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"The Newsroom" Recap: "The Greater Fool"

Graham Clark |
August 27, 2012 | 10:44 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Jeff Daniels on The Newsroom (via HBO)
Jeff Daniels on The Newsroom (via HBO)
The schmaltzy theme song lilted one last time. Quips were lobbed, zingers were zinged. In these and other ways, the dust came to settle on The Newsroom's rookie season.

Aaron Sorkin's familiar fetish for narrative knotting came out early this week. The first seconds of the episode have Will McAvoy behind the news desk, beginning a broadcast. He states that his report will not address any number of pertinent issues, including the United States' economic woes. But before explaining why, viewers are yanked back eight days in time.

The season finale's real opening followed a tired and true journalistic methodology: if it bleeds, it leads. The victim now is none other than cultural crusader McAvoy himself, suddenly vanished from his apartment. A harrowed search by Lonny Church and MacKenzie McHale's leads to the bathroom, where McAvoy lays incapacitated. Blood is spattered on his lips, his bathmat and his toilet paper.

At the hospital, a doctor explains the incident was the result of an ulcer. In an ensuing discussion between Church, McHale and Charlie Skinner, McAvoy's antidepressant prescription and pained response to his coverage in New York Magazine are aired.

Returning in time to the broadcast, McAvoy spiels away on a piece about photo identification requirements for voting. He argues that legislation requiring photo ID is an ugly, undemocratic move, made by Republicans looking to disenfranchise would-be liberal ballot-casters.

The Celtic braid of a story structure hops back seven days, revealing the newscast in its inception. Jim Harper is seeking information about about Sex and the City, to better gel with his girlfriend Lisa Lambert.

At the hospital, McHale whaps McAvoy with a pillow to vent her frustration over his current medical condition. She blames the New York piece, "The Greater Fool," penned by McHale's ex Brian Brenner. Advising McAvoy to "get up off the damn mat" (in an odd coincidence, the same expression was used prominently in the last episode of Starz!'s program The Boss). In a sad kind of threat, McAvoy says he may not return to News Night.

They're interrupted when McHale receives a call from Nina Howard, gossip reporter of note. Without going into detail, the columnist reveals she's been tipped off to the fact that McAvoy was high on air. McHale convos on the matter with Skinner, without gaining any headway.

Skinner in turn chats with Solomon Hancock, the wannabe whistleblower from the NSA. When he finds out News Night can't run with his story due to his spotty psychological background, he's crushed. "Beef stew," he mutters, beginning a vignette on his failed family life.

While Solomon and Skinner discuss phone tapping, Sloan Sabbith has accepted a new job offer. Don Keefer is looking to her for advice, he's looking to invite Maggie to move in with him. Sabbith suggests that he should be dating her instead, in a never-before-suggested bit of personal complication.

Harper has the job of breaking some news: he informs Skinner that Hancock's body has been discovered. He committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. "Call your parents once in awhile," is the bosses reply, "it's really not that hard."

Cutting back to the newscast, McAvoy dives deep on a rant about republicanism. He suggests a need to treasure all voters and separate religion from politics.

The rationale behind that night's subject matter, as it turns out, comes from one of McAvoy's nurses. Her mother has been barred from casting a ballot by voter identification requirements. The civic injustice strikes a nerve in the newsman, causing him to bound from his hospital bed. His return to the workplace is met with a standing ovation and the first verse of "Baba O'Riley." A montage portraying the staff coming together to put on a killer show is par for the course by now.

Professional obligations aside, the remaining bulk of the episode centers on interpersonal developments. Lambert and Maggie Jordan fight about Harper's true romantic feelings. 

A Carrie-Bradshaw-themed breakdown ensues, haphazardly leading to Jordan and Harper smooching, longstanding romantic entanglements be damned. Only when Harper goes to break the news to her boyfriend, Keefer melts her steadfast heart with a vast spread of candles.

Then comes the season's big finale: a confrontation between News Night's producers and execs that would be happy to see McAvoy off the air. Skinner drops a bomb on the table: an envelope sent by Solomon, which he claims contains proof of illegal phone tapping led by Reese Lansing. 

The executive silver-spooner admits he's been beat, and the News Night folks tape his whole confession. Only once they've left is the envelope opened, containing nothing but a recipe for beef stew.

McAvoy ends his show with a big riff, calling the Republican party "The American Taliban." Harper and Jordan relocate their relationship to the friend zone once more. But there's time for once last reveal: McHale shows McAvoy her notebook, containing the sign that set him off on his rant in episode one. 

The slim, blonde subject of his wrath, as fate would have it, is at that very moment applying for an internship at News Night. McAvoy takes the liberty of suggesting this young girl will come to represent and translate the beauty of his vision for the rest of the world, setting the scene for a whole 'nother season of his high-minded posturing.

Comparing Sorkin to his manufactured Newroom protagonist is rather intuitive. Both are male media creators with strictly defined visions, loved and beguiled by the masses for their efforts. Over the course of this series' existence to date, McAvoy's campaign for civility has been defined in great detail, whereas reading Sorkin's agenda requires some critical inference.

An eon of storytelling has been set by the mantra of "show, don't tell." The breaking news portions of the program adhere to this principle consistently, and one component of The Newsroom that excites viewers is the dramatic framing of newscast production. Watching the facts come in while sweat spills behind the teleprompter can be exciting, as was the case in nearly every installment of this season.

However, concerning personal interactions between individuals, the huge majority of developments came by word of mouth — the foundational years of McHale and McAvoy's romantic tension existed only in allusion, for instance. These plot points were meant to be noted by viewers purely by assumption; Harper and Jordan passionately kissing is an exception that underscores how static their romance has been since day one.

Sorkin is not on a campaign to eschew visual, obvious communication over verbose explanation. It's not as though his remaining years will be spent making media that exclusively tells, instead of showing. The agenda set by his overwrought scripts suggest that he believes audiences want to consume densely woven narratives. Simply too much happens on The Newsroom for every event to be shown plainly. That's for the popcorn-churning blockbusters; he'll stuff bits of storytelling quirkiness into his work with the passion he once devoted to packing cocaine into his paranasal sinuses, regardless of what can be communicated visually.

Whatever The Newsroom looks like when it returns to the air next year, that banner of Sorkin's campaign should still fly high.

Contact Staff Reporter Graham Clark here; follow him here.



 

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