Well, it’s finally hear. The American public gets to pick between Arnie Vinick and Matt Santos. And Josh and Bruno are over-obsessing about the exit poll numbers.
Two big things happened in this episode:
Josh and Donna finally did the horizontal mambo (not once but twice!)(and it only took eight years for it to finally happen). Who knows, maybe those crazy kids will make it work for them.
And we finally have the series cacthing up to the death of John Spencer. A lot of Secret Service guys guys came running out of nowhere on that one.
So what did they do right last night, and what could have been done better?
They managed to turn the best TV drama series into a numbers-crunching soap opera (“Up two in Nebraska! Up Three in New Mexico!” isn’t what I’d all dramatic writing by any stretch. Up yours on Sunday night from 8 to 9.) What a total borefest. It couldn’t have gotten more interesting if they had done cu shots on Janel Moloney and on Teri Polo during x-rated bedroom scenes.
Well, maybe, that would have spiced it up a bit, but still…
They’ll reveal it eventually, but not at the end of next week’s episode. In the previews, there was a scene of Bartlett asking, “Who won?” I’m betting that’ll be the last scene next week, with the question unanswered for one more week.
It’s also stupid to drag it out. If they put election day as the final episode – fine. Run the campaign until then – it could be interesting. But now that we know it’s close and that Leo is officially dead, it makes Santos the only dramatically viable winner. That opens an entire “Who should be veep?” plot not available to Vinnick.
If Leo had died early on Election Day, would that have changed the voting? Would people then say, I’d rather vote for the Republican slate instead of the Democratic slate of Santos and an unknown person? (Leo brought a lot of experience to the ticket, so perhaps people were less willing to vote for Santos on his own, kind of like how Cheney brought experience to GWB’s candidacy.) I was speculating on this happening and then having the Democrats considering hiding the fact of Leo’s death until after the election was over. But it looks like his death came only in the last couple of hours of the election on the West Coast.
Also, how many times did they mention the voting in the insignificant states, like Connecticut, Rhode Island and especially Vermont? I mean, do the major parties even think about the Vermont election results in a presidential race? It’s only got three electoral votes.
It’s inside politics wonkery. A lot of times the fringe states are so predictable in their voting habits that they can be predictors. That’s why both Josh and Bruno were gnashing their teeth over who was oversampled in the exit polls, what time the polls were taken (since working people tend to vote later in the day) and so on.
Actually I thought the wonk talk was a good way of illustrating that, particularly with Josh, there wasn’t a damn thing left that he could do and he was still desperately looking for some bit of data or overlooked fact that would give him an edge.
They did a nice job of illustrating his desperation to find something to do when he went to the ballroom with that guy to check out the arrangements. I can imagine his frustration at that point.
My prediction is that news of Leo’s death happens while the polls are closed in all the major states except California. That makes CA the crucial showdown. The scene with Bartlett is that he is expecting an election update but instead hears about Leo.
Re: the numerous speeches for nearly every imaginable outcome, does that kind of CYA really occur in a presidential campaign? I’d love to hear from someone who has worked on one, or actually knows how it’s done. I’d have to guess that if you have to write a dozen or so speeches to address all such permutations, they’ll all pretty much suck. We’ve seen how hard good speechwriters- Sam and Toby, for instance- work at writing *one * speech. That kid, whatever his name is, can’t have that much experience.
Another speculation, based on the conversation between CJ and Charlie, who said he wanted to work with CJ in the future; do you think they may be setting up a spinoff series featuring those two in a corporate or academic setting?
I can see it now- a madcap sitcom with a laugh track, CJ is the dean of a women’s university, Charlie is her loyal assistant. For continuity, she keeps a goldfish in a bowl on her desk. Every episode, as she frantically tries to maintain order and decorum at the university while her incompetent staff constantly screws everything up, she manages to work in the phrase “I used to be Chief of Staff at the White House!” Hilarity ensues, for about 6 episodes before it’s cancelled.
I can’t see a madcap sitcom, but perhaps another dramatic series, although I doubt they could capture the magic of the first few seasons. But the success of Frasier as a spinoff series always gives me hope.
