Tilting the camera up to use the ceiling as the eye of God was a very nice touch.
It was a beautiful scene. WW at its best.
Just one other spectacular scene. If I wanted to convince someone watch this show, I would just have them watch this one scene.
From 2.3 - The Midterms
Perfection.
I watched the show when it was first run, but just last year, I checked all of the DVD’s out of the library, and binge-watched the whole thing again.
I could never get into the show because I can’t stand the way Sorkin writes conversations. It seems like every conversation is an argument or an interrogation. Or worse, it’s an argument about whether they’re having an argument. For example, from the episode “Life on Mars”
I liked the part of “Dead Irish Writers” where at Abigail’s big birthday celebration, in honor of Donna’s new nationality, Abby has the orchestra play “Oh Canada” and everyone sings along. Oh, and Jeb’s reaction.
I’m a reasonably erudite political junkie. I lived in DC in the Clinton/Bush Jr. era, across the street from an NPR correspondent and around the corner from an embassy, a senator and an eventual mayor. My favorite scene was Ainslie Hayes, in a towel, dancing to “Blame It On the Bossa Nova.”
I also liked CJ playing a deliberate prank on Matthew Perry’s character, resulting in a fired VP, John Goodman and a constitutional crisis of succession.
I heard the same thing, only with an extra layer. By the time they filmed the last episode, they knew they’d been cancelled. They’d intended to go another couple of seasons with Vinnik as POTUS. But given that there would be no more seasons, and that everyone was depressed by Spencer’s death, they decided to go out on (what was for the POV characters) a high note.
I, too, loved the show. The plotting sometimes went down the wrong path, but you could always count on — as I said about The Newsroom — smart people talking smart. Rare on TV (and … y’know … in life).
I like that scene, and Martin Sheen really nails it, but it always felt to me to be really self-centered by Bartlett. The whole speech is about how her death is god punishing him. Dude, you’re just the president of the United States. You’re not that important.
He had just listened to a sailor kid he was talking to die. He was really, really pissed off at G-d.
Sure, I get that. Still made it all about him though.
Well, he was - as everyone was - preoccupied about whether to stand for reelection. As Bartlett says in anger at the end of that scene ‘You get Hoynes’.
I got the impression from the stories that Sorkin leaving was sudden, happened over the break between season 4 and season 5, so he had different plans for the cliffhanger (I do wonder what that would be).
From his wikipedia entry:
Sorkin never watched any episodes beyond his writing tenure apart from 60 seconds of the fifth season’s first episode, describing the experience as “like watching somebody make out with my girlfriend.”