An avalanche in Colorado believed to have buried the vice president forces the I24 team to drop their plans to be first on the scene. Julian mixes business with pleasure and proposes to Jamie, who accepts, then regrets it. Mel argues with Madeline that their son, Russell, never gets to spend time with either parent, as they both work. For her first project, Peter pairs up new intern Lauren Sabusawa with their vendetta-seeking head of consumer affairs, Lloyd Fuchs, on an SOY field assignment regarding recliners. Bill is angry to hear the network's 18-49 female bracket hasn't met expectations, except when Janet is on screen. Janet uses the avalanche to sweettalk Peter into giving her something substantial. Peter and Rachel feel guilty when I24's VP Richard Sloan -- who would have been on vacation with his family had Peter not called -- is killed in a car accident on his way to work. A source tips the team off that the VP went up to Colorado to cheat on his wife with a would-be actress -- and has the video to prove it. I24 are first to report that the VP died, burying the affair angle in the process.
Mel reports on a patients' rights group picketing an HMO-sponsored health care center in Kentucky and winding up gassed by the police for seemingly no reason. While watching a tape of the riot, Mel discovers that Trevor, his sound guy, provoked the cops by throwing a bottle at them, and rats him out to Peter. Quentin discovers a hostage crisis in a Kansas City dry cleaners, which hasn't hit the wires yet. Jack Barnes, the CEO, hands Sloan's workload to Peter, while angrily telling him that he's putting the replacement search on hold, because I24's ratings are in the toilet. He also suggests Peter stop relying so much on Bill as the network's lone star, and start relying on one of the women. So, to everyone's disgust, Peter forgoes giving Janet another puff piece, and sends her, and not Bill, out to Kansas City with Julian to interview the deranged terrorist, Hank Noonan, who's taken his ex-wife as one of his hostages and who promised to free a hostage if they send Janet. Meanwhile, Madeline asks Mel to join him in therapy to talk about how they won't compromise in regards to Russell.
Rachel and Peter hold blind ads for a new field producer and, against Rachel's judgement, hire Ethan Barnes, Jack's son. Mel nearly gets killed trying to follow up on a story concerning a gang of young Asians called The Kong Boys. Their lieutenant, Ricky Tran, did a long interview with I24 prior to testifying against gang leader Dennis Chung -- an unaired, unedited interview which a crooked judge demands to see, even though that violates the first amendment. Mel sticks to his principals and refuses to hand the tape over, and ends up threatened by the Kong Boys and arrested for his trouble. Quentin and Janet both come to Rachel with their problems; the former because he feels underappreciated, the latter because she's been sent back to doing puff pieces. Jamie and Julian come to blows while doing a story on wilderness survival techniques, and inadvertently make the rest of the newsroom think something happened to them when they don't answer their pagers. Meanwhile, Janet hires a publicist, Lori Stark, to help boost her profile; and after Mel's situation and a visit to her cousin's, Rachel wishes she had a family.
Julian and Jamie try to get the scoop on a Matthew Sheppard-like murder in Nebraska. With Jamie otherwise occupied, Janet helps Ethan cover the raid of an immigrant sweatshop that utilizes child labor. I24's falling ratings prompt Jack to force Peter to get Bill a female co-anchor -- which Bill's contract and ego forbid. Janet's publicist, Lori, tells her that a powerful senator has a thing for her, and recommends she use him to her advantage. Peter hires Lloyd's replacement, Phil Milner, a demanding chronic complainer who's disgusted with his new surroundings. Jamie talks to the killer's lawyer, Benjamin Farmer, who insists it wasn't a straight-gay thing but a white-black thing (as both he and his client are black), and who wants I24 to pay for an interview. Ethan discovers that Jack and I24's attorney, Martin Peltz, are trying to kill the sweatshop piece because the network and the sweatshop are affiliated. The DA doesn't pursue hate crime charges, or even murder ones. Jamie begins to question being partnered with Julian (in more ways than one), and soon asks Rachel to assign her a new producer.
New partners Julian and Mel witness a commuter jet crash in Washington, and become rescuers first, reporters later. I24 brings in retired NTSB investigator Donald Simms to explain what might have gone wrong. Ethan is made Jamie's new producer. Bill has a fit when Peter devotes nonstop coverage to the crash, at the expense of his interview with a congresswoman. Julian and Mel discover a home video amongst the wreckage, and uplink it to the newsroom. Jamie isn't truthful with Julian about the new pairings. Peter makes Jamie interview Mel the hero, while Julian goes to the hospital to play the tape to the survivor, Robert Jenkins (who happens to be the man they saved), whose family seen on it were killed. Janet's conscience is torn when, in hopes of a good scoop, she misleads a woman who may have lost a loved one on the crash into believing she might have too. The congresswoman throws a tantrum during her interview, because the airline I24 is pointing the finger at is in her district. With the team's help, the NTSB confirms that the crash was caused by banned pressurized air canisters that exploded upon takeoff. Robert Jenkins repays Julian by suing him for having the tape aired. Meanwhile, I24 has problems with their phone lines.
After Ethan's date informs him that she knows the name of an accused rapist's unidentified victim, he hands the story over to Quentin, as he's more interested in toxic waste being illegally burned off near Vancouver. Together with Jamie, Ethan heads off to Canada to get proof that the PVC being burned is causing physical harm to people, but their would-be star witness, worker Ted Flynn, is afraid of the consequences of ratting out his bosses -- even with his son choking from the fumes. Quentin helps track down the rape victim, Mary Corsette, although it's not until after Rachel strikes out with her that she lets Quentin have his first crack at producing. Meanwhile, when Bill struggles to find his new co-anchorwoman, Peter suggests Janet try out for the position. Janet tries to do an interview with Mary -- who has a history of filing frivolous sexual harrassment suits -- but Mary storms out of I24 over not getting the control Quentin promised her, and the man she's accusing, Nobel Prize-winning professor Dr. Richard Leonard, goes on TV and accuses her of being a settlement-happy liar. Just who is the real victim?
When the USS Gadsden submarine ends up stranded, Bill's friend, the hotshot Admiral Mack Riles, persuades him to sit on the story for a while. A nervous Janet, who overhears their conversation, gets the co-anchor job. Quentin is excited when a prison grants him and Jamie (who vehemently opposes the death penalty) an exclusive interview with convicted serial killer Raymond Paul Briner, who's being executed this week, and who might spill the beans on where he buried a female victim -- which would allow her parents to give her a proper burial. After CNN breaks the sub story and Riles sells Bill a bogus excuse as to what went wrong, Janet puts on her Sherlock Holmes' cap to get to the bottom of the mystery: Riles pushed up its launch date before kinks were worked out, sent it off to Korea, and is pulling the wool over his friend's eyes. Bill helps his wife, Allison -- who quit a job at ABC -- find work at I24, while Mel tries to convince Peter to give him less work so he can have more time for Russell. Thanks to Janet, Bill opts to expose Riles even before learning that all 140 sailors died on board.
It's Murphy's Law at I24 when the son of a dead Supreme Court Justice lies to Julian about his father's condition, leading the team to nearly go live with the erroneous story that the man survived a fatal heart attack. Then Julian is racked with guilt when he and Mel corner the justice's potential replacement, Judge Douglas Garner, into an interview after informing him that they intend to break the news that he was arrested for DUI -- and the judge commits suicide right before it. To Peter's dismay, the cameramen go on strike after Jack refuses to meet the union's salary demands, leaving Peter no choice but to put Rachel in charge of cameras. Ethan makes his impromptu on-air debut after he and Jamie are sent to South Carolina to cover a hurricane, and not only do problems with an airline prevent Jamie from getting there on time, but her replacement, the inept Gail Davenport, injures herself before air. Janet and Peter decide to take matters into their own hands when Martin says he can't get a humiliating fan site shut down that features photos of Janet's head pasted over nude womens' bodies.
Peter sends out Janet and Julian to interview the grieving parents of a teenage girl who was abducted from a mall. Mel does a piece on free speech concerning an insane professor who's being tried in Canada for expressing his opinion that there's no proof the Holocaust ever happened -- a piece which Mel's belligerent editor refuses to work on, starts a petition against, and emails Mel a swastika photo to make his point. Julian, hardened from all his recent tragedies, complains to Rachel that Janet was too light on the parents, and didn't explore the possibility that they may have killed their daughter, while Janet complains for the opposite reason. So Rachel separates them and repartners Julian with Jamie. Vincent DeMarzo, a suspicious, paranoid mall security guard, offers the girl's wallet to Jamie and Julian, claiming he found it days ago. When the police let Vincent out of custody, Vincent loses his job and the girl's body is found, Julian uses the man's crush on Jamie to lure him into I24 in hopes he'll confess on the air. Meanwhile, Madeline sells her company and Nate the cameraman asks Rachel out.
I24 reports that followers of Muslim terrorist Maulana Youssef are responsible for a car bombing that killed an Idaho congressman, who had made a speech urging the State Department to deny student visas to Muslims. A Pakistani college friend of Ethan's, Ghazi, tells Bill that because of an interview Bill had done with Arafat, Youssef wants to be interviewed by him in Paris, so that the man can tell the world that he had nothing to do with it. Bill and Ethan head off to Paris where they agree to the terrorists' insane demands, and are rewarded by being taken hostage before ever getting to see Youssef. Although they finally get the interview and are let go, Youssef keeps the tape. Meanwhile, Janet is infuriated when somebody, presumably Jamie, pins up an article in the newsroom that denounces her as a "lightweight." When she goes to Peter to complain, he tells her that, with Bill away, she has her chance to prove to the guilty party that she's not. And manic-depressive Allison neglects to take her meds, and ends up caring more about the interview she managed to land with the congressman's wife than for Bill's safety.
Ray Stevens, leader of the militia group the Montana Regulars, drives an undercover Ethan and a teenage kid, Daryl, to a federal courthouse for a surprise: it blows up. Ethan, who caught the explosion on tape, ends up arrested as an accomplice in the bombing, which killed four people. The arrest leads to a stalemate between the FBI, who want a tape of the compound in I24's possession, and I24, who want a tape of the explosion in the FBI's possession -- leaving Ethan caught in the middle. After he's let out of custody and blows the whistle on Ray, Ethan has to contend with the tenacious media, while trying to convince the innocent Daryl to go to the police. But after Daryl does, Ethan's life winds up in danger. Meanwhile, Allison is scheduled to do an interview on sexual harrassment of women dropouts in the military, but she isn't even interested in doing the interview... until she finds out Peter and Rachel want to push it back in lieu of the bombing. And Mel smells gray market when a Russian neighbor moves in with an array of expensive cars -- the kind of cars no one on the block can afford.
Jamie gets pictures of a congressman fooling around with a woman half his age, behind his wife's back. The estranged wife says she'll go on camera and vouch that the woman is a call girl who was paid with campaign funds. So Peter and Rachel send Jamie to D.C. to land some solid proof first. When Jamie encounters roadblocks in Washington, Peter sends Ethan to help out. With Ethan's charm, the two are able to find Darci Allen, the call girl, and convince her to talk. Little does Janet know that one of the people talked about is her very own senator, Sandquist. Meanwhile, David Walker, a former field reporter and alcoholic, drops by to tell old friend Peter that he's now out of the business. Peter, assuming he got the chop because he's getting up there, decides to find a place for him at I24. A worried Rachel tells Nate he may have gotten her pregnant, and subsequently finds out something far worse from her doctor. A wealthy and elderly lunatic threatens to sue the newsroom because she claims Mel is stealing her brainwaves. And Peter strikes up an outside friendship with assistant Jacqui, his new neighbor.
When Jeff Pilote, the man accused of killing his daughter in My Suspect Vinny, is let out on bail, Jamie and Julian try to get an exclusive interview with him. A crushed Janet strives harder to establish her credibility after a man from a focus group drops off a tape showing all the test subjects trashing her abilities -- and lands the Pilote interview before Jamie and Julian can. After Jeff tells Janet that his wife, Karen, filed for divorce and won't talk to him, she promises an interview that might help Karen reconsider... which leads to a jealousy power play between insecure Janet and catty Jamie and Julian. But it's Peter, taking the negative focus reports to heart, who gives the job to Jamie instead of Janet. Karen's belligerent brother, Jim Michaels, threatens Jamie for talking to his sister, and even manages to get a restraining order against her for stalking -- which is the perfect opportunity for Janet to win the power play and reunite Jeff and Karen. Meanwhile, forced by Jack to do a trash reality show piece, Rachel and Peter decide to give Jacqui her first shot at producing -- but the move only makes Jack think Peter is bagging her. And Bill continues to follow Allison around like a detective, landing the scoop that she still isn't taking her pills.