The Newsroom S3 Ep4 – Contempt

“I wanna be part of the digital revolution!” screams no one, ever. Seriously? Just, no.

Minus the continued Hallie/Jim ridiculousness (especially more Sorkin ranting against the evils of the internet), this was another excellent episode. With that unfortunate plot-line, it was still excellent, but I also had to roll my eyes and huff at Jim’s condescension as well as Hallie’s underhandedness. They better not get back together in the two episodes we have left. Also, we only have two more episodes and that makes me very sad.

I’ll go ahead and start with Sloan and Don. It was amusing that it took them both this long to realize that with ACN being sold, they didn’t actually need to worry about what the HR rep thought of them being in a relationship. So, as I predicted, HR rep wasn’t truly a bad guy. Ha! Just so long as ACN’s new evil overlord doesn’t interfere, I guess they’re good to go.

Speaking of, I still really dislike this Pruit guy. I dislike him for jerking Charlie & co. around, and his ideas for crowd-sourcing the news are still awful. I was kind of hoping that he was just kidding about the ideas to see what they would do. But it seems that he was serious. Ugh.

Will’s “Irish stoicism” on full display.

I wonder if, were this fictional whistle-blower situation real, Will would actually go to jail for contempt. It does make for a compelling story, either way. Jeff Daniels has been doing a fantastic job this season – you can feel how Will is conflicted about whether he actually believes he should go free or not, knowing as he does both sides of the issue. Not that there was ever a chance he’d let Neal (or Mack!) go to prison instead.

I’d have been mad if Mack had continued not to tell him about meeting the source. But they continue to treat their relationship in a reasonable, adult way. So I’m glad they got married, both because it made sense, story-wise, and because I was rooting for them even back when the writing for Mack’s character was more irritating. And the scene with Will interacting with the priest was really good. And… look, I love “Ave Maria”, too, Mr. Sorkin, and it’s a beautiful piece, but in what way is it a wedding song? Whatever. One thing that was very appropriate was to have the News Night family be the family that was present for the wedding. Aww.

So, are we to expect Mack visiting her orange-jumpsuit-wearing husband for the last two episodes? Pruit forcing ACN to hire anyone and everyone with a Twitter account, and replace their libraries with Kindles? Are Jim and Maggie just dysfunctional enough to try getting together again now? I’ll be watching to find out. Let us know if you will in the comments.