Fans of Aaron Sorkin’s courtroom dramas, from “A Few Good Men” to the structure of “The Social Media,” were likely cheered by this week’s installment of “The Newsroom.”
In it, the whole case of the Operation Genoa they’ve been investigating on the show all season comes to a head in a talky episode. We knew from the start that it was a flawed story that turned out to be wrong, but not until Sunday was it fully explained how they came to finally decide to run it and how it all came apart – plus how soon.
At the end of last week’s episode, Sam Waterston’s Charlie Skinner said it took all of five minutes to find out it was wrong. But that was another exaggeration.
In the series of court depositions conducted by Marissa Gay Hardin’s character that make up most of the episode (along with flashbacks to the final vetting meeting), we learn it was more like 27 hours.
There weren’t a lot of surprises in the episode, but a few details were filled in from the story that’s been building all season. We had already seen the devilish work of Hamish Linklater’s Jerry Dantana, cutting up an interview to suit his purposes.
But it took an awful long time for the episode to catch up to the telling detail that seemed so obvious when it occurred last week: The inconsistencies of the shot clock in the basketball game running behind the interviewee. There was so much about why the basketball game is in the frame, and even a discussion about sports with internal clocks, that it seemed Sorkin wanted everybody in the audience to grasp what was happening before Emily Mortimer’s MacKenzie McHale does.
Let’s state for the case, however, how prescient the entire Genoa storyline turned out to be, coming at a time when the main actual news stories have to do with whether chemical weapons have been used in Syria — a determination that may lead to military intervention — and the rise of domestic whistleblowers spilling classified information about the country’s wartime behavior.
Another real life incident rears its head in the episode, looking like it will be the same kind of problem it was to other news organizations: the attack of the Libyan embassy at Benghazi, an issue that has not entirely gone away.
But there was even a soliloquy by Jeff Daniels’ Will McAvoy about how different personalities in the Civil Rights movement led to the rise of Martin Luther King. It’s not immediately clear about how this fits in with their story at hand, but hey, this week is the 50th anniversary the “I Have a Dream” speech: Can Sorkin see this far ahead?
At any rate, the confidence that Skinner has in the story came because of an unseen high-placed source he had. McAvoy was sticking to the story, too, because he had a source that said it happened too.
Turns out they were both relying on a guy whose sole mission was to get back at a network after his drug-using son committed suicide after being fired from an internship there. That unveiling happened in a dark parking garage, “Deep Throat” style and involved a dramatic slap.
Another neat turning point was then Elliott — the guy who is hardly ever seen who anchors the show after Will’s — accidentally gets one of the key witnesses to admit that one of his war wounds was a traumatic brain injury, setting up all kinds of red flags.
We learned, too, why exactly the depositions were being taken — Jerry had sued the network for $5 million for wrongful termination, saying the story failed because of “institutional failure” and not his misleadingly mashed-up interview.
The episode keeps a tautness as just about every member of the cast gives their own version of event. But it’s still stuffy as a day in court until Will, Charlie and Mac go to Leona Lansing’s office to offer their own resignations.
Lansing, played with exceeding and winning swagger by Jane Fonda, isn’t having it. It’s a terrific scene for her, as she riffs about not seeing Daniel Craig at a Museum of Modern Art benefit and refuses to let her employees go.
(The only thing I wasn’t buying is that she referred to her network, her house, as her “hizzy.” Not even a corporate leader played by Jane Fonda would use the same language as Snoop Dogg.)
It ends with a challenge, as the team is compelled to win back the audience trust and quickly. But previews for the next episode suggest it will come with the frantic reporting that accompanies Election night 2012.
(That episode of “The Newsroom” doesn’t come for two weeks, though, as HBO allows its subscribers to take all of Labor Day Weekend off).