On Thursday mornings, I could bring up Cafe Society and always see a West Wing thread near the top, with at least a dozen posts. It was always interesting to read about other people’s interpretation of what happend, and to get filled in on the snappy dialog or subtle events that I missed. The West Wing was a show that demanded your full attention throughout, and it was even enjoyable to watch the reruns, because there was always new things to be gleened from each episode.
But not anymore. Last night’s show had about 10-12 minutes of content, which they somehow managed to stretch into an hour show. Yes, we see that Santos is inexperienced at being in a national campaign. Yes, we see that Josh is frustrated with him for not listening to Josh’s advice. But these concepts were repeated over and over again, without any clever style or substance. They mentioned that Santos had some great education plan, yet we hardly heard any of it. We used to learn stuff on this show, and we used to be stimulated by ideas, and the back and forth dueling of policy concepts. Now the writers just don’t care to make the effort.
Last night’s episode was little more than filler. A framework of a show used to sell advertising time.
I caught the last 10 minutes of it (I fell asleep on the couch). I see I didn’t miss much. I was curious what the big education plan was. What else happened? I caught the Bartlet chick giving the $2,000 check, Josh chewing Santos out for not trying, and Santos strapping on a pair at the end, but that’s it.
What vertizontal said. A total filler episode that advanced the plot about as much as 2 or 3 phone calls from Josh in NH back to Toby would have done.
Josh & Matt’s Bogus Journey was terrible. What did Josh see in this guy? I know, I know, Josh is in lo-o-ove, but c’mon! What it seems like to me is that Josh doesn’t want to help Santos run for President, but Josh wants to run for President – he just wants to do it vicariously through someone with better looks.
And so Santos’s opposition to the “Opposition Research” is basically that he’s not in it to win it? Doesn’t Josh remember that Jed wasn’t in it to win it initially when he ran? He just wanted to push the issues, etc.? Speaking of Jed, it’s nice to see he’s standing just fine on his own now. And speaking of “Opposition Research”, someone might want to tell Josh that Santos’s wife is on the cover of Playboy (and exposed on its pages!) this month!
Looks like we go back into crisis-du-semaine mode next week, though… No killer asteroid, or the promo monkeys would have made mention of it in the preview.
Does anyone find it odd that the experienced campaign manager (Josh) is working for a naive, inexperienced candidate (Santos) when Santos isn’t sure he’s going to last two months, but the inexperienced national campaigner (Will Bailey) is working for an empty hat (Bingo Bob?) BTW, that two-thumbs-up cardboard cutout was too cheesy for words.
I predict a Hoynes victory. Josh could get Santos elected, but Santos’ heart isn’t in it. Will can’t get Russell elected, because Russell is a joke.
Again, with the timeline error…Bartlet’s in his 6th year, not 7th, and they slipped up when then mentioned Donna’s “6 years of service.” She joined Josh during the first Bartlet campaign.
Nice to see Josh’s jaw drop when he found out Donna wasn’t just doing “make work.” He so took her for granted.
This is intentional – the producers decided to skip a year and throw us right into the election cycle. There’s a missing year. Apparently part of it is that Martin Sheen’s contract is up at the end of this season… I would guess this is either the last season of WW, or that next year Bartlet will be 100% out of the picture, possibly deceased.
Incidentally, has a Representative ever made the jump to the Presidency? Seems to me all the winning candidates had been Senators, Governors or four-star generals.
Bartlet was governor of New Hampshire and served three terms as US Representative. Remember the show about the Stackhouse filibuster? Donna said the senator could yield for a question without yielding the floor, and Bartlet said he didn’t know Senate rules, since he served in the House.
I think Josh basically wants to recreate the experience he had with Jed Bartlet’s campaign - helping an idealistic outsider become President. But seven years of White House experience have changed Josh - Matt Santos may be the same as Jed Bartlet was but Josh himself is no longer the same person he was eight years back. He’s torn between his desire for an idealisitic candidate and his cynical awareness than non-idealisitic candidates usually win. Eight years ago he believed he could be both idealisitic and victorious - now he’s worried he’s going to have to make a choice.
There have been several of them.
Going backwards, we have:
George Herbert Walker Bush, who represented Texas in the US House of Reps. He was later US Ambassador to the UN and head of the CIA, but was never a US Senator or Governor.
Gerald Ford represented Michigan for 13 terms in the US House, then was appointed VP to replace Spiro Agnew, and became President when Nixon resigned.
James Garfield represented Ohio in the US House, then was elected to the Senate in 1880 but never served, becoming President instead (a bad career move, since he was assassinated within his first year of office).
Abraham Lincoln represented Illinois in the US House before becoming President.
Yes, but after that he was Governor of Tennessee prior to being elected POTUS. Bryan Ekers wanted Presidents who had been US Representatives but not “Senators, Governors or four-star generals”. Many US Presidents were formerly Representatives, but a lot of them were also Senators or Governors at one point (or high-ranking military leaders such as Grant or Eisenhower).
My list (two posts up^^) gives those who were US Reps but never “Senators, Governors or four-star generals”. None of them went straight from the House to the Presidency, although Ford did go directly from Speaker of the House to the Vice-Presidency.
In the West Wing universe, Glenallen Walken (played by John Goodman)went directly from being Speaker of the House to POTUS when Bartlet invoked the 25th Amendment at the end of Season 4 (the VP had previously resigned but had not yet been replaced).
I was going to open a thread on this episode yesterday, but after last week’s attempt I felt like I would be a voice in the wilderness. And reading these posts, I wasn’t wrong.
I liked this episode. I thought that this was one of the better episodes this season. The characters of Santos, Josh, and Donna all had some grow, Lizzie and Doug stepped out of the background, and Will is back into his campaign manager mode, a highly effective juggernaut to be feared (“At least this one’s got a pulse.” “Technically, yeah.”). And Marlee Maitlyn looked really adorable in her bundled-up mode.
I liked Donna acting superior to Josh - she’s on a successful national campaign, and he’s playing Civics 101 with amateurs. The scene outside the post office was pure gold to me - hey, Josh, look, we’ve got our act together, and you can’t even get your guy to stay on topic. I thought it was especially important what Josh muttered as he was drawing a moustache on VP Lumbergh’s cut-out – that he (VP) might be the best candidate, he should have just filled out sooner.
I like how Tiny Press Secretary-to-be and the Super NSA Assistant weren’t in the show. And Barlet insulting his son-in-law: “Josh, if you ever have daughters, don’t let them marry pinheads.”
I liked how the nuts and bolts of the New Hampshire primary (in TWW universe, at least) were explained in a way that they weren’t on Barlet’s two runs through there.
And I thought it was important (and right) that Santos and Josh worked out their differing opinions on the goal of this campaign. Josh is going to let Santos speak about what’s important to him, and Santos is going to listen to Josh on how to get that message out (how to say it, opposition research, etc.)
Before I got to the last two posts, I was thinking that the reason I no longer post online about The West Wing is that I still love the show and I want to share my enthusiasm for it, not hear everything that’s horrible about it. (I have the same problem with Law & Order, but that’s a story for another thread).
Last week’s West Wing really ramped up my enjoyment of the show. I thought it was as good as any early season episode, and for the first time I was actively hoping for a Santos win and a Jimmy Smits lead West Wing future. I thought this week’s episode did a good job of fleshing out the Jimmy Smits character from a political perspective. In a way, it was almost a prequel episode, giving a flavor for what the season before the first season of The West Wing would have been like. Although we got a little bit of that in flashbacks, we met Jed Bartlet when he was already serving as president. This time, we are getting to see how the candidate is formed, which will be great insight to look back on once he is elected.
My only regret is that I may have to switch my vote away from Alan Alda.
Maybe Bingo Bob will make him secretary of Transportation and the entire cabinet will be killed off in the coup.
Josh and Will could argue about Presidential Succession and who they have to kill until they get to Alda. Remember when Bartlett was shot? “You killed him and you didn’t get him to sign anything?”
Donna could poison some of them. Josh would tell her to put it in tea and Will would insist that coffee would hide the taste better.
We could go somewhere with this.
I should’ve added “Vice-President” to “Senator, Governor or General”, it occurs to me. In recent decades especially, the Veep position has been a stepping stone to the big show. As such, I wouldn’t have counted Bush41, Ford or Fillmore.
In any case, if the series ends with the election torn between the Smits character and older, more experienced Alda character, having the former win would shatter the credibility the show has built up over the years.
