The Newsroom “Unintended Consequences” Review: What happens in Africa stays in Africa

Maggie looking sad on The Newsroom

Photo Credit: HBO 

Some brief thoughts on this week’s The Newsroom after I audit this class…

Let’s get straight to the bullets again because of repetition:

• Let me say before we get too far that this was easily the best episode of the season so far and that the “what happened in Africa” stuff was truly heartbreaking and powerful. Yes I don’t like Maggie, and she’s always been the worst character on the show but that’s usually because she’s stuck being or saying something stupid. But what happens in “Unintended Consequences” is truly great at not only humanizing this new version of Maggie but also kind of breaks the whole love pentagon thing. It’s just great because of the fact that it shows that Sorkin can do something good with these characters without them either being jerks or complete ditses. It’s a sign of good things to come and I was very happy with those developments.

• The other part of the episode which I’m happy with is the Genoa storyline. As I said last week I like the mystery that the show is building up and every new revelation (including the mentions of people with fresh eyes eventually looking over it) has me intrigued with where the show plans to take these characters.

• The part I didn’t like was about everything to do with Occupy Wall Street this week. Will hasn’t had all that much to do over the last few episodes and when he did have things to do here he was pretty annoying. The whole resolution of him being lonely and sad as why he crapped on the occupy lady was a stupid excuse that she should never have bought. Sure Will is a sad man but that’s entirely out of his own doing and really should have nothing to do with his interviewing skills. I just hate all the excuses that the show makes for Will being an utter jerk and that in the end apparently he’s just a great guy in disguise. I just can never buy it.

• Oh and Jim didn’t look like an utter jerk this week! Yay! Although I still don’t get how that woman liked him that much… Oh well he’s back in New York now!

That’s all for this week! Overall good episode because of the emotional tug of the Maggie storyline and Jim not seeming like a total jerk.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?