“The Newsroom” is once again an interesting place to be.
1. The episode starts out with Will ripping on every single Republican presidential candidate hopeful. “News Night” replays footage of the candidates giving the highest praise to soldiers, and then plays footage of a gay soldier, who was in combat while filming the question, asking a question about gay rights in the military during one of the primary debates. The entire audience of Republican primary voters boos and the candidates simply sit there. Will then proceeds to characteristically tear apart all the candidates for a definitive lack of leadership in not defending the soldier and reminds us why, in the end, we always root for him.
2. Nina Howard, the gossip columnist who caused a whole bundle of issues for Will last season, is back and guess what? She knows Will taken off the 9/11 coverage on purpose. Will decides to meet with her to "appeal to her humanity," which has something to do with Will's "mission to civilize." Surprisingly enough, because, well, Nina Howard is a gossip columnist, she agrees not to run the story because she likes that Will was honest with her about what happened. This act of goodness leads Will to see Nina in the way he originally saw her when they met on New Year's Eve last season…
3. …As a woman he'd like to bed. Will sleeps with Nina Howard. We find out about this when Mac calls Nina to ask her about that pesky voicemail from last season. The voicemail where Will told Mac that he still loves her and that she's spectacular and the one that Nina Howard deleted so Mac didn’t know what high–Will said. Anyways, Nina is in Will's bathroom when she lies to Mac about what the voicemail said and we are again eternally frustrated that Will and Mac can't just be together.
4. Jim, meanwhile, has finally had enough of the Romney campaign. After knocking heads with a new Romney rep (played by the lovely Constance Zimmer), he goes on a McAvoy-esque tirade about how the other reporters should start asking hard-hitting questions and stick it to the Romney–man and his non–existent jobs/economy reform plans. Unfortunately, the outburst gets Jim, his new blonde friend and one other reporter kicked off the bus. And while watching Jim tear apart the Romney campaign bit by bit is pretty entertaining, it's probably time he gets back into the newsroom because this is getting a little tired.
5. Finally, Mac and Jerry Dantana (the DC fill–in for Jim) meet with Eric Sweeney, the contact that claims that the U.S. military sarin-gassed an entire village—aka, Operation Genoa. They hear his story and Jerry remains convinced that he's got the scandal of the century on his hands. Finally warming up to the idea, Mac gives Jerry the team he needs. They decide to go through every tweet that was tweeted that night near the area and discover that one user was essentially live-tweeting Genoa. The ball is finally rolling with Operation Genoa.
Also, Don and Sloan flirted a lot. All in all, definitely an entertaining episode and a bounce back from last week.
