News Night is exactly where we left it: in complete chaos.
Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom premiered its second season this Sunday night. The show starts off with Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) being questioned by the network's lawyer, Rebecca Halliday (Marcia Gay Harden) about a later-retracted story on something called the Genoa operation. During the meeting, Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill) walks in sporting short and spiky red hair. It is revealed that Maggie had been in Uganda for the past year and “she came back a little messed up.” After realizing the show is at least a year ahead of where Season 1 left off, the show flashes back to August 23, 2011 and the aftermath of Will's “American Taliban” comment.
Reese Lansing (Chris Messina) is denied entry into a congressional meeting for SOPA. Will is taken off the 10th anniversary of 9/11 news coverage. Advertisers boycott the network. Obviously, all backlash from Will's dig at the Tea Party.
Meanwhile, the staff focuses on the rebel invasion into Libyan's capital. Neal Sampat (Dev Patel) becomes interested in Occupy Wall Street and attends a meeting, despite MacKenzie McHale's (Emily Mortimer) denial of a OWS news story.
The Don-Maggie-Jim love triangle takes a huge turn. Distraught by the fact Maggie moved in with Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski), Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr.) requests that he goes to New Hampshire for a couple weeks to cover the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. Remember Maggie's love confession for Jim on the Sex and the City bus tour? Turns out that an onlooker recorder the rant and posted it on YouTube. Sure enough, Don comes across the video and very nonchalantly moves out of the apartment.
When Jim gets to New Hampshire, he is turned away – yet another result of the “American Taliban” reference. However, he is already temporarily replaced by Jerry Dantana (Hamish Linklater). Sloan Sabbith is accompanied by the new guy and his military expert to do a panel on drone strikes. Things go sour as the expert becomes extremely gung-ho and Will, who is obviously on thin ice, refuses to challenge him.
In order to try and redeem himself, the expert offers a tip for a story – “the kind that makes careers and ends presidencies,” he says mentioning Genoa.
The show ends back in the conference room 14 months later with Will and the lawyers discussing what went wrong with Genoa.
Tune in next Sunday on HBO at 10pm EST.
Image: Forbes