‘The Newsroom’ season 2, episode 3 preview: Olivia Munn’s debate

Who knew going into the first season of “The Newsroom” that Sloan and Don would emerge as our favorite prospective couple? Jim and Maggie are heavily-hyped, but the show tends to force them down our throats a la a breaking story that the press cannot seem to get enough of for whatever reason. Meanwhile, Will and Mackenzie are somewhat stunted at times by the frequent presence of evidence that the two really do not seem to like each other all that much some of the time.

What makes Sloan and Don stand out is that they are different in how they express themselves … mostly in that they internalize their own feelings, but have no problems making subtle judgments on the feelings of others. The sneak peek below from Sunday’s episode is no exception. Olivia Munn’s character comes into Don’s office to ask for advice on a stock-trading story, only to become sidetracked by Don working on fixing his chair’s wheels. Her observation that this is “in no way” a move to try and occupy his brain following his breakup with Maggie… it’s pretty spot-on, no?

For the Sloan character, we appreciate that Aaron Sorkin and the staff have not created her this year to be someone completely hung up on Don after he rejected her last year. While you can still sense that there are some feelings there, hence the need to tell him that she was invited to a wedding by a “friend” while explaining her belief that she “leaked” the Will McAvoy – 9/11 coverage story to the press, she is not throwing herself at him or trying to convince him to change his mind. This is going to be a fascinating one to watch as the year progresses.

The real beauty of Sloan’s rant here is that in the end, it means little; Will actually leaked the story to Nina himself, which you can see by navigating to the story over here.

Photo: HBO