Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
By: Lady Sharon
Well tea drinkers, here’s another Newsroom episode that I just didn’t like.
This week there’s a lot more whining about Casey Anthony and trying to overcome doing something you hate for a greater good, i.e. getting to host the Republican debate. This moaning is old, and just to the left of the story they should be exploring. There’s multiple story lines baking, including Neal, the Internet trolls, and Will’s death threat, but none of them come to a head in these 60 minutes, so why are they clogging up our minds and wasting minutes on them now? Overall, the scene setups in this ep are rudimentary storytelling ploys, and the jokes are trite and as obvious as an elephant in the room. I expect more. I need more.
Everything changes yet again with our not-quite beloved characters. My opinion of the show is changing… not for the better. And so the closing song of this episode is quite on point.
Aaron asks, “Will you still love me [after I put you through all the same BS for another week?]”
And I ask Aaron, “Will you still love me after you read this scathing review?”
Casey and Weiner Wincing
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| Will hates doing this interview so much, he lights up while the segment runs. Photo: source |
I can’t believe they are still chaffing over this shit. And the fact that I still have to listen to it is chaffing me too. For the love of everything holy… QUIT YER BITCHIN' and SUCK IT UP!
In your professional career, sometimes you have to do things you don’t agree with. Yes, it’s important to stand up for your beliefs and disagree, diplomatically. But ultimately you have to get behind the boss and the company, and sing the party line. Otherwise, it’s counter to leadership and akin to mutiny.
So quite frankly, I can’t believe good ol’ “Morals Sorkin” is advocating this inappropriate behavior by drawing out this agonizing story line. Why not take the high road sir, and instead explore how it’s more appropriate and awfully difficult to swallow your pride sometimes?
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| Photo: source |
And aside from the fact that the speech was disconnected and confusing, it was also utterly overacted. If it had been done without the calisthenics jumping, arm flailing and screaming like a banshee, it would have at least been tolerable.
My final decision: Nope, I don’t like Emily Mortimer. At all. She grates on me and needs a serious overhaul or axing for Season Two.
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| Hell yes she is!!! Photo: source |
Will outright bullies Maggie into getting her roommate Lisa (who went to high school with Casey Anthony) to appear on News Night. They need the ratings and she’s a guest no other news show can get. Shame on you Will, that was despicable.
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| Lisa Lambert Photo: source |
Of course Lisa is above this news story, too. And this sets her up to give her own speech about how reporting on this story is below her. Blah, blah, blah.
Her speech occurs when Maggie and Jim are at Lisa’s boutique clothing store where she works as a sales person. She’s on a soapbox, they’re trying to convince her to be a guest, all while she’s otherwise preoccupied helping a client, so of course, shenanigans ensue. This scene and the jokes in it were predictable and trite. Bo-ring.
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| Jim: "Do you think they're kissing in there?" Photo: source |
Lisa's client is buying a dress for the Tony’s. Jim, played by John Gallagher Jr, is a Tony-award winner himself. Cute real-life cross over.
Lisa and her client were in the dressing room together and Jim wonders, “Do you think they’re kissing in there?”
Every boyfriend and husband who watches the show dutifully and faithfully for their woman appreciated that line – because every single one of them has had that thought at least once in their life.
Yeah, it was a cheap laugh, but it was the best line in the whole episode.
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| Jim: “If I was a woman, I’d spend the whole day kissing other women. I don’t understand gay men or straight women.” Maggie: “You know you’re talking out loud right now?” Photo: source |
Jim presents his research on Solomon Hancock (the NSA whistle blower) to Charlie and Will. Apparently he’s had a questionable psych assessment, had his security clearance demoted, stalked his ex-wife, and a long time ago, tried to pick up a hooker. Oh the humanity!!!
Everyone’s saying, “who gives a flying #@$ if he lost a level of clearance and has a restraining order from his ex-wife” that doesn’t make him an unreliable psychopath! While the story is fiction, it is such a shame that in today’s society, one little screw up can cast enough doubt to tarnish a reputation in a really big way. If Aaron was trying to make this point, it was well-played, though only in a drive-by sort of way.
This will likely conclude next week, now that it's been brewing for 3 long weeks.
Trolling on a River
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| Neal: “[I'll post] heinous and incendiary lies about you… and insinuate that you're a whore” on that blog and your Wikipedia page. Photo: source |
He got his foot in the door with the Internet trolls by getting a page on that financial website forum shut down, but they think he’s small time. Sloan suggests to him that he may be small time because he hasn’t done something big like make death threats against Will.
Hmmm…
He didn’t make threats, but Neal did something with that little nugget.
Later, when chatting online with the trolls, one of them, screen name Charisma, calls him a poser. Apparently he recognized a hacked IP address Neal used, and calls him out on it. He tells him he knows that IP because that’s the address he, Charisma, has been using to threaten Will’s life!
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| Photo: source |
Neal calls Lonny and gives him the 4-1-1. I smell a big season finale with this next week!
Rock the Mock Debate!
We finally get to see the mock debate. Will and the News Night staff stage it for a pair of Republican Party officials in the bullpen. ACN not only wants to get the contract to air the debate but also hopes to get the RNC guys to agree to a new format:
Will: “Questions have to be tougher. [Candidates] have to be able to square their campaign rhetoric with facts. They have to be stopped when they’re not answering the question. And they have to be called out when their answers contradict the facts. Our job is to find the two candidates who give the voters the best competing arguments... There are no rules. I question a candidate until I’m done.”
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| Photo: source |
We can all agree their format is a good one. And we all agree that reaching for the stars and correcting injustices is worthwhile. But it’s hard to do. Change is hard. It’s easier to “do things the way we’ve always done them” and to save your own skin, job or money.
That’s a topic worth exploring better – but in one or two episodes, not 5.
Shocker, they didn’t get the debate! The format is too harsh for those sissy mary political candidates.
So now, either Will will cave and give the RNC their debate rules (which reporter Brian Brenner thinks) or they’ll all continue whining about how they lowered their standards for a debate they didn’t get. Either way, I can barely take anymore of this.
Is the Love-Quadrangle Finally Over? Perhaps…
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| So, he's been seeing other women? They were broken up for crying out loud! Photo: source |
Despite Jim’s wanting to go on a real first date with Lisa, she rebuffs his advances. Because she doesn’t want to be anyone’s “second choice.” And neither does he… hey! Listen to that! Jim has a small and long overdue realization.
With a cleverly if sappily placed poem, Mac talks Jim into finally telling Maggie how he feels about her. “Gather ye rosebuds…” before I have to start crackin’ skulls!
And now the moment we all saw coming, like the Bermuda Triangle, which is clearly marked on the map:
Jim arrives at Maggie and Lisa’s apartment to confess his undying love. But Don is there, so of course he wimps out. To further complicate things, Lisa has changed her mind and is now 100% Team Jimbo. She swoops in, kisses him, and sweeps him out to walk and talk. Oh pu-lease. I feel just about as yanked around as I’m sure Lisa is about to feel when (possibly, hopefully) next week, he comes clean.
Don of course, saw the look on Jim’s face, and knows he was there for Maggie. He tells her so, and then proceeds to confess that he’s been dating other women. Maggie is stunned.
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| Photo: source |
Don has really grown on me over the course of this season, and while in my first recap I was all “Down with Don,” I now really respect and (wow) like him. He’s turned out to be one of the more interesting and real characters in the series. I enjoyed watching his journey unfold. It was unexpected, which after nine episodes of the same old thing, is unexpected. He needs to stay for Season Two!
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| Even Mac is giving herself a real head slap during another of her screaming nutty's. Photo: source |
What I do mind, is that it was signified by another of Mac’s nervous breakdowns. (mental head slap)
Again, the News Night staff isn’t gonna take it anymore:
Will tells Brian to just “write the truth” about him and News Night in his story. Oh, brother.
Will and Mac decide to scrap the run-down for the night, likely to be another installment of The Casey and Weiner Show, and do an impromptu segment on the debt ceiling. Sloan is thrilled. And I would be too, if we actually get to see that argument in any worthwhile detail.
But there’s one more episode left!
- What happens on Jim and Lisa’s walk? Will he ever own up to his feelings for Maggie?
- Will Charlie green light the NSA whistleblower story even though he’s not squeaky clean?
- Will the trolls capture Neal and turn him to stone?
- Will we see an attack on Will’s life and will Lonny return to save him? (Dear Lord, please make that last one a “yes.”)
