Yeah, the politics of this episode. So, yeah, there's some Terrier Square stuff and there's some Scott Walker stuff. And this is potentially interesting. I don't really feel like it goes anywhere. There's not anything, I think, particularly objectionable about it. It's just kind of boring. Well, as usual, these subjects are mostly used as empty signifiers. They were things that were happening at the time.

I mean, we begin with the Arab Spring. Their man on the ground, Elliot, played by David Harbour,

is, you know, at the Egypt four seasons. You know, he's looking out at Tahrir Square. There's gunfire.

He reports that their cameras have been taken down, which is why he's reporting from the hotel room.

And this is a problem for ACN because the other half of the screen, all they have is five-hour old

Al Jazeera footage.

So they're not getting on the ground reportage.

This is one area where the episode surprised me.

When I heard the words Al Jazeera, I thought that Sorkin was going to lay in on them a little bit,

as he did frequently in Studio 60. Al Jazeera was often invoked as an enemy agent on that show. Not so

much here. It's brought up pretty neutrally. And in fact, this episode in general had less overt

Islamophobia than I was expecting, because the crew at ACN has to use a citizen

journalist in Egypt. Yeah, and he's a guy who posts so they find out about him through

Neil, the character played by Def Patel, who's the guy that despite Will McAvoy's scorn of all

things online, you know, he reads posts. He he's been known to check i think they call it a

twitter feed and yeah he finds stuff and so he tells uh them at an editorial meeting there's this guy uh

ahman you know it's uh it means the hidden one an ancient egyptian he's got a following including

richard angle just telling you what it says in the script.

Neil identifies with him because, quote, our fathers were both mechanics, not because it was their

dream job, but because they knew there was always work for mechanics.

And then we find out, and this is fucking weird.

He's just like me.

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