The show everyone loves to hate returned last night.
Did The Newsroom Season 2 premiere show promise over an opening season that felt like Aaron Sorkin simply preaching every week?
Not entirely, as many of the same missteps this series made last year remained in place Sunday: the women were marginalized, the romantic storytelling a mess, the benefit of hindsight used as a cheap writing trick.
But darn it if that dialogue didn’t still crackle and the performances still weren’t top notch.
Sorkin will be using a trick he’s parlayed before on The West Wing and even more memorably in The Social Network this season, as each episode will be told via a deposition and flashbacks that depict how ACN got into serious trouble when misreporting about a black ops mission.
On the premiere, we learned that Jim volunteered to cover the Romney campaign in order to get away from Maggie… while Maggie chopped all her hair off due to some incident in Uganda.
She also split with Don after a YouTube video got out of her confessing feelings for Jim.
We also were treated to a few strong scenes of Mac in the control room and connecting with Will over the phone late at night.
Was it all enough to overcome The Newsroom‘s faults? Grade the premiere of Season 2 now: