Newsroom Headlines: A God of Carnage Romantic Reunion Leads to Tabloid Trouble

There’s love trouble aplenty in episode four of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom, which opens on New Year’s Eve 2010. Our hero, crusading anchorman Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), dares to approach a beautiful stranger at his office party—and quickly gets a drink tossed in his face. The tosser? None other than Daniels’ Broadway wife and fellow 2009 Tony nominee Hope Davis! By the end of the episode, Will has had tabloid-fodder dates with two other NYC theater vets, Kathryn Hahn (Boeing-Boeing) and Missy Yager (This Is Our Youth). Meanwhile, his executive producer and old flame MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) is flaunting her new lawyer boyfriend, Wade (Jon Tenney), and cutie producer Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr.) has a fling with the roommate of co-worker Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill). Below, our favorite zingers from the show.

Will to MacKenzie, discussing her romantic status with government lawyer Wade: “So, he’s your boyfriend.”
MacKenzie: “I guess he is.”
Will: “I mean, that’s what you call him?”
MacKenzie: “I call him Wade.”
Will: “When you introduce him, do you say…”
MacKenzie: “Yes! How do you introduce the Netflix queue of crazy divorced women with digitally remastered breasts you spend your nights with?”

New Year’s Eve party guest Nina Howard (Hope Davis) to Will: “I say you kiss me at midnight and we see what happens from there.”
Will: “I’m going to start to walk up to people more often.”
Nina: “You seem lonely and broken to me.... But don’t worry. I can fix you.”
Will: “If there’s one thing a man likes, it’s a woman who tries to fix him.”

Later, after Will has berated Nina for working at a gossip magazine: “Are we going to go back to flirting, or are you going to keep putting me down?”
Will: “I’m not putting you down. I’m just saying that what you do is a really bad form of pollution that makes us dumber and meaner and is destroying civilization. I’m saying with all possible respect that I would have more respect for you if you were a heroin dealer. I’m speaking professionally, not personally.”
Nina: “Ok, well, I’m speaking personally when I say fuck you—and you just passed up a sure thing.”

MacKenzie to Will, during a staff meeting: “I’m on a mission to civilize. I’m Don Quixote.”
Will: “Have you read Don Quixote?”
MacKenzie: “In the original French.”
Will: “It was written in Spanish.”

News chief Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) to Will after Page Six reports his romantic shenanigans: “I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s the dating going?”
Will: “You know what? How many women did you date before you finally found ‘the one’?”
Charlie: “It doesn’t matter how many I dated before—I didn’t date anyone after.”
Will: “It probably helped that she didn’t pull your heart out, throw it into an oven preheated to 450 degrees, bake it in a light honey glaze and serve it to you on a bed of rice.”
Charlie: “That’s vivid.”

Financial reporter Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn), warning Will about a vindictive girlfriend she set him up with: “She has a gun and she’s going to shoot you.”
Will: “She’s going to have to shoot you first, Sloan. I’m going to use you as a human shield because you set me up with Annie Oakley.”
Sloan: “You mean Ado Annie?”
Will: “I mean Annie Oakley. Annie Get Your Gun. Ado Annie is Oklahoma!—'I’m just a girl who can’t say no.’”