Sloan looks worried on The Newsroom
Photo Credit: HBO
A full review of the best episode of The Newsroom to date as
soon as I wait for that audio file to download…
It worked it really worked! I sat in disbelief tonight watching
the Newsroom’s finest hour “News Night with Will McAvoy” play out in such a
clean and effective manner after juggling so many pieces at the same time.
Usually the show lets the pieces fall into a strange mess of stupid romantic
comedy and over preachy news coverage, but “News Night with Will McAvoy” fit
so well together with so many of the pieces that usually bring the show down completely
gone. It was beautiful!
The best thing that “News Night with Will McAvoy” could have
done was to make the episode play out in real time. This allowed the scenes to
play out with a certain amount of urgency and the storylines to be resolved by
the end of the episode. There was no time for dilly dallying and messing around
with bad jokes in meetings, weird tech flubs or bad romantic comedy, it was all
about clear and efficiently told stories that were effective on every level. If
I had it my way this is the way most episodes of The Newsroom would play out in
real time as it seems to allow Sorkin to be good with emotional beets and not
allow him to trip over himself constantly. Also it puts the best part of the entire
show the actual making of News Night. Really it just allows time for the show
to use its best element to its advantage and that is always a good thing.
Let’s start with the first Will storyline in forever to
actually work well. The arc of Will’s father dying was very well handled both
from the writing and acting side. It feels completely in character for Will to
react that way and Jeff Daniels plays Will with his usual confused seeming
cool. It wasn’t annoying, pretentious, or smug but instead managed to work as a
beautiful emotional sequence. Will’s relationship with his father is perfectly displayed
in only the brief moments of insight that are given. It’s a beautiful piece of
character that needed no bad jokes or romantic tension to pull off and it was
wonderful.
Another wonderful character pieces was Sloan’s naked
pictures arc in this episode. I was dreading the arc at the beginning of the
episode because it made Sloan look like an idiot and it paired her with Don. I
feared that it would be a horrible degradation of a great character but I
couldn’t be more wrong. Sloan’s arc provided insight into the character and her
feelings and didn’t make any stupid moves towards being more romantically
interested in Don. It also ended with her freaking kicking her former boyfriend
in the balls and punching him in the face then taking a picture of the wreckage
she made all out of revenge for the photos of her that he posted. Then in a
move of sheer brilliance Don’s there to help her get away, without a stupid
awkward romance scene trailing or following. They just worked as a tag team,
and handled the situation perfectly. It was isolated from the rest of the
episode mostly but it provided two of the show’s better characters something fantastic
to do, and that’s what counts.
The rest of the episode revolved around how everyone was dealing
with making an actual episode of News Night. Finally we see how Mac can be a
very competent executive producer as she makes all the right calls here. The show
shows her in complete control of her product and how she’s not messing around
with it. She was in control of Will, in control of the other producers around
her, and even on the guest who wanted to come out on her show (she was having
none of that publicity stunt). When there is a mess up Mac handles it with
grace and control. There is none of the yelling and crazy business seen last
season. Her handling of Neil can be a tad tough at times but it comes off
likable and well placed instead of crazy and annoying. Also Maggie now goes two
weeks without being completely annoying and awful, and after last week seems
much more sympathetic to me. This may change in a week but for now I’m ok with
Maggie for a little bit. (By the way when on the Newsroom timeline does Maggie
cut her hair because she hasn’t at the time of this episode)
“News Night with Will McAvoy” was easily the best episode of
the Newsroom even better than the show’s very good pilot. It allowed all the
most interesting parts of the show to pop and the character arcs to actually
work. It was a fantastic episode that is a bright spot for the show, and even
if the show goes back to being stupid and frustrating next week (which is a
good bet) I will be able to look back at “News Night with Will McAvoy” as an
example of just how good this show has the potential of being.
That’s just me though. What did everyone else think.
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