One of screenwriter/director/showrunner Aaron Sorkin's conceits is that he has given the last episode of the last four series he's created this title. So since he has posed the question again in the last episode of "The Newsroom," I think I'll spend a few minutes answering it.
The day starts at a funeral, then segues to a flashback in which the dead person (Charlie Skinner) is telling one of the still-alive persons (Will McAvoy) about asking his grandson (a white suburban kid from New Rochelle) why he is trying to learn Tom T. Hall's "How I Got To Memphis." The kid answers, "Memphis is a stand-in for wherever you are right now...it really means 'How I got here.'" This is all followed by bouncing back and forth between present-day funeral talk and "first meetings" in the past. We see Will and MacKenzie being set up in the past by Charlie, see him clinching the deal by sending her a copy of "Don Quixote," and we see them in the present day. We see Don and Sloan's first meeting, and how they are today. We see some of Maggie and Jim's first moments, and how they are today. We see the horrific new owner of the network being chewed out/saved by its old owner, played by Jane Fonda. And somehow seeing *her* in the role, we are reminded of Barbarella, and we are reminded of how *she* got here and how magnificent she still is today at age 77, and that makes us smile. Then Will gets to sit in with Charlie's grandkid's garage band and play "How I Got To Memphis" with him, and we smile some more. Memphis is a stand-in for where you are right now. The last episode of a show is a stand-in for everything that led up to it, and thus the stuff that either made it memorable and a good use of your time, or the opposite. "The Newsroom" was a good use of my time. It was a modern-day "Don Quixote," and as in that story, the fact that its characters and its writers were tilting at windmills doesn't diminish their heroism in doing so. All in all, a fairly nice way to start the day...
