina for a story -- and for much more. Their interactions play off of developments from season one, such as Will's voicemail to Mac while high, which Nina received and then deleted, in a rare bit of restraint. Nina says she can't date Will because he obviously is still not over Mac, and it's an amusing scene if, for no other reason, the fact that Will emptied out the ACN executive restaurant and hired a pianist to play "What the World Needs Now". The business with Nina is really only one facet of Will's storyline, as he and Charlie confront Reese Lansing once they learn that he was responsible for the leak.
Credit: HBO
Things go disastrously, as the evidence they plan to use to blackmail Reese into meeting them halfway turns out to have been compromised when the incriminating audio they believe to have is nowhere to be found on the voice recorder, since Will apparently never actually hit record. "I'm the president of Atlantis World Media. I don't meet you halfway," Reese tells the defeated men. "You meet me the full way." Will and Charlie are sent off with their figurative tails between their legs, but hey, at least Will scored an awesome moment early in the episode, ripping on a group of prospective Republican presidential candidates during the primaries in September 2011 for failing to stick up for a gay soldier who was booed for asking a question during the debates. It's not exactly subtle, but there's always going to be a vicarious thrill when Will gets on his high horse, whether he's actually right about the subject he's sermonizing about or not. And besides, he has Nina Howard to keep him company, as the two are chilling in his apartment by episode's end, post-hookup. Of course, timing is always a pain in the ass on this show, so when Mac calls, Nina lies when she asks what the rest of Will's inebriated voicemail from last season said. She tells Mac that Will only said that she did a great job with the Osama coverage -- conveniently leaving out that Will more or less confessed his feelings on the spot. Will doesn't think Nina should feel as if she's done anything wrong. I don't really see the Nina/Will pairing lasting, but I do feel Daniels and Davis have pretty good chemistry with one another.
Credit: HBO
Jim (John Gallagher, Jr.) is still catching hell on the Romney press bus, particularly from Hallie (Grace Gummer), who resents that Jim is trying to infiltrate their world despite the fact that he's a senior producer with no experience or knowledge about what it's like to cover a campaign in the trenches like this. Hallie remains acerbic towards Jim despite his repeated attempts to get the Romney campaign to actually answer his questions, as their responses are frustratingly evasive. As they spend more time together, Jim begins to learn about Hallie's ideals, and how she has questions of her own, from a woman's perspective, that the Romney campaign has been unwilling to answer. Ultimately, Jim calls out the aides in front of the entire bus after a long day on the campaign trail, making note of their evasiveness and encouraging Hallie to speak up about Romney's inconsistent approach to medicare and abortion policies. She eventually does speak up, and Jim even wins one another reporter to his cause...but that's all.
Credit: HBO
The trio is kicked off the bus and left to put a plan together on their own. I still love Jim, even if his plans don't ever really seem to work out. He's not an idealist, necessarily, but he does have a bit of a romantic notion about the news that is similar to Will's, in many ways. And Mac's, for that matter. She's still skeptical about the Operation Genoa tip, but she indulges Jerry (Hamish Linklater), who insists this could be the biggest story in years. But given the flashforwards, there's a cringeworthy bit of hindsight in watching Jerry be so obsessive about his efforts to climb the corporate ladder, since we know how it's all going to turn out. He and Mac meet with the inside source for Operation Genoa, who claims that the government is using sarin gas. Things escalate at the end of the episode when Jerry receives a tweet from a witness to Operation Genoa in Pakistan, alleging that the U.S. used White Phosphorus, a.k.a. Willie Pete, on a target. And the slow-mo car crash for ACN continues, as there's really no way for the team to avoid what's coming. It's already set in stone.
Credit: HBO
"Willie Pete" is a solid episode that contributes to the already strong season The Newsroom is having. I may have preferred last week's episode, even with all the relationship silliness with Maggie, but this was probably the better episode overall. I'm looking forward to what Aaron Sorkin has in store for the rest of the season, as we're already moving at a pretty fast pace. Should be interesting.