- Title: The Newsroom – The Greater Fool
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“For the rest of us to profit we need a greater fool… The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed.”
The First Season finale begins with the hospitalization of Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) brought on by a bleeding ulcer, a hatchet job by Mackenzie’s (Emily Mortimer) ex-boyfriend (Paul Schneider) in The New Yorker, and an overdose of anti-depression medication. By the end of the week, despite his eagerness to throw in the towel and walk away, Will is back at the anchor desk reporting on voter disenfranchisement, the fallacy that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and calling out the Tea Party as “the American Taliban.” So much for playing nice for ratings.
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- Title: The Newsroom – The Blackout Part II: Mock Debate
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Following the recent power outage in the studio, the newsroom team holds a mock debate for two officials (Adam Arkin, Jake McDorman) of the Republican Party to showcase the kind of debate they would like to put on the air. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t go over very well.
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- Title: The Newsroom – The Blackout Part I: Tragedy Porn
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Following an unprecedented ratings drop involving the loss of half their audience in five days for refusing to cover the Casey Anthony trial News Night 2.0 has to step back from the moral high ground, much to MacKenzie’s (Emily Mortimer) displeasure, and cover the stories the American audience wants to hear. They may also be in danger of losing their chance to host the Republican debate (and a format the political party will never agree to) which is what most of the staffers (John Gallagher Jr., Alison Pill, Adina Porter, Chris Chalk, Margaret Judson, Dev Patel) are gearing up for on the three-day Memorial Day weekend.
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- Title: The Newsroom – 5/1
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While celebrating the one-year (and one-week) anniversary of News Night 2.0 with the entire crew in Will’s (Jeff Daniels) apartment Charlie (Sam Waterston) gets an unexpected phone-call tipping him off that big news is about to break from the White House. Within a couple of hours everyone is taxied back to the offices to prepare for President Obama’s speech that they think, but are unable to prove, is the announcement that America has killed Osama Bin Laden.
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- Title: The Newsroom – Bullies
- tv.com: link
“I’m going to single-handedly fix the Internet.”
“What could possibly go wrong?”
After a couple of on-air snafus Will (Jeff Daniels), who has been battling insomnia for several nights, shows up to a therapy season with a shrink he’s been paying for regular weekly seasons for years (he just hasn’t bothered to show up for the last four). When he finally shows up to his appointment he discovers Abe’s son Jacob (David Krumholtz) has taken over the practice after his father passed away two years ago.
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- Title: The Newsroom – The 112th Congress
- tv.com: link
Where The Newsroom‘s first episode dealt with a single day, and the second focused on the show’s first full week under new executive producer Mackenzie MacHale (Emily Mortimer), the third episode of the new HBO series takes place over a period of five months as the newly re-branded “News Night” takes on the Tea Party and ruffles the feathers of ACN’s parent company bringing the full corporate attention to the show’s drop in ratings and disregard for the economic consequences at playing hardball with large corporations such as Koch Industries.
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- Title: The Newsroom – News Night 2.0
- tv.com: link
With the chaos of the recent Gulf oil spill dying down the crew of News Night gathers together to do their first real show by putting the kind of news voters need to know instead of their usual ratings-based coverage. At the same time Will (Jeff Daniels) sneaks off to talk to his ratings guy (Chris Messina), who (Sam Waterston) ordered not to talk to Will, and contemplates a segment to appeal to Republican viewers.
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- Title: The Newsroom – We Just Decided To
- tv.com: link
Starting in 1998, for the better part of a decade, writer/producer Aaron Sorkin created three primetime shows for network television. One centered around the White House produced critical and mass appeal. The other two, neither of which received the same notoriety, were about a subject dear to his heart – television. Sorkin returns with a new show, a new network, and a familiar subject matter with The Newsroom. It’s not television, it’s Sorkin on HBO.
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