Look out! Amanda and Alex are about to get into a "Deadline Duel," after the jump.

Not SO much drama in this one; mostly, it's a lot of plot. As the staff is challenged to close its first issue under the Amanda regime, the EIC herself is still isolated (having a lonely game night with Cassia -- complete with a black-and-white flashback to an earlier evening, when Alex not only showed up but was nice to Amanda), and still socially tone-deaf (passing around her photo proofs to make the staff -- many of whom are obviously not fans -- vote on which one she should use in the yearbook). But perhaps she is not as oblivious as she seems: when Alex asks to switch the traditional duties of the EIC and ME -- so that he handles the front page and she deals with the editorial page -- she agrees; when Cassia asks her to explain why, she merely says it's because Alex wanted it so badly. She's trying to make overtures, but Alex is still so resentful that she got the top job instead of him that he's not acknowledging her efforts, up to and including flat-out ignoring her when she asks him a direct question. Dude, you're seventeen. GROW UP.

But anyway. Adam sells enough ads to break his own record and allow "The Circuit" to do what (he claims) no other high-school paper in America has ever done: publish a 36-page issue. Predictably, problems arise. There are apparently more ads than than there are stories to intersperse among them. And then it seems as though neither Alex nor Amanda ever learned from the previous EIC, Ash, how to create PDFs -- and the only person who DOES know how is Adam, and he's out seeing "High School Musical on Ice"! But as Amanda increasingly retreats from confrontation with her hostile staff, Alex steps up, and in a montage set to the "HSM" hit "We're All in This Together" (including Adam dancing backstage with the show's touring cast -- hee!), the job gets done, and the boys can go out to Antonio's Pizza-Rant (I guess because they're ranting over pizza) and snark on how little Amanda contributed to the process even though they were all doing their part to ignore or undermine her. By the episode's end, those on Team Amanda are colluding as to how to get their EIC to stop Alex's potential coup.

Best lines of the episode:

"We'll know when Adam starts screaming that we're officially in panic mode."

"I think purple makes an edit a happy edit. I think it says, 'Be optimistic! Your story only needs some of these minor changes.'"

And, not a quote, but I loved the moment when Adam does a pirouette in the Newspaper room and Trevor, seeing it, backs silently out of the room. Hee.