The Newsroom - Recap: Blondes Have Less Fun
Recap and review of The Newsroom - Season 2 Episode 4 - Unintended Consequences:
The Newsroom has always had the capacity to be a dark show, due largely to the central conceit that it's a show that covers the news medium, where the old mantra is "If it bleeds, it leads." But beyond certain episodes here and there, such as "I'll Try to Fix You," which dealt with the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the show hasn't really gotten all that bleak or hopeless before now.
But "Unintended Consequences" is an episode that takes a traumatic event and uses it to catalyze a character's progression, which some might find a bit appalling, since the event in question is the murder of a child. However, I feel as though this is a transitional moment for Maggie's character, the point at which she stops being a silly supporting character defined by her love life. Granted, she'll simply be defined by this instead, but at least it's a point of genuine pathos, as the child took a bullet intended for her. There's more of an emotional arc in that story than in whether or not she gets together with Jim. Of course, Maggie's story is only one facet of the episode, which is a pretty solid installment all-around.
Credit: HBO
So we learn what happened to Maggie (Alison Pill) on her trip to Africa, and why her state of mind is being cross-examined by Rebecca Halliday (Marcia Gay Harden), Atlantis World Media's attorney. On the trip, Maggie and Gary Cooper (her cameraman, not the actor) end up having to stay at an orphanage to avoid traveling the treacherous roads after dark, as hostile cattle raiders roam the lands. While there, Maggie befriends a young boy named Daniel, who becomes enchanted by her blonde hair. Maggie reads to him from the same storybook seven times, and they develop a quick bond, with Maggie bringing the introverted boy out of his shell and Daniel putting Maggie at ease in her new surroundings. It's a sweet relationship, if nothing else. But the minute Daniel becomes transfixed by Maggie's blonde hair, and the orphanage director joking remarks that blonde hair is nothing but trouble, we immediately realize why she cut it and dyed it red. The irony of the situation is that Daniel isn't even an orphan. His parents simply placed him in the orphanage as a form of daycare while they were working, assuming he'd be safer there than in the village where they lived. They couldn't have known that raiders would appear on the scene and open fire on the orphanage. It's pretty intense even though we know how it's going to end. Maggie carries Daniel to the orphanage bus on her back, but turns briefly when Gary stumbles behind her. In that split second, a gunshot rings out, and a bullet that would have hit Maggie hits Daniel instead, killing him instantly. As we see the boy's lifeless eyes on the floor of the bus, it's easy to understand how Maggie came back changed. It's made all the more harrowing by the discovery that this all could have been avoided if they'd just handed over their news camera. But no one there spoke the proper dialect. It's a compellingly tragic development, made all the more bleak and inexorable by the future narration that pretty much reveals to us that there's no other way for this to end.
Credit: HBO
Of course, the flashes forward don't tell us where the other storylines end up. For example, are Jim (John Gallagher, Jr.) and Hallie (Grace Gummer) still together? Or was it a one-time hookup? The show seems intent on having a romance, so it might as well be between these two. Here, it gets started once Jim overhears Hallie's boss verbally abuse her over the phone for missing out on a campaign story due to not having been on the official press bus. Luckily, Jim is able to bait press director Taylor (Constance Zimmer) into lashing out at him. So, to keep it under wraps, she'll do anything. Jim sees this as his opportunity to finally get thirty minutes with the candidate, but instead of taking the chance for himself, he passes it on to Hallie. Yet her high is short-lived, as she overhears Mackenzie (Emily Mortimer) chewing Jim out for giving away a top story to a girl he likes. Hallie is offended, and it looks to turn into Jim/Maggie all over again, except Jim has a bit more self-respect now than he had then, essentially telling Hallie that he doesn't care if she's offended, somebody had to stick it to her jerk of a boss. And, because this is Aaron Sorkin, he gets the girl because of it. But I don't mind, since Hallie has kind of grown on me, and Jim is still in a three-way race with Charlie (Sam Waterston) and Sloan (Olivia Munn) for my favorite character on the show. I just don't expect the romance between Jim and Hallie to last.
Credit: HBO
Nor do I expect the whole Operation Genoa tip to end well, except that's actually bolstered by evidence from the flashforwards, in which we're told that the fallout from this could spell doom for ACN. But we're still in the inchoate stages of the Operation Genoa story, with this week chronicling Jerry (Hamish Linklater) and Neal's (Dev Patel) desperate attempts to get Occupy Wall Street activist Shelly (Aya Cash) to take them to a source that can help verify the sarin gas claims. Shelly had previously agreed to take Jerry and Neal to where the informant hangs out, but rescinds that offer following her devastating interview segment on News Night, in which Will (Jeff Daniels) tears her apart on the air. And so she refuses to help until she gets an apology from Will, resulting in some of the best stuff of the episode, as various members of the ACN team try to apologize on Will's behalf, only to lose their temper at Shelly's stubbornness and tell her off. Olivia Munn is once again solid gold in every scene she's in, first beaming that Shelly thinks she's a "TV star," and then calling Shelly out on thinking she's superior just because she teaches at a college. While Munn is slowly becoming this show's MVP, Thomas Sadoski is also a quiet scene-stealer, as Don similarly loses his temper with Shelly and tells her off in the hallway outside her class.
Credit: HBO
Yet it's Will who makes things right, appearing at the end of Shelly's class to admit that he had fun during their interview when he shouldn't have been having fun at all. Jeff Daniels has a way of making Will immensely likable in his smugness, as there's a certain sincerity to everything he says. The apology here, in which he states he's sorry for having embarrassed her, seems as if it's almost enough to make Shelly forget why she hated the guy in the first place. She agrees to help Neal meet with the informant...only to learn that they've already found him. Well, that kind of renders the last hour pointless, if they could just find the guy anyway. But hey, Will apologized when he didn't have to! And he got to audit the rest of a pretty young woman's college class! It's the little victories with this show...like Charlie scaring Mackenzie by smashing his face against the glass outside the conference room.
Credit: HBO
"Unintended Consequences" isn't a landmark episode or anything, but it's certainly compelling in many respects. Maggie's story would have been enough to anchor the hour, but the Operation Genoa storyline also helps carry much of the weight. I'm most interested to see how so many capable people could be taken in by the story -- or how so much independent evidence could exist for something that, ultimately, wasn't true. But then, that's kind of how myth, legend and rumor exist. If there's no smoke, there can be no fire. Yet smoke doesn't always mean fire.