Opening Doors (Review)

Series: The Newsroom
Episode Title: "Election Night, Part II"
Episode Grade: C

I didn't like this episode very much. Objectively speaking, I should have liked it even less than I did. It is only because I'm a soft-hearted, mushy headed sentimentalist that I find enough enjoyable elements in The Newsroom's season finale to salvage an otherwise poor effort.

We'll start with what...well, I don't know if I'd say it "works," but it works for me. And those are the closing moments of this episode, where Aaron Sorkin, writing what seems likely was intended to be a series finale, throws caution to the wind and just gives his characters and his audience a bevvy of feel good moments.

These start with Will proposing to MacKenzie. Again, objectively speaking, this is patently silly. A tiresomely large portion of this episode is taken up with the two of them bickering over their romantic past (replace "episode" with "series" and that works just as well), and Will's decision here is less spontaneous and more mystifying. That he still loves MacKenzie is believable (and has been addressed before); that he would take this particular action at this particular moment is not.

And yet the actual proposal scene works, almost entirely on the basis of Jeff Daniels' performance. Daniels was the show's main draw when it debuted, save Sorkin himself, and he's done solid work pretty consistently. But if he hasn't exactly been sidelined in The Newsroom's second season, he has spent a lot of time in B-plots while the rest of the staff handled Operation Genoa. And Sorkin's (smart) decision to spend less time with the on-camera aspects of News Night With Will McAvoy meant Daniels got less time to play Will McAvoy, Commentator.

Daniels is outstanding while proposing, and if the dialogue he's given here is mainly just a reprise of the standard Sorkin trope of nervous, hyper-eloquent babbling, he and Sorkin both execute it well. He executes it well enough to make the moment genuinely touching, anyway.

A few plotlines converge in the newsroom at the end of the episode, all to the strains of a cover version of "Let My Love Open the Door." Will and MacKenzie announce their engagement. Reese, given the choice of accepting or rejecting Charlie and Will's resignation by his mother, announces that he won't accept them or settle with Jerry Dantana. Don and Sloane look lovingly into each other's eyes, having finally shared a kiss once Sloane figures out that he was the one who bought her book at the charity auction. And the camera pans over the newsroom, everyone hard at work and drinking champagne, before zooming in on Maggie checking a breaking news alert and cutting to black.

It's a genuinely moving ending, a reminder of the energy and passion of the people in the room, as well as the endless nature of what they do. It serves as a kind of wordless mission statement for the show as a whole, which is why I suspect this was written before Sorkin and HBO had worked out the details of a third season.

What comes before, however, in the first 40 minutes or so of this episode, is something like a perfect example of Sorkin at his worst. Some of this comes with the previously discussed re-hashing of Will and MacKenzie's past.

Even more irksome is Sorkin's continued insistence that Jim is something akin to a saint. I said last week that Jim embodied the worst sort of Sorkin character: the insufferably arrogant jackass whose insufferable arrogance is never acknowledged in-universe. "Election Night, Part II" demonstrates this brilliantly, as Jim gets not one, but two opportunities to lecture a woman in his life about how awesome she is.

The details of these are even more depressing when listed in detail, so it will suffice to say that he lectures Lisa (his ex and Maggie's friend who we haven't seen since early in the season) on her intelligence and lectures Maggie on her strength.

This is the sort of thing that Sorkin's critics seize on when they accuse him of raging sexism. Those criticisms are dramatically overstated, but watching a saintly male character gallantly come to the defense of women who lack self-confidence it's hard to say that they have no basis in reality. These "you're too good for your own doubts/the man you're with/the job you're in" speeches were tiresome when delivered in Sports Night, and they haven't grown less so over the last 15 years.

More of consequence happens this week than last, but the episode isn't nearly as good. There are problems of character and narrative here, but put simply, "Election Night, Part II" isn't remotely as fun as "Part I." The manic energy and wit of the first part is lacking, and what's left makes a poor end to what was generally a solid season of television.

Notes

• There's a fun little runner where Will has to keep interrupting Sloane to throw to various reporters. "Are you doing this on purpose now?" "No, it's just working out incredibly well."
• Reese wants to give a big speech announcing that he won't accept Charlie's resignation, but Charlie and Will have already decided not to quit. Reese's disappointment at not being able to do the right thing is pretty funny.
• Reese: History should reflect I acted admirably. Rebecca: Is it possible the greater glory belongs to me?
• Marcia Gay-Harden was a delight this season.
• Jim to Hallie: "Just physically, you're hard to look at. Not homely so much, but weird-looking."
• Sorkin clearly thinks a high Jane Fonda is a comedic delight. I don't agree.
• See you next year, folks.