“The Newsroom” week 2 recap: The Genoa Tip

HBO’s “The Newsroom” — the show about fake people and real news — aired the season’s second show flast night. This installment dove deeper into the ever-conflicted news anchor Will McAvoy as he navigates where to tow the line between his Republican party affiliation, corporate demands, and some internal journalistic-ethics quandaries — all while trying to deliver straight nightly news.

The news stories that framed this week’s episode include the Georgia prisoner Troy Davis’s likely-wrongful execution and the assassination of American citizen and terrorist Anwar Al Awlaki. Juxtaposing these very different narratives brings up some legitimate questions about the morality of the death penalty and state-sanctioned killing.

McAvoy, the “News Night” newsman played by Jeff Daniels of “Dumb and Dumber,” desperately seems to want to cover these stories, but after an unfortunate “the Tea Party is the American Taliban” comment, he is unsurprisingly in the dog house, both with his corporate bosses and his loyal Republican viewership.

As his fast-talking production team tries to convince him that the morally right thing to do is to cover these stories, he provides equally as quick-whipped responses as to why he just can’t, though it is very apparent that he wants to (woe is me, or something). The team seems to have lost the journalistic high-ground that they painstakingly worked to achieve in the previous season.

McAvoy’s token come-to-Jesus moment comes when he goes to the local police station to get his employee, Neal Sampat, who was arrested for videotaping an Occupy Wall Street protest and sat in jail for an hour and a half. McAvoy goes on a tirade to the officer about a lot of nothing, and something about the criminal-justice system being not fair.

Meanwhile, senior producer Jim Harper is denied access to the Romney press bus in New Hampshire for his boss’ earlier comments about the Tea Party and the Taliban, and a video of assistant producer Maggie Jordan’s bus confessional about her love for Jim makes it around, ruining most relationships in its path.

Maggie’s over-eagerness to cover Africa seems like a good out for her, as she gets approval to go overseas to cover rebel protests, despite a recent attack in the capital city where she’ll go.

The title of the night’s episode was “The Genoa Tip.” This fans last week’s spark over a secret story that has the power to take down people in the government and even put them in prison. This week we find out that special forces used toxic sarin gas to kill civilians — an obvious war crime. The story will continue to develop as the season progresses, but — as was alluded to in the first episode — will ultimately get botched by the news team. More hard and frustration ahead for nothing.

Despite hiring conservative consultants for the show, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin again fails to deliver on the premise that McAvoy is “Republican.” None of the stories nor their angles grapple with true conservative principles, and instead the storyline only provides coastal-liberal criticism of traditional American values.

Politics and cheap shots like “the American Taliban” crack aside, the show continues to provide amusement through its melodrama and idealistic romanticism of the news business and American politics.

Betsi Fores is a Content Editor for Rare. Follow her on Twitter @ejfores.

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