‘The Newsroom’ season 2, episode 7 review: Powerful and predictable

“The Newsroom” is still on a hot streak, even to the point where some of the show’s haters over the past several weeks have started to come around to what the HBO show is putting on the air: Sharp writing, a strong story, and characters that are both true to themselves and growing at the same time.

But what we had with Sunday night’s “Red Team III” was something rather phenomenal: An episode that managed to be tremendously exciting almost in spite of itself. Going into this hour, we knew already about most of what was going to happen. Jerry Dantana would be fired over his role in setting up Operation Genoa, and Will McAvoy was going to have to go on air and retract the entirety of the report. No one was going to ever believe them again.

This episode was about the process, and learning how this story, once believed to be so strong and true, started to fall apart at the seams. The devil was in the details, and it was driven by a man in Jerry that no one, save for maybe Jim, realized was drunk on his own story. He was such a staunch believer that he had the truth, it really did not matter whether or not there were warning flags. He ignored them, and put it on the air, anyway. Add to this the humiliation that Charlie suffered thanks to an angry source, and it all made sense why so many well-informed people could end up being wrong.

We suppose that there could be some protest in the way that the ending was handled. While many businesses would clean house after something like this, Leona Lansing surprisingly decided not to. In a brilliant and drug-induced speech played by Jane Fonda, the ACN honcho refused to accept Charlie, Will, and Mackenzie’s resignations, and told all of them that they are going to have to earn the network’s trust back.

We are more than excited to see where Aaron Sorkin takes this next. We loved the first season, but even with that, “The Newsroom” may still be the most-improved program on television.

If you want to check out some more news related to the show, including previews for future episodes, just be sure to visit the link here.

Photo: HBO