NO ONE I ship are getting together? That’s not how season finales are supposed to work.

Well, we’ve reached the end of the first season and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that the episode wasn’t titled “What Kind of Day Has it Been” as every other first season finale of every Sorkin show to date has been. For the record, I don’t hate the title, “The Greater Fool.” In fact, I really like the concept and what it represents. It’s perfectly fitting for the show. What I don’t like, is that it’s not “What Kind of Day Has it Been.” I completely understand why it wouldn’t necessarily work (you know, seeing as the episode didn’t take place over the course of a single day.), but it still rankles me. For your reading pleasure I’ve left my all-caps freak-outs that I wrote out in my notes. There are… quite a few.

We start the episode with Lonnie, Mac and a door guard searching Will’s apartment. Someone saw him go in, but never come out. (There’s a joke in there somewhere.) Lonnie finds a trail of blood, one that starts at the New York Magazine sitting on his desk and leads to his body, shirt bloodied, crumpled in front of the toilet. After being rushed to the hospital, the doctor says that his stomach was bleeding because he self-medicated with antidepressants. Lonnie knows that Will takes antidepressants, but Mac didn’t. She’s upset she missed that development, though she did contribute knowledge of old college injuries.

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There was a lot going on in this episode. Relationships are imploding and forming and deteriorating for good and being patched together. There are a bunch of plots, so sorry that this is kind of a long one:

The Blackout:

Lasts all of two seconds. The episode picks up immediately where the previous left off, with the studio plunged into darkness because God is sending Mac a message. Obviously Mac starts preaching about miracles. She hates what their show is being forced to cover in the name of ‘news’ in order to keep ratings up and potentially host the RNC debate their way. But this power outage is totally an opportunity to be a team again.

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This is absolutely how I felt when I had to answer constituent calls at my congressional internship.

First off, can we talk about the fact that the name of the episode is actually: “The Blackout Part I: Tragedy Porn.” Because what even? This might actually be the worst title of any single episode of television I’ve ever seen. If you can think of a worse one, please, tell me in the comments. Now sit back and relax and look at all of the Parks and Rec crossovers (don’t worry, I’ve compiled a nice little cheat-sheet for you down below).

Down to business. Paul Schneider is in the episode as Brian, a reporter from New York Magazine. He’s looking especially scruffy which is in no way a bad thing. For some strange reason, will had his pick of newspaper/magazine and writer to do a story on the reinvention of Newsnight, and he chose Brian. Don’t worry, it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart to help the guy get a cover story or anything. No way, it’s to torture himself and Mac with the guy that Mac cheated on him with.

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Hey guys, I’m back! First off, a giant thank you to Bethany for her awesome job recapping last week’s episode. I would’ve done it, but I was obliged to go to a family reunion at a Polish Festival in Michigan. Be jealous.

This week we’re taking a look at the Death of Osama, putting us at May 1, 2011.

There’s a party going on at Will’s place celebrating the 1 Year Anniversary of Newsnight 2.0. There’s a mysterious deep voice calling Charlie to prove its credibility by saying that Charlie will be receiving an email at 9pm from the White House which will tell them to get to work. Inside WILL AND JIM ARE JAMMING! It was phenomenal. My only complaint with that scene was that it needed to be, like, three times as long.

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If you do, you will see that I’m human and relatable because I’m clumsy!

I’ve never seen Rudy, so sorry in advance for me not getting all of Will’s speech perfectly fit into this recap. That being said, I liked this episode more than last week’s. It was less preachy and less misogynistic, which was nice.

We’ve made it to early February and the episode is all about the Arab Spring and the events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Elliot, the 10 o’clock anchor, is reporting from Cairo where he is stationed in a hotel room. ACN cameras taken down, gunfire under the correspondents room, and other than that he doesn’t have much information. To find out more he bravely/stupidly goes outside and is promptly beaten up by a bunch of thugs. Or something. Long story short he broke some ribs, an arm, and his face is all cut up.

Don’s still lurking around because his boss is a foreign correspondent this week and he has nowhere else to go? I’m not sure. I still dislike him, but I’m starting to recognize Don’s merits. Perhaps because we didn’t see as much of him this week? Anyway, as much as I dislike him on a personal level, Don makes a good antagonist. He annoys Mac in the control room and instigates trouble with Jim (understandably so, what with Maggie’s attention waning). But you can’t say that he doesn’t care. He fights valiantly for what he believes in, even if that’s the opposite of what everyone else thinks is right.

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I’m not sure what pacing guide this show is using, but we’ve miraculously made it to 2011 in the Newsroom. Maybe Sorkin realized that some HBO shows are on their fifth season with only about a year having passed *cough*TRUE BLOOD*cough* and that was really frustrating. And, since Sorkin doesn’t have fairies to blame for a time-jump, we’re just going to accept that it’s now New Years. Okay? Great.

That being said, this episode was pretty decent. It still had its issues – and believe me, I will get to them – but there was also a lot to like. First up was my favorite part of the episode. That’s right – Neal. He’s on some Big Block of Cheese Day-esque rant about Big Foot being real. Obviously that’s a news story that Will needs to cover. Neal is so passionate about revealing Big Foot to the unassuming masses that he pitches the story to Will at the office New Years party (after all of his coworkers laughed in his face about it). Will quickly shuts Neal down. Poor Blue Diamond. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the biggest nerd in the office (it’s usually Neal, looking mighty fine in his seemingly vast collection of cardigans. Maybe he could do a web-series with Schmidt from New Girl about them?). Oh, and bonus points for Neal getting a girl! Double extreme bonus points for her having a stint on Parks & Rec as Tom’s girlfriend, Lucy, the bartender from the Snakehole lounge. (Dare I say she has a type?) (Sidenote: Minus bonus points for her having dated Tom Haverford first.)

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“I’m not going to swoop in there like she’s some rent controlled apartment,” Jim says before realizing if that’s true he’ll never have sex with Maggie.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode, which moves us from May of 2010 up through Election Night of the mid-term elections. As we begin, Will is delivering a nice monologue about having allowed his broadcast to be controlled by ratings in the past. Don’t worry, he realizes how shitty those broadcasts were so now he’s promising to do better.

Mac and Charlie work together to nudge Will in the right direction of what he should be covering and it is a thing of beauty. They seem to work really cohesively. Regardless, Charlie gets taken to task by his superiors at ACN. They are not happy with Will’s new direction for News Night. He’s reporting facts, but audiences are perceiving that as being left-wing, so they’re losing viewers, ergo money. Unless Will can stop heckling the Tea Partiers and include some human interests pieces in his broadcasts, Jane Fonda will fire him.

I have to say, I really thought the show found a good balance between news coverage and creating the news this week. Of course this show wouldn’t work without inter-personal relationships, but, as with News Night, the news sections can be more interesting to viewers than human interest pieces.

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“So this is what it feels like to be in a train wreck as opposed to watching one.”

I’m trying so hard guys, but the opening credits almost put me to sleep. Where is WG “Snuffy” Walden when you need him?

This week we’re introduced to Sloan, an econ specialist with a PhD from Duke and is an adjunct professor at Columbia. And she looks like Olivia Munn, so Mac wants to give her 5 minutes a day to talk about the state of the economy. So far she seems to be the only woman in the newsroom who isn’t comically clumsy or an endearing fuck-up.

The show wants us to know that Will is super cool because he has 3 guitars in his apartment. Will wants us to be impressed that he knows all of his coworker’s names. He stayed up super-late learning them because he is suddenly surrounded by a very young, inexperienced, newsroom. Clearly he’s still going for the gruff-but-lovable vibe. Oh, and we’re supposed to be intrigued as to why Will and Mac broke up. But neither of them want us, the audience, nor their colleagues to know the reasoning behind it.

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"It's not. But it can be."

Disclaimer: I am an unapologetic Aaron Sorkin fan. I love all of his shows (yes, even Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). I’ve tried to remain semi-unpartial and haven’t read any of the critiques/reviews of Newsroom. Yet. With that being said, I will try to keep all of the Sorkin connections to myself. Now, on with the show.

The show opens in an auditorium at Northwestern University. There are a panel of cable news anchors being asked questions by journalism students. It seems like the pundits that the show opens with have the same fault that befalls my entire family – over-talking. Everyone has to be right, and everyone needs to be heard. Except Jeff Daniels’ character Will McAvoy, who seems content, well, apathetic enough to let this firestorm rage on around him without taking part.

Until this “sorority girl” comes up to the open mic. At this point I have to wonder who is asking these questions? I mean, I’m a college student and I’d like to think that we come up with slightly more intellectual questions than why is America the greatest country on the planet? Then again, that’s probably giving my generation a little too much credit. His answer is kind of daunting, reminding us viewers (in the Sorkin-iest way possible – shoving it down our throats in a torrent of information) that we’re actually mediocre when it comes to test scores, infant mortality, life expectancy, etc. Maybe, he says, America isn’t the greatest country in the world. Not anymore.

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