The Newsroom 1.6: Bullies

[marymary]

Will receives a death threat and a tabloid threat, which result in a security detail and new assignment for Jim and Maggie, respectively. Sloan pursues the latest on the Fukijima nuclear reactor and goes too far, on air. Will's insomnia drives him to his psychiatrist, who uncovers the origin of some of his behavior.

Comments

[tomfoolery815]

You two are right about the staging of the ring bit. I like that they showed Will ripping up the receipt -- his lies about his feelings for Mackenzie are in concentric circles, aren't they? -- but it could have been executed better.

Meanwhile, I think the problem with being a Sorkin junkie is that, in knowing he likes to recycle, you can actually see things coming. Which is contrary to one of the best things about a Sorkin story: It moves fast because it presumes you (the viewer) want to be treated as a smart person.

But when you've already seen Dan Rydell, Josh Lyman and Jed Bartlet in therapy, you know the chord change in the bridge without anyone calling it out to you. They took so long for Will to answer the therapist's question about standing up to his father, I was able to formulate my guess, say it aloud (to myself) ... and only be off by one year. (My guess was age 10.)

[anatolealice]

I was still suprised by how blindsided I was by the al anon comment. When the shrink brought up the drunk, abusive father I thought, oh, of course, how did this not occur to me. But then later, the almost aside about al anon? Big, gulping, I can't breathe sobs over it. Sigh. Wasn't expecting either.

[tomfoolery815]

- I found the argument between Will and Santorum's spokesman pretty unrealistic. Just in terms of how heated it got, on both sides. I get that it was supposed to show Will going over the line, but I thought it was unrealistic on the other side too.
I agree, Mary. The TV newspeople who engage in bullying either know and don't care that they're bullies, or just never let that on-air facade fall. Also, people who are being bullied on air don't fire back that way. They're either too flustered, or cut off before they have a chance to respond

[marymary]

... and the fact that they were using the opposition-research assignment as an excuse to dig up stuff on each other

Yes! Excellent point -- that was funny.

But when you've already seen Dan Rydell, Josh Lyman and Jed Bartlet in therapy, you know the chord change in the bridge without anyone calling it out to you.

SO TRUE. Even the cadence of the whole thing and the bantery style of the session is straight out of the Josh/Jed/Dan therapy.

But I learned, with this episode, that I need what happens during ACN's programs to be more realistic than that.

Conversely, I liked Sloan's whole storyline.

Yes, exactly -- the on-air stuff has to feel realistic or all the rest of it falls apart, IMO. Hers worked; his didn't. Sloan going off-script and talking to them in Japanese felt not too far from what, say, an Anderson Cooper might do if he got a little ticked off.

"Go back to Japanese."
Hee! Don had quite a roller-coaster ride there. Nice work, again, by Sadoski.Yep, all that was a really nice piece for him and he killed it. I continue

[gatsbyfan]

I continue to like TS more and more.
For me it was more the bit at the end with Sloan. He sees Jim and Maggie in the conference room and gets concerned again. This time enough to say something to Sloan. Poor Sloan has no sense of these things. .

It was the first time where I felt like we got to see that he really cares about Maggie and why she might continue to got back to him after breaking up with I'm so often. (I'm not counting the last episode and the flowers. That was Valentines day. That's artificial.)

[marymary]

OH AND did you guys notice that we got (as expected) the disdainful characterization of "the internet?" The faceless, homogenous, idiotic, cowardly and (apparently) racist masses?

So...News Night HAS to air website user comments, which are apparently consistently stupid. They have to. I feel so bad for Will, forced to deal with that every night. If only there were some way he could change the show.