Despite the fact that the Bartlet administration seems to have skipped a year (the Pres election should not be until 2006 in WW world, but they’re talking about “seven years in office” and “next year’s campaign” already) this was not a bad episode.
One other minor nitpick…it looked like Josh only hit the bumper of the Prius, but they were talking like he totaled it. And I can’t believe the buyers would have to wait another 6-8 months for a car…wouldn’t they just be put back at the top of the list?
CJ seems to be getting on top of things, and I was right about Charlie being asked to quit. Can CJ just create a position for him out of thin air? It was nice to see Zoey again too.
Not bad. Not Sorkin-blow-you-away, but not That’s-the-Last-Time-for-Me either.
If I remember the “seven years” line right, they were talking about CJ having done her job for seven years. I assumed that this period included time during the campaign before Bartlett took office. Also, if Bartlett has only been in office six years, the campaign would start next year, cuz they last so damned long.
People with an axe to grind were saying the Prius had been totalled, but clearly that didn’t happen. As for going to the top of the list, that might be true if the accident had been the fault of the dealer, but the car was bought and then hit by a driver who didn’t work for the dealership. Unless one could prove the SUV suffered a mechnical failure, the dealership’s obligation to the Prius owner is nil in this case. I wouldn’t expect them to simply replace the car, though I could imagine them offering prompt repairs and spare parts, at Josh’s expense.
She’s chief-of-staff and ten feet tall. You wanna tell her what she can and can’t do?
I was a little put off by the petty squabbling of the alternative-energy people, and it was downright mystifying to me why a representative of nuclear wasn’t there. It would have been nice if they’d tried to dogpile him and he shot them all down with his death-ray, err, some solid facts about nuclear power.
Well, strictly speaking, neither can wind or solar, and they each had a rep. On the assumption that cars will eventually be electrical, a combination of wind, solar and nuclear could be used to power the recharging grid.
It is, but supposedly the discussion was about laying the groundwork for what might be feasible years from now, when fossil fuel demand greatly outstrips supply. Personally, I’m hoping for controlled fusion, but that wasn’t even mentioned in the episode.
The lower staff positions in the White House are GS (General Service) schedule positions, and heads of department have considerable leeway in creating new positions (subject to overall availability of funds, of course). When you’re at the White House, the origin of the executive budget, I imagine it’s easier than at, say, my agency to ensure budget support.
What’s more interesting is FILLING that new position created out of thin air non-competitively. In other words, there may be other government employees as well or better qualified for the position, and the rules generally forbid simply giving one person a job without considering all applicants – indeed, if you have other applicants qualified for the job that are on a “stopper list” (they were RIFfed from other jobs) – they must be given priority.
There are a set of federal service jobs known as “Schedule C” – these jobs permit appointment directly, because they involve policy-making, or close working relationships with the department heads. Those appointments can be done non-competitively. A GS job can only be made Schedule C with the concurrence of the OPM and must be done on a case-by-case basis. I assume that the White House Chief of Staff has enough juice at OPM to make this happen.
I think it’s kind of strange that Bartlett wants Charlie to “get a real job” after he graduates. Also strange that one, he could possibly go to university while also being the personal assistant to the POTUS; two, that the PA to the POTUS is supposedly some kind of menial, low-level position that only an uneducated flunky could get and is entirely unsuitable for someone with a bachelor’s degree. I imagine that people practically kill to be considered for that job in real life, and they usually have a master’s at the least. High school boys are not offered the position no matter how underprivileged they are.
So he’s going to go from being a flunky for the president to being a flunky for CJ? How is that supposed to be any better than what he’s doing now? If you’ve got to be a flunky, at least be one for the most powerful man on earth. Right, like they’re really going to let some youngster with no actual policy experience make policy.
I have to keep reminding myself this is just TV and not supposed to resemble real life at all. Sigh.
I refused to watch last night after I read a blurb for the show that said that Kristen Chenoweth was the new Press Secretary. 4’11" Kristen Chenoweth replaces 6’0" Allison Janney as Press Secretary. Ha ha ha ha. What a knee slapper. Oh, they have a sense of humor on that show. Never mind that the character is totally unqualified for her new job. So’s C.J. and that’s not stopping them.
Bad info. Chenoweth is Assistant Press Secretary for Media Relations. She’s doing the search for the new Press Sec and generally schooling Toby how to not look bad on the camera.
I liked the episode. The alternative energy people disembowling each other was amusing (and from my experience fairly on the mark). Nuclear may have been off the list because of the negative connotations nuclear power may have (I dunno). Though Josh wanting to drive the manly SUV and then getting in trouble on it was hilarious.
My feeling was that Kate went through a similar type of thing in the past, and it’s not so much that she wants Donna to feel that they can talk, but that Kate could finally talk about her experience with someone who understands. (Donna). Then again, I have absolutely no basis for that. I do like the idea of Kate hitting on Donna, though – if their genes could only combine… that would be one beautiful child that they’d have with eachother!
That makes sense, but since I had the (mis)fortune of seeing “Mary McCormack” in “K Street”, I think of her as a lesbian when she’s playing a character in DC…
Was I the one so totally and utterly put off by what seemed like an extended Toyota commercial at the beginning of the episode that I couldn’t recover my composure enough to give the rest of the episode a fair shake?
Possibly. I don’t mind commercialism, and I don’t understand the hostility toward it, especially from Americans. I think that the general condescension toward it from the intelligentsia is misguided. It helps the economy by putting a lot of people to work; it greases the wheels of tecnological advancement by helping to market technology; it lowers prices by exposing products and services to the maximum number of consumers; it takes snapshots of our culture and helps keep providers aware of consumer demands.
I think the point of CJ’s offer was to keep Charlie close to the President. There is a relationship between the two that is more than just boss-to-flunky. Charlie has been Barlett’s right-hand for six years now, and (except in some cases when his judgement was clouded by emotions over Zoey) has provided solid advice and a different perspective to the administration. One specifc I recall is the school voucher issue for the city of Washington DC. Charlie is the poster boy for what public education can produce (black, entered college with enough credits to be a “junior with a pretty decent GPA”, goes to night school to get his bachelor’s degree, works side-by-side with the most powerful leader on the planet, all the while supporting his sister after there mother, a DC cop, is killed in the line of duty.) Barlett was sure he’d be against vouchers, and Charlile goes and tells them he wishes they were available when he was in school.
And CJ probably feels that she owes him for a favor he did for her years ago (“20 Hours In America, Pt II”, episode 4.02.) When her Secret Service boyfriend Simon was killed, Charlie took over being a Big Brother to the kid Anthony. He didn’t want to do it at first, but when he heard the kid threatening CJ, he stepped in and took over. And did a damn fine job of it, in addition to everything else that was on his plate.
And Sam Seaborn was damn impressed with Charlie’s intelligence. Remember the conversation those two had in the second (or maybe third) season:
Sam: “Charlie, just how smart are you?”
Charlie: “I got some game.”
No, I really like the character of Charlie, and I don’t think anything from this episode seemed contrived just to keep Dule Hill on the payroll.
Honestly, I don’t get all bent out of shape over product placement normally, and I understand that in the age of TiVo, normal TV advertising doesn’t cut it anymore. But I literally wasn’t sure if I was watching TWW or a car commercial for the first minute of the show, particularly given that for some reason I didn’t immediately recognize Bradley Whitford.
