The Newsroom Season 2
Overview
One bad story nearly kills News Night, and this season is the slow autopsy of how it happened. The whole run is framed by a deposition: Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) sits across from a razor-sharp lawyer (Marcia Gay Harden) and explains, piece by piece, how his team came to report that American forces used sarin gas overseas — a story built on doctored footage, a coerced source and everybody's best intentions. Aaron Sorkin structures it like a legal thriller, flashing between the original investigation and the fallout a year on. Around that spine, Jim ships out to cover the Romney campaign and loses his dignity (and nearly his heart) on the bus, Maggie comes back from a reporting trip to Africa carrying damage she won't talk about, and Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn, quietly the season's MVP) keeps being the smartest person in every room she enters. It all wraps up on election night 2012, breathless and defiant. Fewer characters lecture the audience this year; instead the show turns its questions on its own heroes' arrogance, and it's stronger, sadder and more honest for it.
