Don Keefer

The newsman tells his friends he will be back in a moment, and turns away to begin his march to the battlefield. Charlie Skinner is on his way to fight one last war for the nobility of his profession. But he doesn’t even make it to the the upstairs office of furious crowdsourcing mogul Lucas Pruit. His back turned to the stunned faces of Mackenzie McHale, Don Keefer and Sloane Sabbith, he falls to the ground. The second-to-last episode of The Newsroom of the season was filled with many great, big moments, but it will surely remembered by fans as the one where Charlie Skinner died.

To feature the death of a major character (one that I never cared for but many people enjoyed) in the second-to-last episode of a series is a bold move by Aaron Sorkin, but I can see where he’s going with it. If a random viewer had watched last week’s episode, “Contempt,” they would have never guessed that the show had only two episodes left. All the characters spent last week engulfed in the government docs storyline. Will and Mac’s marriage was the only big character-driven event that somewhat resembled the typical home stretch of a scripted series, everything else just seemed to be ends that were getting looser and looser. But in “Oh Shenandoah,” Sorkin returns to what all of his shows do best: He makes you feel for his characters while also slipping in some shots at reality.

A death is not a conventional way to remind fans how much they love a show before it ends, but, if executed correctly next week, Charlie’s death may be the perfect way to end this series. On a base level, his death could be interpreted to mean the death of old-school journalism — a theme that has been ubiquitous in the show’s three-season run. But it will also serve to add some real human emotion to characters that have been oft-criticized for being shallow and pretentious. It’s much easier to draw a likable character who is passionate about a friend than one who is passionate about a social issue.

This episode was also notable in its eerie relevancy. Don’s journey to Princeton to find the girl who started a site for rape victims and ask her to deny Pruit’s request to come on the show turns into something very real very quickly. Both performances in this scene (the girl played by Sarah Sutherland) are exceptional, and Sorkin’s dialogue really hits some interesting, topical points. That this scene (one of the best I think the show has ever put forth) would come amid a growing national conversation about campus rape spurred on by the Rolling Stone University of Virginia rape article is unbelievable timing. That the scene would discuss not only the themes of the original story but the situation that followed concerning the reliability of supposed victims is even more unlikely. It was really a solar eclipse of pop culture and the news — everything lined up perfectly to create one big conversation about the same topic. 

These two big scenes overshadow the fact that Will McAvoy is in prison — inmate #02326, beige jumpsuit and all. The opening shot shows him entering his cell, glancing at the other empty bed in the room. This is followed by 52-day jump and we see him still in jail, still remaining silent about his source. He has a roommate now, one that questions Will’s beliefs. The cellmate asks him about his dad, if he drank. The man proudly says he’s in there for beating his wife and, later, that he doesn’t like Jews. At one point, he and Will almost come to blows. But Will points out that he is stronger than this man, and could surely take him in a fight. It’s not until the final shot of Will in prison, when he goes to take a picture of his — one of him and his dad after a fishing trip — off the wall that we see that Will’s dad looks just like his cellmate. As Will walks out of his cell and back out into the world, he does so past an empty bed.

This brilliant little plot device allowed us to delve a little bit deeper into Will’s identity. Plot-wise, the big Will storyline was his release from prison. The cause for freedom is the fact that Lily Hart, the anonymous source, killed herself on the front steps of the department of justice. Evidence found on her computer was reason enough to let ACN’s favorite anchor go free. It’s a quick kill of the storyline by Sorkin, but I don’t mind with the series finale next week. Exterior issues would clutter the finish of a show about people.   

Sidenotes:

– I have been blown away by the transformation of Don this year. Not only has Thomas Sadoski turned in very good preformances all season, but the writing of the character has vastly improved. I hated Don in seasons one and two; I found him to be an embodiment of Sorkin at his most annoying. But now, not only has he been very witty and smooth in all the right ways, but his Princeton dorm scene was very touching. I didn’t realize such a transformation could take place in only five episodes.

– In the Princeton scene, it was also fairly interesting that Don would reference Sloan sending nude pictures to an old boyfriend when Olivia Munn faced a similar situation in real life.

– Sloane’s on-air slow roasting of the app developer felt a bit like the preachy, anti-future stuff that has dragged the show down a bit in the past but it was wildly entertaining.

– #uracn: “It looks like urine.”

– Really upset we didn’t get to see a Will McAvoy prison fight, even if it would have been against the memory of his father.

– I will not miss almost all of Charlie’s dialogue. Just never got on board with his nonsensical yell-speak.

– Sorkin is a master of finales so I can’t wait to see what he does with the 25th and final episode of this series.