Tonight on The Newsroom, the events of summer 2011 are briskly moving along into the fall, as Jim is now accepted onto the Romney campaign bus and following the candidate around the country, avoiding Maggie's calls as much as he can. He also seems to be making a new friend in the form of another reporter named Hallie, who I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of in the future. As of tonight she didn't seem to be doing much besides typing on her laptop in every scene she was in, but she appeared to warm to Jim by the end of the episode.
Maggie is focused on a bit more this week as she deals with the fallout from last season's freakout on a sidewalk being recorded and put up on youtube for everyone to see. This is what caused Don to break up with her last week, and she proceeds to move back in with Lisa after spending a night on the floor of Sloan's office. She tracks down the woman who put the video up and tails her to Queens to confront her in a laundromat, with Sloan tagging along for moral support. I suspect they're making Maggie and Sloan more buddy-buddy this year to set up the inevitable tension when Sloan and Don hook up, as looks likely to happen soon. When Maggie goes back to Lisa's apartment, Lisa is furious about the video and severs their friendship, scolding Maggie for lying to her for a year about her feelings for Jim. This comment reminded me that when it comes to the romances on this show, a lot more time is passing than you think, because in order to deal with the current events, months could be going by between (and during) episodes. So that "inevitable" Sloan/Don hookup I mentioned may actually be years in the making by now, which is kind of weird.
Thankfully, Maggie isn't just dealing with relationship drama- this episode sets up her eventful trip to Africa that was mentioned last week. As of the end of the hour she and Gary are headed overseas, to help her become the point person on a "serious" issue, which is something she complains to Mac about, saying she knows she's the most expendable on the team (probably echoing the thoughts of the audience on that point as well).
Meanwhile, drone policy is front and center again, as Anwar al-Awlaki is killed in this episode, the result of a direct assassination against an American citizen turned terrorist. Will and Mac are of opposing views on this, and it's clear to me that these kinds of policies are the kind where Aaron Sorkin has an easier time setting up "both sides" of an issue- despite Will's claim that he's taking the Republican position, there are plenty of Democrats who are for drone strikes versus ground troops, including those in the White House. This is the reason why the controversy has been mostly contained in libertarian circles. When it comes to matters of national security, the findings have been that voters tend to trust the person they voted for regarding a specific policy, especially when it does not directly affect them, which is how most see the drone strikes. Besides this, Will continues to be upset tonight about being pulled off the 9/11 anniversary coverage, and we see ten year old footage of his first day anchoring, which happened to be on 9/11, where we get to see him interacting with Charlie for the first time.
Don, meanwhile, is upset about the pending execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia man who was convicted 20 years ago for having killed a police officer. Focusing on this case was interesting to me, as I'll admit to not knowing much about this, and it was another reminder how shining a light on issues that were not as highly publicized can be just as, if not more enlightening than the ones we all remember from less than two years ago. And finally, Occupy Wall Street is starting to heat up just a bit, as Neal is arrested in a protest where the police have gotten unnecessarily aggressive with demonstrators, as we know is going to start happening more and more.
As for the ongoing arc of the season, Jim's replacement producer keeps bugging Mac about the Operation Genoa story, and finally she talks to a soldier who claims he was there during the black op, which was an extraction mission where they supposedly used nerve gas on civilians.
This was something of a quiet episode, mostly setting up stories for future development, and I appreciated the looks we got at the newsroom in action. Mac is hugely improved in efficiency as a producer this season, and thankfully, Maggie seems to be at least attempting to head in that direction as well. The 9/11 look back at Will and Charlie was a bit odd (I think for me that was more of the awkwardness of very real life colliding with fictional people), but the continuing Genoa story is at least intriguing. We're led to believe News Night made a mistake on this, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going. But on the downside, no Jane Fonda tonight? Boo- come on guys, pay up and make her a regular. When she's on the air you can't go wrong.
