Sunday’s episode of “The Newsroom” is titled “One Too Many,” and like most episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s ambitious tale of contemporary journalism it could refer to the number of the show’s characters, failed romances, references to the season-long bombshell that proves to be a bomb, Romney gaffes, Santorum gaffes or exasperated looks by Will McAvoy.
It probably is meant to refer to drinks, though, and as contrasted with last week’s change of pace, that took place entirely in the newsroom, this one is spread over a number of barrooms, where Don is initially drinking by himself before he is joined by MacKenzie; where Maggie is drinking by herself before she picks up some random guy; and at dinner where Jim is reunited with his campaign bus squeeze Hallie and the rest of the expanded dinner party have reason to drink.
Constance Zimmer’s Taylor Warren has just been fired as spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, supposedly for raising precisely the same kind of questions Jim does during dinner (the fact that Hallie doesn’t immediately run off and report the firing calls into question her own reporting instincts — and Jim’s for that matter).
And already hammered at dinner is a young woman who is set up with Neel, (played by Melanie Papalia) who is already hammered from pilfered wine at a Romney event. We learn she’s a reporter on the Ron Paul campaign, but she sounds more like a partisan – a drunk one at that.
The one guest star that mattered most Sunday, though, was the one playing a retired Marine general who is also an expert on chemical weapons who may be able to verify the Genoa story about dropping sarin gas on a Pakistani town.
The story is about “two inches” from being ready for air, says Sam Waterston’s Charlie Skinner, though the rest of the staff is more than skeptical when they’re informed of the seven months of investigations that have already occurred. And of course we already know the story is less Genoa and more Bologna.
Odd to see such a bigwig as Skinner himself fly out to Silver Spring, Md., with MacKenzie to meet this retired marine general. That’s some high-powered pre-interviewers.
He’s played by Stephen Root, the former “News Radio’ and “Office Space” star who is just right as the possibly addled source, who keeps an eye on March Madness college basketball at all time.
In fact, the sly editing of what he says to help bolster the story isn’t caught as it should have been by the similar jumps in action, score and time on the basketball game on the big screen just behind him.
Jeff Daniels’ McAvoy, such a big part of last week’s episode, is less so this week. Mostly he’s seen watching the results of focus groups he’s hired himself to check his likability. Sloan says he doesn’t need it, but Hope Davis’ Nina Howard says he should try to fight to get the numbers up. Thus he’s booked on the network’s “fun” morning show where’s he’s humiliated into throwing footballs and wearing a helmet. He pitches one purposely in the lights.
Once more, Sorkin packs “one too many” news stories into the episode, from the “Do Nothing Congress” to religion and politics to the Etch-a-Sketch, with so much sped up dialog to accommodate everyone’s speeches and tart ripostes, it’s starting to resemble screwball comedy (or “The Gilmore Girls”).
But once he raises the possibilities of sex between Jim and Hallie at a fancy hotel (which of course never happens), we realize how difficult it’s been for Sorkin to cotton to his new medium. There might be salty language, but there’s none of the nudity HBO series often use. And there could be a beheading or two ever so often to keep the interest up. (We’ll assume McAvoy is the dragon).