Are you religious?
In my way.
Me, too. I think the way you know you've broken one of God's rules is if you can't put it back together again.
“Unfinished Business” · Season 1, Episode 15
In this episode: Dean Winchester (940), Damon Salvatore (715), Sam Winchester (665), Olivia Benson (637), Stephen Fry (608), Narrator (554), Clark Kent (523), Nate (486)
We had a story that the US used sarin gas on a village in Pakistan and we went. Anybody would have. Most people would have gone months earlier. To not go would have been to participate in the biggest cover-up since--These were war crimes. It was a Sunday special report. Neilson tracking showed it was gonna be a monster audience--Three and a half, four million. It ended up closer to six. By 10:05, I knew we had a problem. None of it was true.
He says he never said they used sarin.
It's on film.
He says he never said that.
It's on film.
I knew this would happen.
It happens all the time. These guys get cold feet or someone at the DOD begs them to recant.
What's he saying we did?
Edited him out of context.
Did you tell him we have the raw footage?
Yea.
Raw footage isn't edited out of context. It isn't edited at all.
I told him that.
What did he say?
He said he was gonna kill me.
Did he say it the way Mac says it to me or did it seem like he meant it?
I mean it when I say it to you.
He was very upset.
Tell him I'm gonna go right now to look at the raw interview again and that he can look at it with me if he wants.
All right.
We knew things were gonna happen.
Yeah. [stepping out the door] Chemical weapons expert wants to kill me. I make the worst enemies. Seriously, I'm a perfectly nice guy.
This is the very last polling data taken before the polls open tomorrow.
Who's gonna win?
The president will be reelected. But Tulsi Gabbard's gonna win in Hawaii's second. She'll be the first Samoan in Congress. And Kerry Bentivolio is gonna take the seat vacated by Thaddeus McCotter, who came out with my pick for the best resignation statement of all time. "The recent event's totalities of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family. Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth among the ruins of their US House office, for the sake of my loved ones, I must strike another match, go start anew by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen." Sounds like he and his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are about to take a journey by sea to ask the Duke of Verona for his most kind blessing.
I like you, Keefer.
My trust in Maggie has nothing to do with anything but the right things.
I need some kinda sign from you. I need an indication... some kind of indication that you -
What?
You fully understand the stupidity of this?
I do.
Doesn't feel like it.
How would you like me to behave?
It feels to me - I have to say - it feels to me that you think this is nuanced, that you think there are layers that have to be explored.
Why do you say that?
Well, for one thing, there's four lawyers in the room, filling out a... I don't know, I'm sure you're worth it. And you've been here five days - this is your fifth day? But that's my point. Why do we need lawyers who are worth it? Why do we need lawyers? Why do we need lawyers?
You're being sued.
And you're saying that like it's not insane? You're saying that like it isn't... [pauses, leans forwards towards them, getting angrier with each sentence] Tell me what I'm missing. A producer comes up from D.C., he wants to make a name for himself in New York. He chases a story that's not there. And the story - it's not a kitten up a tree. Chemical weapons, serin gas, on civilians. He cooks an interview, he takes a pair of scissors to raw footage. Of a man on the street? Of a retired, three-star Marine general. We go to air, 48 hours it takes for the story to come undone, and with it Atlantis Cable News, ACN is brought to its knees! The producer's surgical strike is discovered, and that producer is fired. Does he write an open letter to the New York Times apologizing to the public, his colleagues, the three-star General and US Armed Forces? No, he sues us for wrongful termination. And I need to know - I need some kinda sign from you, Rebecca, because you're obviously - all four of you, you couldn't be stupid and afford haircuts this good - [Rebecca laughs at this comment] I need you to tell me that this is exactly as insane as it is.
I'm afraid I'm gonna have to infuriate you.
Why?
Because it is nuanced.
[outraged] He cooked an interview! He took pruning shears to the raw - Rebecca... If he doused the studio in kerosene and lit a Tiki torch, it wouldn't have done as much damage as Genoa, so where is the complexity? Where is the nuance?
His claim is he was a scapegoat.
That's his claim?
Yeah.
I understand why he would feel that way, because it was entirely his fault.
Piers Morgan and Rihanna had a Twitter fight about her haircut.
I'll give you $100 if you go pitch that to Will.
How much of what you're saying do you believe right now?
60%
I thought it was in the mid-80s. You pulled it off.
Experience.
March 2, 1955. A young black woman is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Alabama. Civil rights leaders and the ACLU rush to her side and she will be a symbol of the struggle against segregation. Her name is Claudette Colvin and she's 15 years old. She's also unmarried and pregnant. Civil rights leaders and the ACLU decide that Colvin is not the best foot forward and stand down. Eight months later, Rosa Parks happens, but during that eight months, a brilliant and charismatic young minister gets the attention of the community and is chosen to lead the bus boycotts. If Claudette Colvin doesn't get pregnant, if they'd gone in the spring instead of eight months later, Martin Luther King is a preacher you've never heard of in Montgomery.
Who is Giuseppe Zangara? I don't really know. He's a guy with a gun who fired five shots in February 15, 1933, killing the Mayor of Chicago. Why? Because Zangara was standing on a wobbly chair. And the Mayor of Chicago wasn't his target. It was the guy the mayor was shaking hands with, the newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt. If Zangara's chair isn't wobbly, Roosevelt never takes office and we swear in his running mate, John Nance Garner, a man whose political ideology was the basis for his opposition to a package of legislation that would be called The New Deal and we don't survive the Great Depression.
Your kitchen faucet has washers. They keep water from leaking through the joints in the fixtures. And that's what O-rings do. They're giant washers that keep pressurized hydrogen from leaking out of the SRB, the solid rocket booster, that shoots the space shuttle out of the Earth's atmosphere. These O-rings have been tested and tested under every possible circumstance but one-- cold. They didn't test to see if the O-rings worked when it was cold. Why would they even think to test for that? The thing's launching from south Florida. When's it gonna be cold? On January 28, 1986, a cold snap dragged the overnight temperature down to 18 degrees and it turns out the O-rings stopped working below 40. So 73 seconds after the Challenger lifts off, it converts itself into a bomb and detonates.
[Jerry goes to get out of the lift, but an angry looking Mac, having found out that he had trimmed the footage of a Genoa interview, confronts him at the door]
You forgot about the shot clock.
JJerry
Mac? [she pushes him back in, pressing the "G" button] Hey, easy does it.
The shot clock jumps. From nineteen, to three, to two, to fourteen.
[There is no response from Jerry, and she gives him an impatient look]
JJerry
He said it, Mac.
How do you not understand what you've done?
[They begin talking over each other]
JJerry
He said it before we were rolling, but I couldn't get it to say it on camera. He said it to me.
We have to retract it. Do you understand this..?
JJerry
Did Genoa happen? It happened. It happened.
...That we invented evidence to support a story of a war crime. A WAR CRIME!
JJerry
Maggie was there, she heard him say it. She's just fucked up. Yeah, it's a war crime, and it happened! We went into Iraq because he had these things. We don't torture, we don't use chemical weapons.
No one... No one... No one... No one..!
JJerry
I WOULDN'T HAVE DONE THIS ON ANY OTHER STORY, AND I WOULDN'T HAVE DONE IT UNLESS I WAS SURE!
... Is ever going to believe us again.
JJerry
[after a brief silence] I think I shouldn't say anything more until I've talked to a lawyer.
[They reach the ground floor, and he leaves]
You're fired.
JJerry
I know.
We're gonna resign, Leona. It's what has to happen now. Elliot Hirsch, Sloan Sabbith, Terry Smith, Dayside ACN, ACN. We understand the integrity of the news is more important--
Than one individual. That is beautiful. Not as beautiful as Daniel Craig.
Leona.
I'd have sent my plane.
We're not fucking around.
You will resign when I fire you out of petty malice and not before.
Our trust numbers are--
Yeah, they're bad.
They're fatal.
Firing Jerry was obviously the right thing to do, but it wasn't enough and we've known that for two months. Charlie and I have to go.
And Twiggy over here?
It was my fault.
McMac. Can I call you McMac? Doesn't matter, I'm gonna anyway, McMac. Your head's up your ass.
Mrs. Lansing.
Guy comes in here into my hizzy-- guy comes in here, cooks an interview, no remorse. It goes on air. You, I don't know what you'd do to Sherlock Holmes this thing. I wouldn't be able to figure it out and I'm the smartest person in the room.
Well, I wouldn't go that--
Oh, shut the fuck up, you Daniel Craig wannabe.
I don't want to be Daniel Craig.
Well, you should want to be Daniel Craig. Everybody should.
Leona, are you stoned?
[catching sight of her own reflection in a window] You know, my makeup lasts a long time.
Oh, jeez.
Mrs. Lansing.
No, no, please, call me-- Continue to call me Mrs. Lansing.
Leona--
Guy comes into my house which I love. Which I bet you guys didn't know. But I love it. I love ACN. You don't make me a nickel and you cause headaches for the divisions that do, but you make me-- You make me so proud. God, guy comes in here, cooks an interview, and this ends up with-- 'Cause he's unemployable he gets a $5 million settlement and the three of you leave? Oh, I don't think so. And McMac. That's a name that's really starting to grow on me. She doesn't have to go. Nobody's ever heard of her. But she's going to do the honorable thing. And what's expected of me, huh? Not to do the honorable thing? What's expected of me? [shouting] No, I do not accept your resignations! And Jerry Dantana's not gonna get one FUCKING dollar! [in a normal tone] I got some kick-ass courtroom outfits.
You have to accept our resignations and you have to settle. He'll take it to trial and win. There was an institutional failure and he was the only one fired.
Then you'll need a good lawyer. Lee, don't accept their resignations.
I already wasn't accepting their resignations, Becca. Don't horn in on my honorable thing. God, I mean, can't a lady have--
[in desperation] Leona, we don't have the trust of the public anymore!
Get it back!
If a news outlet doesn't have credibility, it doesn't matter what else it has. That's a fact. There are people here from Jane Barrow, Terry Smith, everyone at the DC bureau to Sloan Sabbith, Elliot Hirsch, everyone on Dayside, these people don't deserve to have a piano strapped to their back. Their credibility shouldn't-- (to Rebecca) When did you arrive here?
I'm stealthy.
I think it's commendable and pretty shocking that you want to do something just because it's the right thing to do, but it's not the right thing to do.
I know.
What do you mean?
I think you were responsible for a massive fuck up. I think Will was the face of a massive fuck up. I think firing a mid-level producer appears to be an abdication of responsibility. Now we're gonna have to read about Jim and Maggie and Don and Jim and Maggie and Don and Maggie and Mac and Will and did Sloan punch a guy in the face?
Yeah.
The train, she is wrecked.
Why are you gleeful?
I'm on the right team for once and I get really paid.
Are you saying you agree?
I think your resignation should be accepted immediately and we should write Dantana a check and get to the business of rebooting this once respected brand.
Then why don't you?
[sheepishly] My mom says I can't.
[incredulous] Reese!
There's a difference between being tough and wanting to be. You and Mac are tough. Don's tough. I want to be.
JJim
You are.
You know when I first noticed you?
JJim
When I ran into the room and got tackled by Mac's luggage? Did you know--
No. It was funny, but I didn't notice you until later. There was a beep. It was an i News alert. But it was yellow.
[Flashback]
JJim
You've got a news alert.
[Current]
Nobody was paying attention to it.
JJim
It was yellow.
You clicked on it anyway. You couldn't help yourself.
JJim
You ran back into the building.
He's dead and I'm alive.
JJim
That's what I'd keep in mind.
[After Sloan kisses him to the bewilderment of everyone.]
What I have can't be taught.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Criminal Minds pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.