I thought this was one of the best episodes this season. The storyline was very compelling and well written. Will Bailey has stopped being comic relief. Barlett was shown taking complete charge. I particularly liked the scene between him and Vinick in the plane on the way to the power plant.
I agree…great episode tonight. But in case you missed my earlier thread today, I have some bad news for you.
I think there was a misstep in how the audience would perceive tonight’s episode. Or at least there was for me.
I get that this is a political show. I get that these are politicians and everything must, in their minds, relate in some way to politics and the upcoming elections. But that doesn’t mean that we, the general audience, can relate to that.
One man lost his life. Tens of thousands are fleeing a 10-15 mile radius. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be potentially affected for generations to come. It’s a huge national disaster that’s has and will affect all levels of government from city to national.
On that grand a scope, and the entire episode went on and on about just how grand a scope this is, I’m not quite sure I can bring myself to care about Florida and whether it’s still in play.
But that’s the whole point with these people, the wonks in charge of getting people elected. They see everything in terms of how it will affect the candidate.
I didn’t like how no one told Bartlett that people in a radiation area do not exceed their stay times. 15 minutes is 15 minutes. The guys in there leave, and more go in, working in shifts, until the job is done or the plant explodes. That’s just the way it goes. There was no need to kill off an engineer just to make a point about how dangerous nuclear power is.
And the root cause of the problem with the plant wasn’t Vinick shepherding it’s approval through 25 years ago, or even lax Federal Regulators. The problem with the valves was caused by improper maintenance procedures at the plant. And there is never only one way to get water into a core.
I like how Will showed some stones with the renegade staffer who talked to the press after he expressly told them only one person will be the voice of the White House on this one.
From what little I know, it didn’t seem terribly realistic in the technical area.
Jimmy Carter would have know how to handle it. 
I agree with you on Carter. And granted, there wasn’t a lot of background given, but stay times are not to be exceeded, especially when there are more people available to do the same job. So CJ’s whole comment of “Would you have rather sent in two more people,” shows a lot of ignorance, in my opinion.
So hey, what do youu guys think of the impending world war in Kazackstan (or however you spell the place)?
Yeah, I would think if 15 minutes was a safe level of exposure, SOP would have 147 tag-teams of engineers suiting up for 10-minute stays apiece.
Really?
I wonder why that is, since when Carter faced an actual nuclear plant crisis during his presidency, the federal response was seen as slow and the advice to people in the affected area unhelpful and conflicting.
A lot of lessons were learned from Three Mile Island, and most of them involved doing things much differently from now on.
This isn’t an indictment of Carter, per se. A lesson learned is just that. I’m just saying that Carter’s actual record in this area isn’t a great one.
He was a nuclear engineer in the Navy and did this “tag team” stuff for real.
I liked it, too. My favorite moment was actually when Josh told Donna to leak the story of Vinick having shepherded the nuclear plant through to approval years earlier. You could see from Donna’s expression that she knew she shouldn’t - that Santos hadn’t given his OK - but that it was what Josh really wanted, and that it might win them the election. She gets off the elevator and walks over to the reporter, almost in a daze… and then finds out that the reporter already has the story. Her relief was almost palpable. Great scene.
Since when is there not a reporter to whom Josh could leak the story who would, if asked where he got the story, not reveal that it was Josh? Isn’t that 100% SOP, constitutionally protected, etc?
I also thought that the breakdown seemed WAY too easy. If pumping cold water through the pipe would cause it to shatter, then they would have known that ahead of time, because those kinds of contingencies are thought out dozens of times over ahead of time. I suspect (without really knowing) that it would take 5 or 6 independent and unlikely things all going wrong at once for an accident of that magnitude to occur, rather than the 2 or so it seemed to take.
I remember that Josh holds “off the record” to be holy and sancrosanct, however you spell it.
I agree. It seems like they set Vinick up, however you spell his name.
Bingo. I had forgotten all about TMI to be honest.
It was an unusually sloppy script last night, but I did enjoy seeing more of Barlett. The show is so much less without Sheen, and I don’t think Smits could carry it. Alda maybe, but not Smits. It’s all moot now, of course, but still…
When Barlett announced that he would be going to location .1 miles outside the evacuated zone, that certainly made me think of Carter going to the 3-Mile Island plant during the emergency. That blew my mind when I saw it on a documentary.