If I understood it correctly, the intent was to kill him and then fake a plane crash into the ocean. I assume the taking the plane back up and crashing it part was left out.
I had trouble swallowing that whole plot – or will if it doesn’t have any consequences. I don’t see how you can inform both parties in Congress of the intent to assassinate someone and have everyone keep quiet about it forever. So I’ll be watching to see if and when it bites Bartlett in the ass next season.
Not that I gathered; just that they’d caught him.
This also hasn’t yet been fully explained, but I don’t think it has to do with the assassination attempt, I think it may have more to do with him not really being qualified for the position he was given, but I don’t know – I think we’ll hear more about that next year.
I was really disappointed by this whole story line. To introduce the character just to kill him off in some random act of violence? I thought it was stupid. The play for the heart-strings was too overt and too heavy-handed. I think they could have done some really nice things with that character and CJ – but no, let’s just kill him off. And he wasn’t even around long enough to really care about, so not only was I irritated by the obvious play to my emotions, it didn’t work anyway.
And I second (or third?) that no law enforcement officer would ever relax his guard until securing the entire scene. Where there’s one shooter there may be two – that’s first week of police academy stuff. So I didn’t buy that, either.
Yes. Apparently, the politicos were invited to this event by a Cardinal (one assumes the Cardinal of New York) – I gather it was some charity deal. But Ritchie decided to go to the baseball game instead to play “the common man” and then zoom over and sneak in late. So Bartlett’s boys tied up traffic to make him really inexcusably late – that’s why Bartlett told him “you can probably apologize to the Cardinal.”
Okay, thought more about the episode, and decided I liked the first forty minutes or so and HATED the last twenty.
Re Bartlett v. Ritchie:
“That’s when I decided to kick your ass.” Gee, I must have missed all those episodes where Bartlett was going to roll over and not run again. Not to mention the fact that his campaign staff had already started in with the dirty tricks earlier in the episode, plus Bartlett’s quote-gaffe-endquote on the hot mike some weeks ago.
Gee, sorry the governor didn’t respond the way you wanted him to, mister president. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that A) he had been stuck in traffic for hours thanks to YOUR staff, B) the most powerful man in the world AND his opposition had just invited him to a sitdown, probably their first ever, C) only to tell him that someone he had never met before was gunned down in a stupid corner-store robbery. What did you expect him to say?
Re the motorcade trick:
Sam, “moral high ground” doesn’t mean you make one nice gesture and then throw up your hands and say, “Fuck it – they’re not worth it.” Gotta love the way the White House’s dirty trick was made to look like a hijink, a frat prank, while the opposition’s dirty trick was base treachery, treason most foul. I won’t say they were on the same point in the moral scale, but they were a lot closer than they were portrayed.
Re Lily Tomlin:
She was fired because she hired Charlie? Okay, I can buy that except for one thing – he’s still there. An infraction by someone else that would get a Personnel/Human Relations staffer fired would require that the employee he or she hired get canned as well.
Though I did like the scenes with Jed and Charlie – “What, are you pledging a fraternity?”
Re the Qumari defense minister:
How exactly does taking him out make us an “ordinary” nation? I’d say that instead of starting a war over clearly belligerent actions by an agent of a foreign power (which, incidentally, we’d win within a week – less if we went all out), just taking one guy and his bodyguards out ain’t ordinary at all.
Luckily, that montage to Hallelujah won me back. That was Jeff Buckley’s version? What CD, if any, is it on?
What kind of stupid Secret Service agent doesn’t check the whole store for accomplices? That was so completely untrue to life that it ruined the whole situation for me.
Lily Tomlin’s gonna bother me. Does anyone else seem to think that Sorkin was sitting in his chair in the sun one day and said, “Hey, I don’t think we have enough quirky administrative assistants on my show. I’d better add one…”? I mean, come on! We already have Donna, Charlie, and Mrs. Landingham (hells, even Ginger)! Why do we need one more? Anyway, I figured she got fired because Charlie is an inner-city youth, or something equally dumb, and that’s why Charlie wants to hire her back.
Oh, stankoww, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought “Hey, it’s Willow!” I’m glad C.J. didn’t destroy the world, but maybe they’ll hire (the recently unemployed) Amber Benson to be her new girlfriend!
I also was annoyed at the way Harmon’s character bit the dust. No bullet proof vest? No checking to make sure the guy wasn’t alone? Shoot, he didn’t even ask the guy he wrestled down if he was alone.
And the whole part about why she’d get fired for hiring Charlie…the best I could come up with was that a) he wasn’t qualified or b) she hired someone with ties to the White House (if he was dating Zoe at the time) - maybe that’s taboo.
But I thought Josh hired Charlie? Didn’t Charlie apply for an intern position and Josh talked him into taking the position as the Prez’s bagman or whatever he is? And he’s been extremely efficient…hasn’t made a misstep so far that I’ve seen.
IIRC, Charlie was applying to be a messenger. Josh said the person who interviewed Charlie for that job decided he would make a good Presidential aide and referred him to Josh. So my guess is Lily Tomlin was the person who interviewed Charlie for the messenger position, although I still have no idea why that would lead to her firing. If it had something to do with the shooting, (1) I don’t know how she could possibly have been expected to forsee Charlie dating the First Daughter, and (2) why hasn’t Charlie himself been fired to get him away from POTUS?
I need to know if Amy was really fired or not. Was she fired? She says she’s resigning. Is she resigning for personal reasons (frustration with the whole situation, can’t accomplish any more in that job), or is she just taking control by quitting before they can fire her? Also, I’m assuming this is where Amy makes her exit and the curtain comes down on the Josh/Amy romance. They did know this was an inevitable part of their being together, right?
Romance just never survives on this show. Poor Josh. Poor C.J. (Poor Sam and Toby, for that matter!)
Where the heck is the First Lady??
I don’t understand why there isn’t some legal way they can just grab (“detain”) the Qumari minister guy instead of killing him. I’m still not sure this is legal, let alone moral. (They made the big deal about Bartlet ignoring his own E.O., but what about the older E.O.?) I’m assuming that if it ever becomes an issue, either with the re-election campaign or with the Qumari government, they just whip out sheaves of documentation and show why they had to do this. Then Bartlet would look like this take-charge, “Don’t mess with me” guy.
I like the way they had the minister look like an innocent - relaxed and gracious, like any other foreign leader meeting the President.
So we don’t really have a cliffhanger this season, except for the election stuff (of course) and the question of whether we might be going to war with Qumar. Will they pick up the new season in real time - we fast-forward to the fall, two months out from Election Day? We’d miss the conventions and all that.
I forgot to mention last week how moved I was by Bartlet visiting Mrs. Landingham’s grave and talking to her. So he’s still seeing the therapist. Bet he’s a tough customer, not just by being unable to talk about secret stuff, but by being unwilling to talk about touchy-feely stuff.
I was disappointed. I just assumed Mark Harmon was wearing a vest and was playing dead, thus missing out on the immediate drama. I didn’t realize it until the other agent told CJ.
I kept thinking of the ending The Godfather III.
I’m not going to like James Brolin. He wasn’t convincing as a southerner, his accent was off. Maybe he really sounds like that but to me it sounded like a guy trying to talk like a southerner. I could also tell that he enjoyed playing the character and making him a buffoon.
Are you allowed to smoke where Bartlett was?
The West Wing is starting to disappoint me in that it’s becoming what I always thought it wasn’t. A “we are good, those guys are bad” look at politics.
The way I read this is that she is resigning. She is a senior policy maker at her PAC and her boss basically sold her out in order to help draft the Dem’s platform.
When you have a job at that level, and you say we’re going North, and your boss decides to go South, you’ve gotta go. You no longer have the support of the people above you. Even if you’re not fired, you’ll never get anything important done at that job again.
What’s more, is that as soon as the White House got Amy’s boss on board, the whole West Wing knew she was gone.
Tomlin’s character’s firing–I think the most logical assumption is that she was fired for sending Charlie up fo the the job as the president’s assistant, even though he lacked qualifications (who knows what the qualifications may have been, but a college education springs to mind–Charlie is in college now). I would think that the reason Charlie wasn’t fired when somebody figured out that he wasn’t qualified for the job of POTUS’ assistant is the POTUS had gotten used to him, and you don’t fire someone the preseident is used to–especially if he’s as prickly as Bartlett. Remember, Charlie impressed BArtlett right off the bat, and his family history–cop mom killed inthe line of duty–didn’t hurt either. But the White House personnel office is part of the on-going establishment, and bureaucrats protect their turf. She pissed somebody off by sending Charlie up (probably instead of somebody’s Ivy League educated nephew), without any of the “new kids in town” knowing the difference.
As for Agent Simon–he was wearing a vest. The whole thing was a set up to make C.J believe he was dead, 'cuz he’s really afraid of committment. He’s been reassigned to the counterfeit division in Seattle. Some guys will do anything to get out of calling you again.
I got the sense that the “Crime. What are you gonna do?” line was a dig at Bartlett. Ritchie revealed a few moments later that is isn’t just a matter of having political and ideological differences, he really hates Bartlett as a person, and resents everything he represents. Bartlett was obviously moved by the death of one of his people, and Ritchie took the opportunity to get in a really nasty dig.
I don’t think the “gang of eight” will use the assassanation as political fodder. The implication I got was that this isn’t the first time this has happened–it’s just one of the unpleasant things that comes with the job, hence Leo telling Jed he has to do it because he won. If the opposition gets ahold of this and tries to use it against Bartlett, it would backfire. One of Bartlett’s weaknesses is his lack of military experience, and this would only serve to help give him a tough guy image. In addition, ranking members of congress don’t reveal secrets that are a matter of national security for political gain. I just don’t see it happening.
I think the whole purpose was to show the personal struggle Bartlett had to go through in giving the order. Though he didn’t pull the trigger, he did kill a man.
Bartlet was also seriously PO’d that his opponent would rather go to a baseball game than to a Catholic Charities fundraiser. (Although I think that Shakespeare would be an odd choice of entertainment for such an organization.)
I believe that if any of the member of the Congessional Intelligence Committees revealed any findings that they had received, they could be arrested and charged with some really nasty crimes.
Everybody is assuming that Tomlin’s character was fired because of something to do with Charlie. It is a lot more likely that she was fired for doing something oddball (plenty of evidence for that in this episode) and Charlie is trying to get her back because he is grateful for her hiring him.
By the way, at the beginning where they listed the guest stars on the show, they listed Armin Shimerman (who was Quark on DS9, as well as being on Buffy). Did anyone see him in this episode?
I figured they’d just send some fighter pilots to shoot the Kumaran (sp?) plane down and then act surprised and send their regrets about the tragic accident. Shooting them down in cold blood seemed a little…public. What? Does no one work at the Bermuda airport that would greet a foreign head of state???
Oh fine, kill off the only character on the entire show that I’d like to bag (Mark Hormone). And call me cynical but wasn’t it very convenient that CJ’s prospective lover was killed in a “robbery attempt” at the same time that Abby is on an extended business trip…
Color me confused about why they’d fire someone for hiring Charlie. However, I can’t wait for Lily Tomlin’s character to answer the multi-line phone!!! “Yes, is this the party to which I’m speaking?”
I was under the impression that Tomlin was fired by someone with some race issues. Nothing to support that, just a hunch.
I also wasn’t a big fan of the “Crime. Man, what’re you going to do?” line. It’s just too stupid. Oblong, Floridians don’t really have southern accents, unless you’re in the panhandle. Even there, it’s not a true drawl.
