Grade: 86/100
With just six episodes on the docket this fall, HBO’s “The Newsroom” sprinted head first into its fall schedule with a sense of urgency akin to a Best Buy patron on Black Friday.
Having much to say and very little time with which to say it, the third and final season of Aaron Sorkin’s widely controversial newsroom saga began its final encore with an hour of fast-paced, hard-hitting visceral drama reminiscent of its invigoratingly fresh pilot episode.
“Boston” began as any frequenter of television drama who’d been keeping up with the show would expect. Anchor extraordinaire Will McAvoy and executive producer MacKenzie McHale are arguing, but this time around things seem a little off. A little less hostile and a little more like a series of pulled punches, perhaps. That’s because Will and Mac ended the show’s second season with the exciting news of their engagement, and this time their hot-button topic of discussion is how many bridesmaids Mac wants at the couple’s wedding. She stipulates that nine are needed, rattling off a list of names including former ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer, Will responds with his famously caustic tone and the audience is told not to fear — the gang’s all here, and they’re exactly the way you remember them.
What follows is an eventful, if convoluted, series of four separate plotlines, meant to provoke fear and pique interests. In addition to the Will/Mac wedding talks, the newsroom erupts into its usual story-breaking frenzy when Mac sees what appears to be an explosion while watching the Boston Marathon. Maggie Jordan earns the admiration of Charlie Skinner and her producers while filling in for an allergy-ridden Elliott Hirsch in Boston, and Neal follows the trail of a mysterious whistleblower. Sloan Sabbith, meanwhile, tries to solve a series of mysteriously related economic events that seem to suggest a hostile takeover at ACN.
Each tells a story that might have been one of two or three in either of the first two seasons, but has now been squeezed due to a shortened schedule into half its potential time block. It’s about time Maggie earned more than a proud smile from either of Will or Mac, and the fact that it took this long for that to happen makes it all the more disappointing.
Her growth over the three seasons makes for one of the more interesting character arcs. Interaction with ACN President Reese Lansing, despite that his mother Leona is sadly nowhere to be found, nearly always provides for wonderful drama, and something is pointing to the fact that he may not for much longer be the big man upstairs audiences have become so accustomed to.
Neal’s online escapades, while nearly always fraught with skepticism from all comers, generally lead to some of the best stories News Night 2.0 has ever aired, and this season looks to be no exception. His retrieval of a hidden USB from a grimy bathroom and its “Godfather” homages notwithstanding, what clearly points to the Edward Snowden story for Neal could be one of the best story arcs of the short season. Despite the excitement, too much was attempted to be fit into a single 60-minute block, but that’s to be expected with only 360 minutes of airtime in a season.
What can be said about the newer, tighter and more fast-paced format is that it leaves precious little room for slowly progression, constantly evolving and eternally confusing love triangles and quadrangles inside the newsroom, making this season a little less “Grey’s Anatomy” and just a little more “West Wing.”