The 112th Congress

Tonight's new episode of The Newsroom was the first one where Aaron Sorkin shared writing credit with another writer. And while the episode still sang from top to bottom with his signature dialogue style, I think the imprint of that second voice must have been there somehow, because this hour seemed to move the series a large step in a better direction.

Although Will's on-air tirades against the Tea Party still seemed to be the strong mouthpiece of Sorkin, other characters started to find voices of their own. For example, while Sorkin has had lovelorn characters on his series before, Jim's situation (in regards to Maggie) began to carve out a space of its own. Sam Waterson's Charlie began to find his own voice as he was forced to defend himself in the meeting that framed the episode's ongoing action.

It's interesting that the show decided to push the fast forward button tonight. Though the series initially lagged a bit more than two years behind real time, tonight's episode compressed six months into a single hour, as it chronicled the midterm elections of 2010. On the political front, this allowed for the aforementioned evisceration of the Tea Party. On the character front, it allowed for a number of things.

First, it allowed the work environment to settle in as "normal." The question of whether Will would actually fire Mackenzie was swept completely off the table. (Instead of threatening her job, he opted to torment her emotionally with a procession of girlfriends until she herself moved on.) We skipped over the breaking in period of Olivia Munn's new character Sloan. A long "on again, off again" relationship between Maggie and Don was condensed into a synopsis. The series is now fundamentally different, because while we the audience are still learning about the characters, they are no longer really learning about each other.

Second, it put a new threat on the table in the form of Jane Fonda's new executive character. I noted of the series pilot that The Newsroom was going to be Sorkin's wish fulfillment of what intelligent journalism should be like. But it appears he's not going to dismiss entirely the fact that such a thing would be a fantasy in the real world. He's adding a dose of reality (polished to a shine with his typical style of dialogue, but his version of reality all the same), of the news media's enslavement to ratings, corporations, and financial gain.

This narrative growth in the series comes at a particularly good time. Earlier last week, HBO announced that it had renewed the series for a second season. This first season is already in the can, so the knowledge of a renewal won't affect what we're about to see. But I think we the audience can now relax and watch the show go somewhere, knowing that it does indeed have somewhere to go.