The Newsroom - Season Finale - Recap and Review - The Greater Fool

"The Greater Fool," the first season finale of The Newsroom, is a bit of a tonal shift from earlier episodes, which were concerned with presenting the personal conflicts of these characters in the way they reported the news. Tonight, we switch more to an outright character study, getting down to the nitty-gritty with hardly much in the way of on-camera reporting (outside of the "[x] days ago" framing device, in which Will's on-screen editorializing accompanied each act break). What we're left with is an episode that delivers on moving characters forward while also resetting them, in a way; Jim and Maggie still aren't together, nor are Will and Mac, and Will isn't really any closer to lasting change in the cable news industry than when he started, but the characters have grown over time, embracing their idealism while leavening it with the realities of their experiences (via the stories they've reported) these past ten episodes. In this sense, I considered the finale to be a pretty big success.

As "The Greater Fool" opens, Lonny, Mac and Charlie Skinner discover Will, passed out in his apartment, having vomited a trail of blood. At the hospital, it's discovered that Will (Jeff Daniels) accidentally overdosed on a combination of antidepressants and bourbon, leading to a bleeding ulcer. This is due to the stress created by the magazine piece Will commissioned about News Night, which excoriates Will for his pretentious on-screen persona. To make matters worse, TMI columnist Nina Howard (Hope Davis) has received a tip from "an unimpeachable source" that Will was high while on the air on the night of May 1st, the night in which news of Osama bin Laden's death was released to the public. Nina is resolved to see the story published, but cannot go public until she gets a second source to confirm it. All this coalesces into a breakdown, with Will resolving to leave News Night and ACN altogether.

It's strange to see Will so defeatist and "woe is me" about his situation, despite how bad it really is, since the narrative of this season has involved Will rediscovering his ethical center in an industry with which ethics don't seem to count for much. These momentary doubts, however, are necessary in Will's progression, and his resolve returns to him when it's discovered that Nina's "unimpeachable source" is Will himself, as he had sent a voicemail to Mac while under the influence, which Nina (under the orders of ACN President Reese Lansing) retrieved by hacking into Mac's phone. They now have Nina, Leona, and Reese by the proverbial throat, as they can't publish the story about Will without revealing the felony they committed to obtain this information. Will bolts up out of his hospital bed, ready to fight, with Leona Lansing at the top of his hit list.

The meeting is every bit as tense as the buildup has suggested, with Leona (Jane Fonda) outright firing Will for being high on the air, even acknowledging that he was really great that night despite his altered state. But the firing doesn't stick when Charlie reveals what he's discovered. As it happens, Charlie had met with Solomon Hancock, the NSA analyst who brought the Lansings' hacking scheme to his attention, to let him down gently: he cannot be utilized as a credible witness, given his reduced security clearance (the result of a troubling psych evaluation) and criminal history (having violated a restraining order against his ex-wife). Hancock, who had been treated as a pariah by his own family for years, ultimately kills himself by jumping off the Queensboro Bridge shortly after his fateful meeting with Charlie, leaving Skinner to fight to maintain his composure. Sam Waterston is tremendous in this scene, at first refusing to hear the news of Hancock's suicide that he knows Jim has come to deliver him, and then telling Jim that it isn't that hard to call your parents every once in a while, implying that Hancock might have had the Will to keep living had he felt as though his adult children still wanted him in their lives. It's a poignant, understated scene that feeds into the fire with which he goes after the Lansings, as he now has confidential files from the late Hancock implicating Reese in hacking to obtain the information for Nina Howard's hit pieces. And like that, Will is no longer fired, and the Lansings are no longer in complete control. Will returns to the News Night desk, triumphant, and things seem back to normal, though he still has no intention of telling Mac what the rest of his inebriated voicemail message entailed (we only hear a brief snippet towards the end of the episode, when Nina Howard plays the message on her laptop before sending it to the recycle bin. "After tonight I really want to tell you that I never stopped...". We could probably infer the rest, though with Will McAvoy it's hard to know for sure).

Credit: HBO

However, the power dynamic between Will and Mac (Emily Mortimer) is not entirely back to the status quo, as it's revealed that the hallucination Will had of Mac in the audience in episode one, which partially led to his outburst at a sorority girl's insipid line of questioning, wasn't a hallucination at all. Mac was really there, in the audience, for Will's big breakdown that started all of this. Will is appropriately incensed at Mac's convenient decision not to tell him this at any point in the last fifteen months. Worse still, Mac is interviewing the sorority girl in question for an internship. Will charges into the meeting room and demands to know exactly why the hell this girl would come here at all. She responds, appropriating a recurring quote from Don Quixote, that she knows what "a greater fool" is, and she wants to be one too. Will is moved and decides to hire her, but not before asking her to repeat her infamous question to him: "What makes America the greatest nation in the world?" Will's response this time: "You." Will McAvoy's quixotic idealism is back, the sharper corners of his partisan rhetoric smoothed by his dedication to truth and holding irresponsible legislators accountable.

Meanwhile, the Don/Maggie/Jim storyline finally reaches its apex. Jim (John Gallagher, Jr.) is intent on sharing Lisa's interests now that they're an actual couple, so he looks into a Sex and the City bus tour of New York City on the advice of Neal (Dev Patel), in order to learn as much as he can about his new girlfriend's favorite show without really ever having to watch it himself. On the other side of the fence, Don (Thomas Sadoski) is mulling around the possibility of asking Maggie (Alison Pill) to move in with him. When Don is ruffled about Maggie, he becomes pretty tactless, as he has the gall to ask Sloan (Olivia Munn) for her advice, after she'd just announced to him her intention to leave News Night for a new job she's been offered. Yet, despite Don dismissing her threat to leave with a curt "Well, I still have five days to change your mind," Sloan still offers her heartfelt opinions about Don and his Maggie situation, declaring that he's not a bad guy, and that he shouldn't spend so much time believing that he is. Don asks Sloan why on Earth a girl like her is single, and she responds with the relatively out-of-nowhere revelation: "Because you never asked me out." Don is moved, but still announces his resolve to make things work with Maggie. Sloan agrees that this is what a good guy would do. Jim interrupts the tension by arriving for a meeting with Don, and learns of Don's intention to ask Maggie to move in with him, strengthening the regret Jim feels for not fighting harder for Maggie.

Maggie, herself, is also starting to feel a pang of regret over not telling Lisa (Kelen Coleman) how she feels about Jim. Over dinner, Maggie breaks it to her Don believes Jim, on the night he got back together with Lisa, actually came by the apartment to declare his feelings for Maggie before Lisa interrupted him. Lisa storms off, and Maggie gives chase, but not before a Sex and the City tour bus kicks a puddle up into her face, causing her to finally lose it. Maggie rants against the impracticality of the Sex and the City myth of single women in New York City, finally revealing that, hey, sometimes you're in love with your roommate's boyfriend. And, of course, this happens to be the Sex and the City tour bus that Jim is on at the moment. Now, instead of chasing, Maggie is the one being chased, trying to avoid confronting this situation with Jim altogether. He finally catches up with her and, after nine episodes of interminable back-and-forthery, Jim and Maggie share their first kiss.

To finally see the two openly acknowledge their feelings is a fitting payoff, though I have to admit that they look equal parts perfect and uncanny together, since the chemistry between Gallagher and Pill fluctuated inconsistently throughout the season. The kiss, at least, shows us the real on-screen potential of the pairing, which has had its share of obstacles since its inception. Yet nothing is really resolved between them. Maggie must go meet Don and tell him that it's not working out, and she shows considerable resolve on the way over, rehearsing what she'll say to him once she gets there. But that resolve dissipates when she realizes Don has prepared a candlelight dinner to pop the "move-in" question. And we pretty much know what Maggie is (or rather, isn't) going to do. She stays with Don, while Jim (who Maggie never called back) lies to Lisa about who he'd really come to see at the apartment that night in order to stay with her. A platonic, clinical work relationship is reestablished between the two, and it's as if the kiss never happened, for now.

The actual news element of "The Greater Fool" seemed marginalized completely, with little more than stories on The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and voter ID fraud, the latter story suggested by Will's hospital nurse. Her elderly aunt, a woman named Dorothy Cooper, is being denied the right to vote due to a lack of government issued identification. It prevents another cause for Will to rally for, another windmill for Don Quixote to charge.

Credit: HBO

This was a fitting, character-driven finale for a show that has been more character-driven than most on television this season. Sure, this episode had a framing device of constantly shifting between "[x] days ago" and the present, and yes, there is the larger context of the news which these people covered in every other episode. But taken in its totality is a series that is more concerned with the interpersonal dynamics of a crew of disparate personalities thrown into high-stress scenarios, where their thoroughness, or lack thereof, affects how the public is able to understand the world in which they live; because what's the point of news if not to inform? It's a question couched in the larger rhetoric of a more personal community, a group of people from all ages and walks of life, who don't seem to understand their world any better than their viewers. Yet they are the ones in the privileged position, choosing the stories the public will hear, while imposing a principle upon themselves to present the facts as they are, never altering the story to suit their own needs. The Newsroom was fascinating television, even in weaker weeks, exactly because it presented the conflicting dilemma of mounting a truly non-partisan cable news show, all the while illustrating, at a subtler level, the motif of the blind leading the blind. These are people who are very much still finding their feet in the evolving world of cable news, of all news. I'll be very interested to see how season two handles this premise going forward.