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The Newsroom, Ep 2.03: “Willie Pete” is the season’s first major misstep, as the show’s poor attributes are laid out for display

One of the big weaknesses of the first season of The Newsroom, alongside the poor characterisation of many of the show’s women, was the often preachy tone that would accompany storylines, as the writers often struggled to balance the show’s depiction of a fearless news team with an ability to humanise the opponents to the debate, or a portrayal of the core cast as three-dimensional characters rather than simply mouthpieces. The exploration of real-world consequences and conscience attacks suffered by the team at ACN did a lot to mitigate this issue, and while the second season premiere showed promise in further exploring this storyline, this week’s episode manages to fall down the rabbit hole once again, taking a few steps backward from a lot of character progression the show has made, and delivering an unpleasant episode this week, where the bad qualities outweighed the good.

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