One Step Too Many is the 6th episode of the second season of the Newsroom which resides around the premise of checking out the facts for the Genoa story. A couple large developments happen during this episode particularly for Jerry Dantana (Hamish Linklater) in relation to the Genoa story while the majority of the rest of the cast seem to be happy to just drink away, while Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) continues reading the news while worried about what people think of him.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl98h2ADNj4[/youtube]
The most shocking thing about this episode is probably what Jerry Dantana did with the interview tape that he got from interviewing General Stomtonovich about the use of sarin gas. It seems Jerry Dantana in an effort to prove himself, prove that he can get a good story just like his rival Jim, will go to the extreme of editing the words of a general to make it look like the government committed a war crime. What Jerry’s character did is not only wrong but in my view it’s irresponsible. We’ve seen the flash forward sequences that his mistake of a story that is Genoa has caused and we now know it’s all because of Jerry Dantana.
What this episode did well was question the trustability of Jerry with conversations between Mackenzie and Don about trust and it was determined that they don’t trust Jerry Dantana. What is interesting though is that the other members of ACN seem to trust each other quite a lot I had no idea of the level of trust Mackenzie Mchale (Emily Mortimer) has for Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski) or other members that we’ve known since season one. I think this is an interesting element brought into the show because as a group the ACN team is quite close and it seems they aren’t so trusting of outsiders like Jerry, I wonder how the lawyer fares in all this though?
It’s surprising to me though that even with all the trust issues somehow the team at ACN goes for the news story. What’s interesting to watch in this episode is of course the opening and continuing scenes, referred to as the red team. I thought it was interesting to watch the journalistic process in action as the story was questioned piece by piece to make sure it’s right before going to air. It’s just unfortunate that Jerry Dantana is not a man of honor and fabricates his evidence given during this meeting. While the red team meetings are great, it’s clear that it all comes down to trust in the team for, the meetings to work.
Will McAvoy is of course still excluded from the red team discussion. Will McAvoy continues with his crisis of confidence storyline we’ve been seeing him go through since his mentioning of it in Unintended Consequences. Will McAvoy goes to the extent of even ordering his own focus group to provide a view on what they see in him. I fear that in order to prove his character Will might run with the Genoa story out of something he may need to prove to himself. I hope not though because of how it turns out. But his character especially in the last few episodes seems to be really looking for something and the ratings mentioned by Charlie Skinner (Same Waterston) in this episode (the figures for the night) may just be what he is looking for. Either way, Will is looking to be loved by the audience but will running with the Genoa story gain their love? Or will it be for Mackenzie?
Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr.) spends most of the episode trying to continue his long distance relationship with Hallie Shea (Grace Gummer). Unfortunately for Jim it seems there are no shortage in interruptions to stop them from coming together. Taylor Warren (Constance Zimmer) returns this episode as well to mess things up between Jim and Hallie while Maggie (Alison Pill) makes an appearance during the night as well. Just who will Jim end up with out of these three? Where is Maggie, Taylor and Hallie as character’s meant to be going and who is Jim going to end up with?
Overall this episode was quite entertaining with a lot of things happening in all the scenes. While it was good in that it was shocking to find out what Jerry Dantana did, I feel there are better episodes to come up in this season. So far I do still consider Unintended Consequences to be the best of this season. But this episode was fun and had some good plot developments, looking forward to the next episode.
