'The Newsroom' Recap: 'Boston'
- sarahkloepple
- Nov 10, 2014
- 2 min read
The final season of "The Newsroom" debuted on HBO last night with everything you'd expect out of a Sorkin-created premiere.
When we last left the "News Night" gang at ACN, the big lawsuit against the network had wrapped up, Maggie (Alison Pill) was deep in her PTSD after a tragic trip to Africa and Will and MacKenzie were newly engaged.
So obviously the premiere opens with MacKenzie (Emily Mortimer) and Will (Jeff Daniels) arguing over the number of bridemaids that are going to be in the wedding. They even name drop Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams as contenders among the bridal party.
Then the alert comes in: two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Everyone speeds into action as we've seen countless times before. And that's when I got excited. "The Newsroom" is finally back.
But I will say this: it's not as enjoyable as it used to be. When it first aired a mere two years ago, I was awed. Aaron Sorkin had created this insanely entertaining hybrid of fiction and non-fiction. A non-existant team of reporters covering real-life current events.
Plus, it's Aaron Sorkin. So there was an abundance of rally-the-troops speeches, over-the-top romantic gestures, and lightening fast jokes littered in the dialogue.
What worked so well for the first season was the almost procedural framing of the show. Each episode presented a different crisis that had to be covered from the BP oil spill to Gabby Giffords to Osama bin Laden.
Then the second season dragged out two enormous storylines in 10 episodes: the lawsuit and the 2012 election. Suddenly, the show's pacing came to a screeching halt. And they put Jim (John Gallagher Jr.), the only relatable and most sympathetic character, on the road! Major mistake.
Back to the present. This third and final season lays on some pretty hefty dilemmas, including sweet, Bigfoot-loving Neal (Dev Patel) being in possession of and accidentally co-conspiring with classified government documents; and Sloan (Olivia Munn) discovering that ACN is about to be the victim of a "hostile takeover."
Woah! But under all of that, an adorable romance between Sloan and Don (Thomas Sadoski) is slowly and surely underway. Their back-and-forth is usually the highlight of any episode.
Everyone was weirdly surprised when Maggie pulled off an on-the-spot broadcoast from Boston (Elliot, the normal anchor, had an allergic reaction to walnuts because plot!) even though she's been a producer for, like, awhile now.
And Jim is still dating Meryl Streep’s daughter aka Hallie (Grace Gummer), who suddenly works at ACN now.
I'm curious as to how this show will wrap up in only five more episodes. And Sorkin has already inserted his own thoughts on that relatively short timespan, including the last line from last night spoken by Will, in reference to a story (there's always a metaphorical story) from MacKenzie: "We're not in the middle of the third act, we just got to the end of the first."
Well, here's to a great final act.
