Those who thought that the first few episodes of last season were bad and stopped watching are the lucky ones.
“Third-Day Story” is the all-time nadir of the series. One thing to use Josh and Toby as comic relief, but as totally incompetent fools who after five full years have no idea how to do their jobs? Josh is Deputy Chief of Staff. He takes charge when Leo is away. No two-bit storefront would operate any differently, and to pretend that the White House doesn’t have this down to a choreographed ballet whenever anyone is out of the building for five minutes is insulting to the intelligence of every viewer. This was disgraceful, demoralizing, and just plain yucky.
And it’s about to get worse. Much worse.
Just for those who didn’t get the huge hint, and didn’t watch the “next week” trailer - or who haven’t received next week’s TV Guide - I’ll put it in a spoiler box.
C. J. will be the new White House Chief of Staff. No. A thousand times no. It doesn’t matter how competent she looked on this episode. The job function, job skills, and job knowledge of a press secretary is totally outside that of a Chief of Staff’s role. It’s like moving the Surgeon General over to National Security Adviser. It’s dumb shake-'em-up because the ratings are down television.
To quote Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this episode.
Josh was the obvious choice; he’s the Deputy Chief of Staff.
The West Wing (like most TV series) has always been unrealistic about depicting people’s jobs. You had someone like Sam Seaborne, who was a speechwriter, being shown as a major policy advisor. The only justification for this was that the character was being played by one of the show’s stars. The same logic has led to the bizarre situation we’ve been seeing the last two seasons where the Vice President’s Chief of Staff goes to more senior policy meetings than the Vice President does.
No, that’s extremely realistic. The Vice President doesn’t have a policy role. In recent years, the real-life Veep has been a close associate of the President, true, and has been given some tasks, but in the West Wing world the Veep is more like George Bush 41 was - a political choice who is barely on speaking terms with the President.
West Wing reminds me of Star Trek, where you have a ship full of hundreds of people, but basically all of the actual work and all of the interesting events involve only the five or six main characters. It’s a stretch on ones suspension of disbelief to not wonder where all the other people are, what they’re doing, etc. Makes some of the episodes seem kind of “empty”, huge events are transpiring but only the same small bunch of folks are involved in them, almost in isolation.
I thought it was just me, but Exapno must have read my mind.
What a huge slap in the face to Josh that his boss did not name him as his successor. What the hell has he been doing for the past six years as Deputy COS if he’s so incompetent he can’t fill his boss’s shoes?
To portray Toby and Josh as stupid idiots fumbling the ball was an insult. These are brilliant men who have been doing this job for years. They didn’t get to where they are by not knowing how to broker deals. To imply that the place falls apart without Leo may have been a nice homage, but was completely unrealistic. Hell, even in my own job, the department does not fall to pieces because one person is out. I doubt highly that the WW would be any different.
How long was Leo lost in the woods at Camp David? Overnight? Just during the afternoon? I’m surprised he’s still alive.
Also, continuity error…in the PBS-style documentary they showed late last year, they said CJ was the only press secretary to have served two full terms. Umm, guess they forgot that little detail.
I want more Charley. I want more Debbie. Christ, I want more Aaron Sorkin.
I’ll keep watching it, but it’s starting to be less of a pleasure and more of a rubbernecking as you drive past a car wreck.
Oh, I forgot something. My son is a big Tom Clancy fan. He said the plot of this show is lifted straight from The Sum of All Fears, where the White House COS dies of a heart attack and is replaced by the female press secretary.
Not being a Tom Clancy fan, I can’t confirm this. Can anyone?
To continue on this point – what the hell were CJ, Toby, Josh, Will, and Alison Sterm (she’s a great actress but in my mind she’ll always be Howard’s wife from “Private Parts”) doing at Camp David negotiating with the Israelis & Palestinians? Doesn’t the US Government have people more qualified to deal with this kind of thing, like, you know, diplomats or something?
So why, why, why would they choose CJ for Leo’s job? By default, it goes to Josh – but the argument could be made for it going to Will. All I can figure is that Leo was really enjoying his morphine drip there and flaked out – but Jed listened to him! In that crappy episode ivylass refers to, CJ went on and on about how long it took her to “hit her stride” or whatever and that the press corps will eat you alive, etc. – with the Chief of Staff resigning in the hospital after a heart attack and a tentative peace accord forged between the Israelis and Palestinians, would you really want to throw a newbie in front of those reporters every day?
Gah. I want to like this show, I really do – but it’s killing me.
No problem with the realism of the VP not being a major player. But why then is the VP’s assistant supposed to be a senior advisor?
No, it was the National Security Advisor who had a stroke in his office and was replaced by a female DNSA.
Assuming this isn’t a whoosh, the father was the 41st President. The son is the 43rd President. Personally, I preferred to stand on precendent and call the current President George Quincy Bush.
Because this was the moment that the show went into the toilet? Preceded and foreshadowed by Will heading up the speechwriting staff and having nothing but same-named interns to work with?
Will’s character was great when he was introduced. He never should have replaced Rob Lowe as a lead character because they’ve never figured out a way to give him a proper role befitting the character they had set up.
Of course, same can be said of the vow they had the President and Leo make after the re-election to use the second term to make their dreams and ideals into reality.
I hate to say it, but last night sealed it for me. I’m done w WW - and this despite being a huge fan of CJ.
I’ve watched dutifully for the past three years, even all of last year when the wheels started coming off, but this last episode was just ludicrously bad. The Josh and Toby stuff, the donuts deal, the kooky senator w the monarchy bill - enough is enough. Time for me to rent Seasons 1 and 2, which I’ve never seen. Perhaps Mr. Sorkin will come back and rescue this moribound franchise before it babbles itself into oblivion.
This all seems a setup for a final season of WW next year with only certain members of the cast continuing on. Josh can’t automatically get Leo’s job because then he’ll have no reason to leave to go work for Jimmy Smits. Same with Toby; getting passed over for CoS is going to propel him out of the WW so that he can still be around next year.
Also, with Josh out of the WW, Donna is free to go work for someone else so that they can move on to a romance that isn’t impeded by the fact that she works for him.
This is typical John Wells thinking. It sucks. It’s made ER into a parody of itself that’s only going to last another year, it’s made Third Watch into a shadow of what it was at its start that’s probably only going to last another year, it’s like he’s getting sick of the television business and wants to be lounging on a beach in Costa Rica by fall of '06 without having to worry about anything.
You should definitely do this right away. The first two seasons are really excellent, and switching to them right after watching the recent stuff makes the difference in quality even more clear.
I haven’t watched this year. Or the second half of last year, but for some reason I still come into the threads - partially to make me happy about not watching…still, I have a question
Did John Spencer leave the show? Is that why they’re doing this?
imdb has him listed as 1999-2004, which would imply that he has
I haven’t really watched the show since early last season either, and I keep reading the threads too, just to keep up to date with what’s going on without having to suffer too much. I actually started watching last night’s episode just to see how it was doing this season, and turned it off in disgust when they turned Toby and Josh into incompetent jackasses. Oh well, at least I know for sure that I’m safe turning off the tv after Lost now.
