The Newsroom - Season 1 Episode 3 - Recap and Review - The 112th Congress

The latest episode of The Newsroom finds our gruff, occasionally likable head anchor, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) making the Tea Party his cause célèbre, but not before opening the latest broadcast of News Night with an on-air apology to his viewers for being a part of an industry of misdirection and sensationalism. Of course, for every bit of heartfelt sincerity that Will allows, he must back it up with a healthy helping of indignation. Likening the Tea Party to the radical movements of the 1960s, Will goes on a crusade, taking a pair of Tea Party members to task over their insistence that the party answers to no one, leading Will to respond with the names of David and Charles Koch, the two-headed dragon behind Koch Industries, which has offered financial backing to the Tea Party over the past several years. It's Will McAvoy at his most prosecutorial, and it makes sense. Not only did Mackenzie (Emily Mortimer) come outright and say, last week, that she wanted Will to be the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney of the show's courtroom, this week we discover that Will was, in fact, a prosecutor before getting into the TV business, boasting a 94% success rate under the Brooklyn DA (wonder if it was Jack McCoy?).

But for all the substantive information we learn about Will, we're also reminded that, the majority of the time, he's simply a jerk. Will has re-entered the dating scene, and seems happy to go out of his way to bring all his dates to the newsroom, in full view of a jealous Mackenzie, as he does with a New York Jets cheerleader named Danielle, and two more beautiful women throughout the episode. This leaves Maggie (Alison Pill) to basically be the one to break it to Will that he's being a massive jackwagon, and owes Mackenzie a bit more consideration than he's been showing. The message seems to sink into Will, but as he seeks out Mackenzie to apologize, he finds her in the control room with her new boyfriend. Touché, Mac.

The melodrama of the relationships is indicative of one of The Newsroom's more troubling aspects: its warped gender politics. The women of Newsroom seem to be incapable of accomplishing anything without their superior male counterparts, as Maggie completely fell apart last week and blew the centerpiece interview with Arizona governor Jan Brewer due to her emotionally torrid past with the governor's representative, with whom she was conducting the pre-interview. And all this, after she insisted that she wouldn't need Jim (John Gallagher, Jr.), one of News Night's producers, to help out or moderate the pre-interview. Maggie keeps it up tonight, insisting that on-again/off-again boyfriend Don isn't the massive tool he appears to be, echoing Mac's insistence last week that Will truly is a wonderful man, despite his passive-aggressive scowling to everyone who dares say two words to him. It's like some macabre representation of battered spouses, with both women constantly doting on their respective men to the point of distraction, if not outright error, in their work, and falling to pieces at the slightest provocation. We discover tonight that Maggie and Don have broken up four times in two months. And this is attributed to Maggie's inability to argue with Don, instead simply opting to make like Christian and bail, when the going gets too tough.

I generally hate how Aaron Sorkin writes his women, since there's such a cynical undercurrent of dependability inherent in each male-female relationship. Never mind that the details of every relationship between every man and every woman seems to be everyone's business but that of the two people involved, as Don gets chewed out by Elliott, the anchor of the new show he's producing, to either stay with Maggie or just end it already, while Jim insists to Maggie that she stay with Don, since they must have something between them if they keep getting back together. It's a fairly absurd argument, but there you go. And when there's a woman who has genuine power over the men, as Jane Fonda does tonight, as the president of Atlantis World Media, the parent company of ACN, she's left to do little else but complain about Will to Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston). He's too real for her, you see, as his anti-Tea Party rhetoric is threatening several shady business deals she has going.

Fonda's character, Lynn Lansing, is the mother of the ratings-obsessed network executive from last week, Reese. Together, they pose a threat to Will's tenure at ACN, as Lansing threatens to manufacture a reason to fire him if he doesn't back off. I don't know if this story will really lead to anything all that exciting since a) we know Will isn't going to get fired, b) it's even less likely from what we know about Will that he'd compromise his values just to placate the brass, and c) it takes us even farther away from the real meat and potatoes of the show, the business of the news. Because, really, it's the best part of this show. It could easily be argued that this is because the character dynamics are well-established, which lends weight to when these people are under the gun, working hard to meet deadlines and ratings approval. But I feel like that's too big of a leap to make. Don't get me wrong, the show is pretty great, all things considered. Like I've said before, there really isn't anything else like this on television right now, except maybe BBC's The Hour. There's room in the market for what this show provides, a fast-paced, incisive look at the events of the recent past, fronted by compelling character dynamics, and situations unique to the news industry. For that reason alone, this is a show I'll continue to love, since it's well-done even at its schlockiest. But I really do wish they'd tone it down with the soap opera elements, since it's not something that's connecting nearly as well as the show probably thinks it is.

As for the rest of the episode, Sam Waterston is tremendous in his scenes with Fonda, showing the kind of flash and verve he showed as iconic District Attorney Jack McCoy on Law & Order. I could stand to see more of Charlie Skinner, a character who always makes the most of every second of screentime. This was also a superb showcase for Jeff Daniels, particularly in his opening missive to the News Night audience, as much a declaration of purpose as an apology. It's a resolution to, as Mackenzie puts it, tell “the boring side of the story.” But News Night is intent upon giving its audience the substance without the useless sensationalism. One can only hope The Newsroom follows its own lead.

Credit: HBO