Now that's more like it! This was an outstanding episode, reminiscent of the best of The West Wing, filled with tension, suspense, great acting and plotted so tightly that we are completely wrapped up in believing how News Night botched this Operation Genoa story. If there's anyone who wonders why I will always keep watching Aaron Sorkin shows, it's because I know there is the potential for television like this.
We start off with lawyer lady MGH interviewing Don now about the failed story, and this is where we find out that MGH is working on behalf of Jerry Dantana, who is suing ACN for "wrongful termination," after he had been fired for doctoring that video last week of the general refusing to confirm the military using sarin on civilians. Don is outraged by the audacity of Jerry to sue them and wants to know how MGH can have any doubt about the ethics of what he did, but she explains that Jerry's claim is of an "institutional failure" on the part of ACN, for which he should not have been the only person fired. Don disagrees and thinks the doctored tapes are reason enough for the Red Team not to have been able to catch the holes in the story, but as we go on to see, nearly every witness News Night secured falls apart one by one.
We then flash back to the final Red Team meeting, where Jim remains unconvinced, even though by this time, Charlie and Mac are ready to go with it. Jerry continues to forcefully defend his evidence, and he's played extremely well, as I said last week but it deserves another mention, by a perfectly upright, righteous Hamish Linklater. He points out that Jim mainly doesn't trust the story because he's the producer on it, and Jim agrees, as we find out from his own questioning in the present day that the first hint of the story Jerry provided came from a source in the army that Jim would not have trusted, had he not been off covering the Romney campaign at the time. Don and Sloan have various other concerns about not airing the story, namely safety issues involving riots and the upcoming election, but final say rests with Will, who after hearing the whole thing for the first time, confirms that he'd heard a similar story from another source, who later turns out to be the same one who'd told it to Charlie. This of course, is not caught at the time, and after Will says he trusts Mac and Charlie, the greenlight is given and News Night finally airs their report on Operation Genoa.
After it's aired, we see that there was long time waiting for a response from the Department of Defense, and MGH tells us this was because they had brought in lawyers and the attorney general before finally sending out to ACN their strongest possible denial, even threatening charges under the Espionage Act. Before this, Stomtonavich calls in to protest the editing of his interview, but it's not taken very seriously from Mac, Charlie or Will, who assume it's the standard "taken out of context" complaint from disgruntled interviewees, not having figured out yet that the raw footage had been fudged. There's some pretty heavy foreshadowing over the way Mac eventually figures this out (we knew it was going to have something to do with the basketball game playing on the TV behind the general), as Will explains to her about the time clocks in certain sports, which gives her the idea to get him one for when he's on the air.
The ratings come in and are higher than expected, but the elation doesn't last long, as the notice from the DOD arrives and brings everyone back down to Earth, but they decide to stand by the story for the time being. Then, one by one, the witnesses start falling apart, the first one being Sweeney, the soldier who was embedded in the unit that was conducting the mission. After some cute flirting between Don and Sloan in the control room over who'd better survive in prison should they be indicted (and they seriously need to get together soon, I'm hoping the plan is NOT to drag this out ala Josh and Donna on The West Wing), Sweeney says in an on-air interview with Elliot Hirsch, who anchors the show before Will's, that he and two others suffered traumatic brain injuries, a fact no one on the staff had been aware of. Don panics and pulls him off the air, and the staff reconvenes in the conference room to go over who knew what yet again.
This is where Maggie confesses to not having been in the room with Jerry for the Stomtonavich interview, and doubt begins to creep up on Mac and Will, but not yet Charlie for the moment. Mac tells Will she's having doubts now about her interview with the final witness who came to light last week, Valenzuela, a buddy of Sweeney's, whom she now feels she might have led in the questioning. As she goes over her transcript with him, she realizes he doesn't produce any original facts he didn't obtain from her or Sweeney, and may just want to stand by his friend.
While all this is going on, the attack on the Benghazi consulate is beginning to happen as Neal and the lower level staff are on it, and this is the only thing in the episode that bugged a tiny bit. It turns out that News Night "discovers" that the protests in Libya were not over the infamous muslim movie sent out by the pastor Terry Jones, and were probably a coordinated terrorist attack, but News Night decides not to run that theory because they don't want to take risks with accuracy in the face of the flailing Genoa report. That's awfully convenient and another one of those hindsight issues people accuse the show of taking with "real" news stories, but it was a pretty minor part of this episode, so it doesn't hurt it much.
Charlie decides to meet with his source again, and this time we find out that his source has flat out lied to his face and was seeking revenge against Charlie for the death of his son, a one time ACN intern who was fired for writing political opinions about the news on the internet, after he'd been warned not to. The kid was an addict who then relapsed and died soon after, something for which the source blames Charlie. So he fed him false information in retaliation, and Charlie is stunned, as is the audience. This revelation could have been foreshadowed in a previous episode instead of being allowed to seemingly come out of nowhere, but the surprise is shocking enough that it works in the way that it's intended.
Finally, Mac sees the new time clock for Will and realizes that Jerry's tape might have been off, so sure enough, when she sits down with the footage and plays it back she sees the clock on the basketball game jump around between the numbers 19, 2, then 14- and she's stunned and shaking when she confronts Jerry in the elevator over what he's done. Jerry is adamant and defensive, yet knows he's finished, and then Mac tearfully tells Will and the others they have to retract the entire story.
In present day (which is now the day before the election) Will says to MGH that this was an institutional failure and that after the election he, Mac and Charlie will be resigning from ACN. Then, as the three of them convene to tell Leona Lansing, Jane Fonda charges into the room and pretty much dominates the final scene with a wonderful speech filled with Sorkinese witticisms, mocking each of them, expressing outrage over Jerry's duplicity, and refusing to accept their resignations, instead daring them to earn the public trust back. She's backed up by MGH in a surprise (but not really) reveal that she's not a bad guy after all- and that caps off a very tightly written, acted and dramatic episode, by far the best of the series.
In fact, it may say a lot that The Newsroom's best episode was almost entirely devoted to their fictional news story, and even though I thought that was going to be the contradiction that would hurt the show this season, it came together in a far more compelling way than anything they've done that takes place in the "real world." Should the show have been set in a fictional universe all along, or at least a parallel one, taking inspiration from Law & Order's "ripped from the headlines" style of doing things? It's too late for that I suppose, but this was definitely a step in the right direction and I think it's something that should probably be taken note of going forward. No new episode next week, but part one of the finale is set to air on Sept 8, so I'll see you then folks!
