I'm willing to give this show a chance, so I haven't given up on it yet, but indeed this wasn't a great episode. And I'll be out sooner rather than later if the show's basic MO continues to be "News Night magically gets right the stuff that we already know that other media outlets got wrong in real life".

Wouldn't be the first time that his Irishness has been played or written him this way; it's been implied more than once that all he knew before Coming to America was dirt and potatoes. Because I guess Ireland apparently doesn't have electricity and running water and smartphones and fast food and stuff.

This. I'm a 40-year-old guy from Canada, so when I was a teenager what I had was Degrassi 1.0 — a show whose only attempt to actually do a gay storyline involved having a straight character try to figure out whether he still loved his older brother after he came out as gay. The brother, of course, was a one-off…