I know first hand that in New Hampshire you can get lost taking a walk and end up in Vermont, Maine, Canada, Connecticut or Massachusetts while fumbling around for your compass. It’s pretty confusing.
Calm down. You’re gonna bust something.
You might enjoy this column by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, in which Jed Bartlet offers advice to Obama after a 2008 debate.
Also, this Maureen Dowd column, in which Jed Bartlet offers advice to Obama after the first presidential debate last month.
Cool.
If you can find the Ontario/Vermont border, I’ll eat a bug of your choosing.
You can also follow all the main chars on twitter and whoever is doing it the voices are pretty true to their chars. Donna, josh, Sam and Bartlett are the most chatty but mrs Landingham is there too.
Sadly, Kathryn Joosten (Mrs. Landingham) passed away earlier this year.
There was a reunion of sorts a few months ago where they got together to do a PSA for Everybody Walk promoting the health benefits of walking.
The ad: http://youtu.be/PEdHhZcmEoM
Making of: http://youtu.be/MCZQqu2Xlms
(Martin Sheen, Dulé Hill, Allison Janney, William Duffy, Joshua Malina and Melissa Fitzgerald)
If you subtract the preachy, literal, sledgehammering episodes of The West Wing, you’d have zero episodes of The West Wing. I think it was a great show (until season 5 or so, anyway), but TWW not a preachy or sledgehammery show? That does not compute.
Do you remember how Jed Barlet was introduced? Walking into a room saying, “I am the Lord your God. Thou shalt worship no other God before me.”
Subtle, right?
I did not know this.
I started watching West Wing late in the first season; I think one or two episodes before the first season finale. In fact, as I think on it, I think I may have caught a summer rerun of a late first season episode. Anyway, years passed before I saw the premiere, so I don’t count it as my personal introduction to Bartlett; I already had a firm opinion of him cemented by then, and to me that line came off as sarcasm.
Indeed, I believe it was.
I bought the entire boxed set and enjoyed all the commentaries. Originally Bartlett was only going to be an occasional character. The focus was going to be on the staff. But after Martin Sheen and an intro like that… well too good to pass up.
Two cathredrials. What an episode. I do envy you seeing it all for the first time. Enjoy.
Well, I won’t argue against it being sarcasm, but do you not think Bartlet was swinging a sledgehammer by telling a room full of evangelicals that he is God? (And more importantly, it was a sledgehammer to the TV audience, in that it instantly conveyed him as a president with balls and resolve.) I don’t mean to press the point on you, all I’m trying to say is that I think from the get go, The West Wing had no aversion to being preachy and expressing itself with a sledgehammer.
I’ve never seen more than a single scene of the show, but I’m simply amazed that this scene ever aired on American TV.
Watching that scene, you have to remember that the speaker - the President - is a deeply religious man himself, as well as a liberal, and that it was intended as an attack on religious fundamentalism rather than on religion (or Christianity) in general.
There’s this one, too (voting PSA/partisan ad - two versions were made, one without the McCormack pitch)
Indeed, the Fundamentalist were being insulting towards two Jewish guys on the staff, and arguing which was the First Commandment. Enter Bartlett quoting, “I am the Lord thy G-d…”
I recall an Aaron Sorkin interview from ~2008 where he mentioned meeting President Obama and being told half jokingly that he intended to steal some of Sorkin’s lines.
I think that WW. was one of the best progrmmes on tv, ever.
In quality terms it tapered off towards the end.
But I really, really hope that thy bring it back
Actually, I was referring to the scene linked to by Jragon, in which Bartlett bitch-slapped Dr. Laura Schlessinger.