Screens: HBO
Only A Fictional Cable News Channel Covered The Boston Marathon Bombing Properly
But who made him- or herself the biggest ACN asshole in the process? The answer may surprise you! (In the sense that there's so much competition for the title.)
I know we were all on tenterhooks wondering which major news event of last year ACN would be the first to cover RIGHT, but we could have just Googled and picked the top two stories of the year, just like Aaron Sorkin did. (If this actually does turn out to be the road map for the season, I guess I'm mad in advance about Will McAvoy's rant on why he's too goddamn substantial to comment on the birth of the royal baby.)
The bombing at the Boston Marathon is a horror for so many reasons, you guys. Like: it happens when Don is at jury duty, which means the only producer they can scramble to Boston is Maggie, someone who's not only still sweaty from her boot camp class but so green she doesn't even have a go bag and has to take MacKenzie's. And that it happens so close to the whole newsroom still being gun-shy from Genoa that ACN ends up being last to go to air with coverage. And that even though ACN does the best job of covering it -- just ask anyone who works there! -- the network drops to fourth place. And that the actual story is graceless enough to break in the middle of a conversation between Will and Mackenzie about how many groomsmen he has to have in order for their wedding party to be symmetrical. This bitch thinks he has nine male friends? She HAS met him, right?
In short, Season 3 promises to be as unmitigated a shitshow as Seasons 1 and 2, thanks in large part to basically every one of the show's characters being a gigantic asshole all the time. But who's the biggest asshole of the season premiere? Let's count them down.
- Gary
Most Significant Contributions: Being the first to tell MacKenzie that what she's just glimpsed out of the corner of her eye is legit: "I've got multiple alerts, all red. Blasts at the finish line of the marathon, spectators and runners fleeing the scene."
Most Memorable Line: When asked by a humourless colleague (BUT I'M BEING REDUNDANT) the size of the plasma he's joked about having just bought: "Twenty-eight inches, baby -- the whole ride!"
Asshole Quotient: Ranked least asshole-y for actually making me laugh with that plasma line. That's not easy to do with Sorkin dialogue these days, Chris Chalk! Congrats!
- Don
Most Significant Contributions: Helping Sloan unravel the mystery of a [boring finance shit redacted] tip she's received by telling Gary not to bother checking high-end hotel check-ins from out-of-town finance personnel, but the tail numbers on private planes that have landed at small airports in the vicinity. Also, tag-teaming with Jim on a lecture describing, moment-by-moment, how the incorrect Reddit report about Sunil Triphathi being one of the bombers was disseminated.
Most Memorable Line: Tie: To one the plaintiff's attorney on the case whose jury he might get on: "Look, you don't want leaders on the jury, right? Anyone who can take charge during deliberations? I run a news broadcast five nights a week with a staff of sixty and I bend them to my will." "Ohhhhh...That was an involuntary response you'd get from any man if he pictured a circus girl."
Asshole Quotient: Don does his job effectively and -- Reddit indictment aside -- without being a total scold about it.
- Jim
Most Significant Contributions: Suggesting that, in Don's absence, MacKenzie should send Maggie to Boston with Elliot, and turning out to be right; finding all the other senior staff dicking around on the roof deck and telling them Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's been found.
Most Memorable Line: None. Other than going to bat for Maggie, he's pretty much just there to deliver exposition.
Asshole Quotient: Too boring to be an asshole about anything.
- Sloan
Most Significant Contributions: Figuring out that if the company's stock price is going up despite the announcement that it's just missed its projected earnings, there's a hostile takeover in the works involving Reese's younger brother and sister, who are about to turn twenty-five and thus take a larger role in the company.
Most Memorable Line: "You know how there are tall women who don't mind dating shorter guys? ...I don't mind that you're dumb -- and Don? I mean that."
Asshole Quotient: Other than her conspiracy theory against the New York Times crossword puzzle ("Very often, they put the wrong number of boxes in to house the correct word"), Sloan remains pretty solid.
- Maggie
Most Significant Contributions: Sent to Boston as Elliot's producer, Maggie does excellent journalistic work -- much better than that clown John King -- and even steps in for Elliot after accidentally poisoning him, which is mostly his fault anyway (see below).
Most Memorable Line: Finding MacKenzie's Louboutin pumps in her go bag: "What emergency does she need these for -- breaking news at the Met Gala?"
Asshole Quotient: I guess it's not great that she doesn't have a go bag at the office, but on the other hand, no one believes she's capable of handling herself out in the field anymore so she'd have no reason to. As for how impressive she is when she gets drafted into delivering an on-air report: I would say that Sorkin has walked back Maggie's trademark haplessness because he's listened to his critics except WE ALL KNOW HE NEVER DOES THAT.
- Reese
Most Significant Contributions: Bitches about his siblings' birthday in Sloan's hearing and thus plants the seed for what will eventually flower into her warning about their takeover; is played by Chris Messina, which is always welcome.
Most Memorable Line: Seeing that while CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News have all changed to coverage of Boston while ACN sticks to its regular programming: "NO, NO, GUYS: TAKE YOUR TIME."
Asshole Quotient: His Aunt Isadora-based joke to Don about how long it took the newsroom to agree to start covering Boston is dumb, and putting him in Sloan's office with a cold compress on his head is pure plot contrivance, but I can't really stay mad at Reese if for no other reason than that he usually hates all the newsroom staffers so very, very much.
- Elliot
Most Significant Contributions: Acting like no one who has a nut allergy ever has and letting someone else get food for him without warning her about his food restrictions, leading to his tongue swelling up so much that he can't do his own report, and Maggie has to leap into the breach and kill it.
Most Memorable Line: "My tongue is going to swell up like a bathoon."
Asshole Quotient: It's not his fault, because contrivance, but the whole nut allergy thing requires an impossible suspension of disbelief, not to mention that no matter what his tongue was doing, if he was trying to say "balloon," it wouldn't come out sounding like a lisping person saying "bassoon" except for the sake of a joke that's not even funny.
- MacKenzie
Most Significant Contributions: When the requirements of news reporting intrude on her wedding planning -- including her nine bridesmaids, which is completely fucking ridiculous for anyone, never mind a woman her age -- she does an okay job running things. Really her biggest problem is remaining yoked to Will.
Most Memorable Line: "You ever read Euripides?"
Asshole Quotient: "You ever read Euripides?"
- Will
Most Significant Contributions: Being super-tentative about how to report on Boston; giving Neal money to buy the air-gapped computer one of Neal's shadowy informants has demanded Neal acquire; ranting at MacKenzie, via his assistant, about what foods are appropriate for the breakfast of a person from Nebraska before running out of steam before he can even bother forming a clichéd thought about the ubiquity of Greek yogurt.
Most Memorable Line: "It's more than getting our facts straight. Or having facts. Facts are important. Obviously. But look: Mrs. Lansing told us to get the trust of the audience back, and here it is -- an unwelcome opportunity, to be sure. Here's what I'm trying to say: these-- These situations can be like church. They can be-- They can show us what-- They can guide us in-- This isn't going to be a reality show. We don't do good TV, we do the news....Americans are serious people, and we can reflect that back to them in the worst of times, exalting their dignity by showing a little of it ourselves. By showing a lot of it. Don't reach for common ground: reach for HIGHER ground. Am I saying this right?"
Asshole Quotient: Bro, don't threaten to quit and do sports unless you mean it, which you don't.
- Charlie
Most Significant Contributions: Yelling at everyone for gloating when John King gets shown up for a premature report on a bomber's arrest.
Most Memorable Line: "He got knocked down. You didn't get taller."
Asshole Quotient: Gonna go ahead and point to this supposedly under-the-radar yet in the middle of the newsroom low-five gloat of his own. Shut up, Charlie, and Sam Waterston, you must never make this face again.
- Hallie
Most Significant Contributions: Reminding us that she and Jim are seeing each other, and also that people who learned how to report by working on the internet are unserious and incompetent.
Most Memorable Line: "I'm tracking 2221 tweets describing two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon: what exactly are we waiting for?...Do you guys know the explosion happened in the 21st century?"
Asshole Quotient: Boo, Internet Girl! BOO!
- Neal
Most Significant Contributions: Being the recipient of classified government documents from Snedward Owden.
Most Memorable Line: "Social media's going to solve this crime."
Asshole Quotient: So your answer to receiving like 30,000 classified documents from a whistleblower is to pursue the matter on your own and ask for more, THUS BREAKING THE LAW so that now we have to SUFFER THROUGH GENOA II?! GREAT WORK, CHAIWALLA.
