The Newsroom: “I’ll Try to Fix You” Review

Will and Sloan stare amazed at how bad the show was this week

 So before I talk about this episode let’s go through a couple of random points. First off I’m about to go on a little bit of a rant about this episode and am prefacing this by saying there is some good in this episode. I would like to say this because I will probably gloss over the fact that there is a little bit of good in this episode and so I’m saying it right now. Second off Fix You may be the finest montage song ever as this show has now been added to the many many shows that have used the song for montages. Ok now that that’s over and done with now it’s time for a review of “I’ll Try and Fix You”.

If “News Night 2.0” was plain and simply frustrating then “I’ll Try to Fix You” was absolutely infuriating.  The relationships and female characters on this show are so grating and terrible so when a whole episode is based around them and said episode makes these things even more unbearable it just eats at the soul. The reason last week’s episode was successful is because it ignored all of the things that sucked about the show and made some of the other things better (and it moved so quickly so they couldn’t really give time to much but the newscast). So when you do none of that and do the things that were bad in the second episode worse than the second episode did them you have a giant problem.

Where to start… Oh yeah AARON SORKIN NEEDS TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE FEMALE CHARACTERS! When you have the first 45 minutes of the episode involve Will ranting to three different Women (who were written so stupidly) about how stupid, mean, and insensitive each of them are. Sure I can see how Aaron Sorkin was trying to comment on how terrible celebrity gossip but it was so poorly done that it was so unbearably that none of that really mattered. The worst part was that as the episode went on each of the women that Will ended up dating (who by the way were all suppose to be semi educated people) got stupider and stupider. Sure Will got made fun of and reprimanded for being a total jerk but it still felt like Will was always right and these women need to be put into their places.

Then there’s Jim, Maggie, and Don’s relationship. This week Don, thanks to him felling insecure with Jim’s play in his and Maggie’s relationship, sets up Jim with Maggie’s roommate. This would be fine and all except for the fact that both women in the situation act like total morons. Maggie’s roommate is very concerned with the fact that she thinks that she isn’t smart enough to be with the seemingly amazing Jim. Maggie’s roommate feels so dumb that she fears Jim’s intelligence. This is absolutely terrible as it continues to make all the women on the show (except for Sloan who hasn’t had much to do) look like complete morons. Oh and Maggie isn’t much better as the show continues to make her the most stupid, outrageously annoying character on the show. It continues this week with her feeling offended that Jim and her roommate didn’t tell her they were sleeping together and was completely oblivious to Don’s goals for Jim.

As for Mac, well she didn’t have much to do this week she still feels too much like she’s in “Will is so great that even offending him would be blasphemy” mode. Well it looks like that relationship was mended by the end of the episode it continues to be frustrating that so much time is spent on making such a seemingly powerful woman so stupid and hopelessly delirious.

Despite the first 45 minutes of the episode being absolutely horrible the last ten minutes featured what the show does well. The montage to “Fix You” when the whole staff came together for a big news story was well done for the most part although it still ran into some problems that have been evident throughout the season. The main problem was that again these characters seem to have perfect hindsight on how the story is going to break. The story of a U.S. senator being show was covered so quickly and so precisely that it felt too good to be true. There were still the strange coincidences and prophetic judgment calls that have plagued past news stories on this show. Despite that when the montage worked it really worked and was a little shining light in a very dark tunnel.

In conclusion, the thing that bugs me the most is that this show has the potential to be (and at times has been) really good and yet it keeps falling into the same traps week in and week out. This week was the worst of these falling into traps episodes and the show cannot continue down this path if I am to continue to stay invested in it.

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