Shut. It. Down. I seriously gotta hand it to Sorkin and his "writing staff" — this 'ship has been built up so sneakily and subtly that the the whole "I'm single because you haven't asked me out, Don" (really, aren't we all?) moment felt like the best kind of going-away present. Seriously, it's like we've been refreshing our Google Alert for Bigfoot news only to have the Loch Ness monster swim right up to our cubicle. I'd also like to point out that Don was inexplicably swinging a knife around during a large portion of their conversation, which was like the Loch Ness Monster showing up with cupcakes. Don and Sloan are supposedly the most people-stupid in a show full of people-morons, but they're also the most self-aware, so they might just beat Jim & Maggie to the consummation finish line. (That's the added bonus of having months go by between episodes: It's a lot like NBC cutting to commercial during racewalking — you can't be mad because it's the one sport in which we can be reasonably certain not much happened while we were away, save for a bunch of people walking around quickly and occasionally falling down. Phew, glad I could get in such a timely joke before the end of the season.)
Hottest speechifying
"I don't know who told you you're a bad guy, but somebody did. Somebody along the way. Somebody or something convinced you of it, because you think you're a bad guy, and you're just not. I'm socially inept but even I know that. So because you think you're a bad guy, you try to do things that you think a good guy would do. Like committing to someone you like, but maybe don't love. A sweet, smart, wholesome Midwestern girl. I could be wrong, though; I usually am."
Sloan has conveniently neglected to mention that she has a third Ph.D. in Emotional Science.
Editor's note: As evidenced by last week's slew of Jim/Maggie fanvids, the Newsroom fan community has been more and more prolific as the season has worn on, which is why, in lieu of hot speechification, this week's 'shipping report will feature the hot fanworkification that has been the fruits of their labor. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just search Don Keefer on Tumblr and see if it doesn't make you feel a little less alone in the universe.
Will & Mac
There's only one week of The Newsroom left, and it's as if Sorkin & Co. realized they were given a quantity of smoldering glares that will expire if they don't use them up by the end of the season. This makes for eminently 'shippable, GIF-able television, but so far the good folks at fuckyeahwillmac.tumblr.com have been dragging their feet. (Otherwise I would totally have embedded Will's face post-crazy-Mac-speech, which in five steamy seconds conveyed all the passion and drama locked away in Habib Sr.'s volumes — VOLUMES! — on Willkenzie.) These are the most fascinating people on television, and their feelings have never been more important.
It's been more than a year since Mac originally held up her hand-drawn signs and inspired Will to be the integrity, and since then she has perched, pixie-like, on his shoulder, nodding along as he ultimately made all the Right Decisions, and forgiving him his superficial flaws, like the smoking habit, and the tendency to use his show as a bully pulpit. But this week not even Will McAvoy could resist the power of the Anthonys Twain (Casey and Weiner). I was originally thinking that if Mac were an actual pixie, she'd be Crysta in Fern Gully, who turned a human man into a boy pixie so they could save the rain forestnewscountry universe together, but this week she's more like the Pan's Labyrinth pixies who try in vain to stop their master from eating the big delicious Casey Anthony grape, and wind up getting their heads chewed off by Jane Fonda.
After a bit of Will/Mac overload last week, the youngs are taking over the 'Shipping Newsroom leaderboard in a big way. Don continues his journey of redemption this week by flying (ugh, I'm sorry) in the face of federal regulations and a very uptight Julie Delpy doppelganger to report the news, even if his only audience is the cabin of their mysteriously business-class-free aircraft (United Airlines: not elitists, it turns out!). But if Bin Laden's death was the top story, the lead-in was Elliot and Don's gratuitously in-depth investigative report on the state of the latter's relationship with Maggie, and now those strangers on a plane are fully briefed on the two most generation-defining stories of 2011. And while they seemed pleased overall with the efforts of Seal Team Six that evening, they are so totally over Don & Maggie's on-again-off-again drama. SO ARE WE.
Hot speechifying:
Julie Delppelganger(?): "Maggie's a lucky girl."
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in ’ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Editor's note: I'm somewhat pressed for time this week, so we're express ’shipping this episode. Also, despite all appearances, I don't necessarily hate this television program, and there were a lot of things to like about last night's show! Terry Crews and David Krumholtz are there now!
1. The Newsroom & the Internet
"I'm going to single-handedly fix the Internet!" Will proclaims after a couple of on-air comments plucked from the ACN BBS were not the kind of reasoned, intelligent arguments he had expected from an anonymous online commenting system. The Information Superhighway has reared its ineffable head a few times before now, but it's really starting to emerge as the MPDG of The Newsroom — the quirky, impossible-to-tie-down nymph who will confound and delight our fictional staffers (LOLs, asterisks) and our IRL showrunner alike (at least have your erstwhile writing room brainstorm like 50 commenter screen names for you to choose from before settling on "LollipopLollipop.") So many bullets could have been dodged this week if they had just switched to Facebook commenting; at least then users would have to set up a fake account and populate it with pictures of other people's cats before firing off their death threats.
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in ’ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Will & Mac
Willkenzie ’shippers, your patience has been rewarded! With congressional creepster Wade out of the picture, Will and Mac might finally have a chance to sort out their feelings for each other. Baby steps, though — it wouldn't be The Newsroom without a little ACN floor show interlude with some light public displays of personal history thrown in for good measure (tap-dancing lessons! Blatant lack of understanding of the basic premise of This Old House! Get a room, you guys!), and Mac, with the help of the entire ACN staff, hit a home run this week with her elaborate Rudy role-play scenario. Some guys want you to dress up in a Princess Leia slave outfit and play Call of Duty with them, and some want you to massage their egos by reenacting their favorite Sean Astin film in their honor. Mac knows which kind of guy she's dealing with.
Hottest speechifying: "It took six months to build the city of Dubai, you really think they were renovating the same mid-century colonial for 15 years?" What is a mid-century colonial? And This Old House has been on since 1979 and is still airing episodes. Just trying to keep you honest, Will.
With the summer TV pickings so terribly slim this year, Hollywood Prospectus editor Emily Yoshida has had to get creative in the search for some scripted romantic intrigue until her CW shows come back. Here's your week in 'ships on HBO's The Newsroom.
Will & Wade
Mac asks Will if it's OK for her boyfriend Wade to pitch a story to Will, because this is The Newsroom and we're supposed to see the characters' inability to stop thinking about current events and integrity even 10 minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve as some kind of mark of indefatigable professionalism, and not a form of psychosis. This one has some legs, folks. Mac should know better than to leave these two alone in the cozy confines of Will's cigarette-stale office together, especially when the champagne is flowing and the housing crisis in still in full swing.
Hottest speechifying:
Will: Countrywide? I don't know what to tell you. You've got guys flooding the market with bad mortgages, lying to investors, making billions of dollars, but most incredibly, discussing it by e-mail. I don't mean to insult you, but how do you not get a fraud conviction?"
Man, Wade basically walked into that office dressed in a purple muscle tee and eyeliner and asked to be truth-banged.
This week The Newsroom turned up the heat with an OMG-worthy makeout sesh between Maggie and Don — the first display of physical intimacy on this series, which was also very, very gross. I've watched enough vampire shows to know that original pairings are made to be broken (this rule applies to pretty much every contemporary drama except Friday Night Lights), so why are we even pretending this is a thing? Also, Don is wearing some sort of horrible tribal necklace while shirtless in bed; no wonder she was pretending to be so engrossed with her BlackBerry.
Mackenzie's nickname could just as easily be Will's, so I'm sure he gets a double kick out of the "Will + Mac 4 EVR" hearts he has scrawled on the inside of his Trapper Keeper. (It's been left off this list because, spoiler alert, but Newsroom so totally has a Will/Will endgame.) This week Will makes the horrible mistake in the first five minutes of the episode of specifically asking Mac not to tell anyone on staff about what *really* happened with their relationship, and inadvertently pioneered the dramatic device that will heretofore be known as "Chekhov's Staff E-mail List." Later on, the two share a more tender moment, as Thomas Newman's piano strains fade in and Mac gets real: "You were in love from the moment you met me. For two years you were the man of any woman's dreams. You just had these ways of ... doing things." When Aaron Sorkin characters can't properly complete a sentence, you know they are experiencing True Feelings.
