Never a dull moment when the News Night staffers are on the case. Check out what happened in tonight’s episode with our recap of The Newsroom season 3, episode 4.
‘The Newsroom’ season 3, episode 4 recap
Will’s been subpoenaed in front of his entire News Night staff, but despite Mac’s insistence that he is probably wrong about being too big a celebrity to jail, Will refuses to be ruffled by it. He believes that this will be dropped without jailtime.
Maggie and her date are cozy poolside discussing the ethical conundrum that is Hallie’s new job at Carnivore, and when confronted by Jim and Hallie, Eddie basically has a classic case of foot-in-mouth disease.
Hallie drags Jim away to confront him about talking to Maggie about their business. Deep into their argument, Don approaches and asks Jim to deny, deny, deny when it comes to his and Sloan’s relationship. There is nothing that Don and Sloan do that doesn’t put a smile on our faces.
Charlie brings Will and Mac to meet Lucas in a private room off the party. Lucas makes sure they know that he is not going to be pushed around by them like the Lansings were, and that starting now, they will be using every internet resource at their disposal to engage their audience. He wants the newscast to be more user-generated than the mission-to-civilize framework that Will has been adamant about since season 1.
Will appears in front of the Grand Jury, and while he does respond Yes and No to what he is asked, he does not elaborate, and does not agree to reveal the name of the source.
Charlie is looking for another buyer for ACN, hoping that they can find someone better suited to their type of newscast. He takes a list of people to Sloan, and while she shoots down all of his ideas one by one, the last one rings a bell. A man named Tony Dodd may be interested in buying a media company, and if Sloan has her say, he may just get his hands on ACN.
Hallie is writing an Op-ed piece about her history with the Plan B pill. She can sense Jim’s disapproval coming from a mile away, and it’s clear that she isn’t entirely sure she’s okay with her new job either as she overreacts nearly immediately to his comment about Penthouse magazine.
Will, Rebecca, and the prosecutor meet in chambers about getting a judge’s order to compel Will to give his source’s identity. The judge orders Will to appear before the Grand Jury again, but does not seem to want to be involved in the proceedings any further than that.
They are close to getting their hands on the writer of the article, but hurdles keep appearing in their path. The latest is that the youngest child doesn’t have a passport to leave the country.
Sloan and Charlie meet with Tony Dodd’s wife, Antoinette, about purchasing ACN at a nearby restaurant. Things go well, and she tells Sloan that she will meet with her board and get back to them by Thursday with an answer.
Mac takes a cab out to a picnic table at a park in the rain to meet with Lily, the source, to get her to lift her self-imposed deadline in order to spare the life of the writer that is still on the ground. When sweet talking gets Mac nowhere, she threatens her. If Lily dumps the documents before Mac can run the story, she will quit her job and and turn Lily over to the FBI.
Maggie and Eddie are playing pool, and Maggie gets a link to Hallie’s latest article, an Op-ed about an “Old media guy and a new media girl” (in other words, a fight she and Jim had). When Eddie gets heated about it being inappropriate subject matter for anything more professional than a blog, Maggie defends Hallie. Eddie then hits the real problem right on the head. He tells her that clearly Maggie is into Jim, and that she doesn’t want to be cliched about it, so she defends his girlfriend to the death. Maggie seems more than a little unnerved by Eddie’s revelation, but more so that he thinks any guy in her life will be nothing more than a runner up, including him.
Hallie shows up in the ACN newsroom (she still has her security key??), and confronts Jim about his not coming home. He relocates them to the balcony (aka away from the classified documents), and she goes on to apologize for the article about their relationship. They get into a VERY heated debate about whether or not Hallie is a part of the problem that Will and Jim have been fighting on News Night. The fight ends with Hallie handing Jim her security pass, and him declaring that he will miss her.
The writer and his family have been successfully evacuated from Kundu, and they are now free to run the story without fear of his family or him being hurt in the aftermath. The staffers cheer, and Gary plays the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Mac wants to air it that evening, so she asks the staffers to get back to work.
Reese meets with Mac and tells her that she can’t run the story. Pruett won’t sign the deal if they run the story due to the fines they would incur. Reese tells her that living to fight another day is good, but Mac is angry about not having won any.
Mac tells the staff about not being able to air the story, and then stomps off to her office to stew in her misery. Don enters and when Mac asks if he knows any responsible reporters that would be interested in their story of the century, Don gives her the name of an old professor of his that he trusts.
After leaving Mac’s office, Sloan hugs Don, which is seen by the HR guy that has been stalking them. After confronting them, he admits that he was doing this mostly for his own amusement, which was… amusing.
After Charlie comes to Sloan about not hearing from Antoinette Dodd, Sloan checks the Bloomberg terminal to see if it had any answers for them. She then got a release about an interesting acquisition announcement coming that evening. She assumes this meant the ACN buyout and told Charlie to go tell Reese, but seconds later, she realizes it was all a ruse, and that Dodd is buying another company entirely.
Charlie marches into the signing meeting to stop it, when Pruett fills Reese in on what Sloan just found out as she marches in the room to stop Charlie. Charlie looses his mind a bit, and is absolutely furious about Lucas’ ramblings.
Rebecca and Will head to court to prove that Will has a reason to withhold his source’s name, so he will not be ordered to do so. The entire News Night staff waits eagerly in the hallway. Each side argues their case, and the judge decides to find Will in contempt of court and orders him to surrender himself at 5pm to the court to begin his imprisonment.
Mac tells Will she wants to marry him before he is incarcerated. She texts an invitation to everyone, and they march off to get married.
Mac had all the documents organized and couriered over to Don’s trusted reporter at the AP. We see the men picking out rings, the girls choosing flowers, cupcakes, and dresses. Charlie goes to Juilliard and walks by the practice rooms until he comes across a vocalist singing Ave Maria. Will asks a Catholic priest to perform a Catholic ceremony for them. They marry in the church. Rebecca is waiting at the courthouse for the now married couple. Will surrenders himself into custody, and Mac kisses him as he is handcuffed and marched from the building.
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