In the episode that aired on Sunday, the family reaches the heights of both their incompetence and their power. Election Day in the newsroom was already tense for Tom without the Roy siblings stomping around, sliding notes directly to TV anchors, pushing their agendas on his top voting analyst, scrolling through Twitter, reframing the headlines because, well, the right-wing candidate asked them to. Tom loses his temper when Greg approves cheap sushi as his lunch.
It’s not much of a power move — it is not, for example, Logan telling the staff to scrape an entire over-the-top steak and lobster dinner for the family into the trash, then order pizza instead — but it’s the only move that Tom, who has lost control of the newsroom, who never had any control over in the first place, has left. He will allow the election results to be nudged and massaged, the newsroom to be compromised and swayed. He will allow the world to burn, but look, he is above the sushi. He will not touch the sushi.
Greg, on the other hand, is happy to dig into his “bodega sushi” as the siblings pressure Darwin, ATN’s election analyst, to call the election before he’s ready. It’s a devastating and hilarious sequence. “This isn’t actually a numbers thing,” says Roman. “I’m just going to say we’re good and that’s on me.” “You can’t make the call ’til I make the call,” says Darwin, angrily.
But a moment later, Darwin has given up all sense of editorial integrity and is punished for it, as he accidentally smears wasabi from Greg’s sushi into his own eyes. Greg, in a bumbling, misguided effort to help, pours stinging, lemon-flavored LaCroix right into the wound.
It’s as if he didn’t know there’s no making things better with food — there is only making things worse.
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