‘The Newsroom’ season 2, episode 4 preview: Will McAvoy vs. Occupy Wall Street

All season long on “The Newsroom” (which, to be fair, has only been two episodes so far), we have seen Neal try to fight the good fight for a cause in Occupy Wall Street that he believes to be incredibly valuable.

Unfortunately, the problems that he faces with this task are basically the same problems that the movement itself faced in real life when it was dominating many of the headlines: There really are not that many people out there with a vested interest in taking it seriously, mostly because many of the people involved are disorganized and without a common goal. There is unrest, but what is this unrest about? Mackenzie told Neal that he could get a segment on the air if he could find an intelligent person who could argue the positions, and so he brings in Shelly, someone who he has met previously.

It does not take long, however, for this move to be exposed as quite possibly the worst one that Neal could have made. Will is quick to take Shelly to task for most of the finer points of the Occupy Wall Street movement, including the lack of any organizational control, and also an understanding for who the real activists of change are. Will is somewhat short-sighted in his view that sometimes, the public just wants to be fighting for something, even if they don’t know what that something is. However, it’s safe to say after watching this that Neal may need to find another person if he wants to spare the movement more embarrassment.

What do you think about this video, and do you think that Will’s arguments about the Occupy Wall Street movement are fair? If you want to see another preview for Sunday’s episode that goes beyond this one individual story, you don’t have to look any further than the link here.

Photo: HBO