On to season 4
Apr. 2nd, 2022 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe West Wing - 4.1 and 2 - 20 Hours in America
This two-parter was excellent – whatever rest he’d had between the two seasons having clearly helped Sorkin and his team (the crowds! All the location work!) bring it to life. There’s a real sense of the cast and writer knowing and loving these characters, with strands continuing from the previous season – Qumar, Simon’s death, Abbey’s penance, hiring Debbie and the fight against Ritchie all picked back up.
By the end of the second episode, I was basking a little in the ideals of kindness (thanks, Donna) and loyalty – Bartlet sticking by his advisers, our guys rallying around Debbie, Donna joining her guys to walk the last stretch of a very long journey to the White House. There was also a theme of appreciating other people’s roles, most obviously in Sam for Josh after stepping in for him, but even Bartlet knowing what Donna did for Josh and Toby, his appreciation of the armed forces, the appreciation of what Debbie had done for Charlie and other things I’m not remembering.
I loved the idea of us getting to see ‘the book’ play out on one of those days that turned out to be even more significant than expected because of the pipe-bomb incident that ended several lives.
I loved the strand of the three left-behinds, commenting on the more normal main action, I say ‘more normal’, but we got to see bits of three Bartlet speeches/remarks! But the duality of governing while campaigning continued, with Sam offering a fresh perspective on the events in the Oval Office. It started out funny – Toby being a drama queen over Bartlet’s delivery, being in danger of giving Josh a high blood pressure day, and the increasing comedy of the Washingtonites lost in Indiana, with the men coming off as menchild, while Donna did her best. I loved bringing in Josh’s take on the anti-Ritchie line that Toby, Bruno and Bartlet were pushing. (As the podcast episode with Martin Sheen had picked up, so many resonances fifteen or sixteen years later, although Bartlet worrying about being a war criminal made me sigh just over a month into Russia’s war on Ukraine.)
I loved the whole question of whether they might not win because Toby was so determined to beat Ritchie, and there they were, in a way bickering about being the smartest guy in the class, and being that guy obnoxiously, while it took Donna to offer perspective on all the people they’d met and not connected with. (It struck me that they weren’t trying to win individual votes.)
It was kind of funny that Toby and Josh reached a point where they agreed that the best way to win was to inspire people by ‘letting other people find out how cool Bartlet was’, to paraphrase, while Sam had got there all on his own. Well, of course, the final remarks he wrote were responding to a tragedy, but he (and indeed Sorkin) was writing that already.
The properly funny bits continued, like the secretarial candidates that had zero chemistry with Bartlet, the tantrums at the realisation about timezones, Charlie’s response to Bartlet’s superstition. (The podcast for first ep was almost just listing them, and I’m glad it pointed me to the missing Medea/Jackass scene.)
There was so much more. Just the love for Charlie. Maybe his final scene with CJ was a touch too much, and yet they underplayed it and CJ needed to acknowledge what Charlie had done by standing up for her and agreeing to big brother Anthony. I get that he was sensitive to CJ asking him because of the colour of his skin, but he was also closer in age, and even if he weren’t sleep deprived, Sam? I mean, I thought CJ was asking all the wrong people in the White House (and rather assuming they were going to be there after the next inauguration), and while I could see why another Secret Service agent might be a no go after Simon’s violent death, there had to be other candidates who weren’t as caught up in the campaign as Charlie or Sam (but not regulars!) Charlie was always going to back up Debbie’s assertion that he was special and Bartlet’s gratitude for him, not to mention respect who his mother brought him up to be, as the picture acknowledged. And Hill was great as Charlie unleashed on Anthony, and Janney was great troguhout, letting the grief felt by CJ show at moments, but also professional as she broke the awful news and, earlier, the CJ we know in her reaction to the angry housewives and to Bruno’s reaction to that.
I enjoyed the byplay between Nancy and Fitz and Leo, though it seemed to me that whatever they’d done with the evidence, of course Qumar would know who had assassinated their guy, but the country’s reaction was the next logical step. And this possibly jumped out at me because I saw I&I out of order, but this season also is post September the 11th. (On the podcast I learned they’d finished shooting it on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11.)
I was surprised at Mallory’s return to fangirl at pretty, tired writer Sam. (Do I remember rightly, does Josh call him in to be his Josh i.e. to do the job of being in the room /Oval Office permanently for the Santos presidency?) I’m not saying I was unpleasantly surprised.
Anyway this was so multi-layered, with the Dow dropping being personalised – I was possibly less touched by the proud middle aged, middle class pop than the show’s target audience. I was thinking somewhat snarky thoughts instead of feeling for him, but that’s a bit petty when Leo listened to Margaret about the grapefruit!
The podcast made much of the second episode having so many pay-offs and neat endings for many characters, which hadn’t registered for me, perhaps because I just watched the two eps without a break and enjoyed it.
Such a rich, brilliant opening to the season.
[Edited for typos 29/12/24.]
This two-parter was excellent – whatever rest he’d had between the two seasons having clearly helped Sorkin and his team (the crowds! All the location work!) bring it to life. There’s a real sense of the cast and writer knowing and loving these characters, with strands continuing from the previous season – Qumar, Simon’s death, Abbey’s penance, hiring Debbie and the fight against Ritchie all picked back up.
By the end of the second episode, I was basking a little in the ideals of kindness (thanks, Donna) and loyalty – Bartlet sticking by his advisers, our guys rallying around Debbie, Donna joining her guys to walk the last stretch of a very long journey to the White House. There was also a theme of appreciating other people’s roles, most obviously in Sam for Josh after stepping in for him, but even Bartlet knowing what Donna did for Josh and Toby, his appreciation of the armed forces, the appreciation of what Debbie had done for Charlie and other things I’m not remembering.
I loved the idea of us getting to see ‘the book’ play out on one of those days that turned out to be even more significant than expected because of the pipe-bomb incident that ended several lives.
I loved the strand of the three left-behinds, commenting on the more normal main action, I say ‘more normal’, but we got to see bits of three Bartlet speeches/remarks! But the duality of governing while campaigning continued, with Sam offering a fresh perspective on the events in the Oval Office. It started out funny – Toby being a drama queen over Bartlet’s delivery, being in danger of giving Josh a high blood pressure day, and the increasing comedy of the Washingtonites lost in Indiana, with the men coming off as menchild, while Donna did her best. I loved bringing in Josh’s take on the anti-Ritchie line that Toby, Bruno and Bartlet were pushing. (As the podcast episode with Martin Sheen had picked up, so many resonances fifteen or sixteen years later, although Bartlet worrying about being a war criminal made me sigh just over a month into Russia’s war on Ukraine.)
I loved the whole question of whether they might not win because Toby was so determined to beat Ritchie, and there they were, in a way bickering about being the smartest guy in the class, and being that guy obnoxiously, while it took Donna to offer perspective on all the people they’d met and not connected with. (It struck me that they weren’t trying to win individual votes.)
It was kind of funny that Toby and Josh reached a point where they agreed that the best way to win was to inspire people by ‘letting other people find out how cool Bartlet was’, to paraphrase, while Sam had got there all on his own. Well, of course, the final remarks he wrote were responding to a tragedy, but he (and indeed Sorkin) was writing that already.
The properly funny bits continued, like the secretarial candidates that had zero chemistry with Bartlet, the tantrums at the realisation about timezones, Charlie’s response to Bartlet’s superstition. (The podcast for first ep was almost just listing them, and I’m glad it pointed me to the missing Medea/Jackass scene.)
There was so much more. Just the love for Charlie. Maybe his final scene with CJ was a touch too much, and yet they underplayed it and CJ needed to acknowledge what Charlie had done by standing up for her and agreeing to big brother Anthony. I get that he was sensitive to CJ asking him because of the colour of his skin, but he was also closer in age, and even if he weren’t sleep deprived, Sam? I mean, I thought CJ was asking all the wrong people in the White House (and rather assuming they were going to be there after the next inauguration), and while I could see why another Secret Service agent might be a no go after Simon’s violent death, there had to be other candidates who weren’t as caught up in the campaign as Charlie or Sam (but not regulars!) Charlie was always going to back up Debbie’s assertion that he was special and Bartlet’s gratitude for him, not to mention respect who his mother brought him up to be, as the picture acknowledged. And Hill was great as Charlie unleashed on Anthony, and Janney was great troguhout, letting the grief felt by CJ show at moments, but also professional as she broke the awful news and, earlier, the CJ we know in her reaction to the angry housewives and to Bruno’s reaction to that.
I enjoyed the byplay between Nancy and Fitz and Leo, though it seemed to me that whatever they’d done with the evidence, of course Qumar would know who had assassinated their guy, but the country’s reaction was the next logical step. And this possibly jumped out at me because I saw I&I out of order, but this season also is post September the 11th. (On the podcast I learned they’d finished shooting it on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11.)
I was surprised at Mallory’s return to fangirl at pretty, tired writer Sam. (Do I remember rightly, does Josh call him in to be his Josh i.e. to do the job of being in the room /Oval Office permanently for the Santos presidency?) I’m not saying I was unpleasantly surprised.
Anyway this was so multi-layered, with the Dow dropping being personalised – I was possibly less touched by the proud middle aged, middle class pop than the show’s target audience. I was thinking somewhat snarky thoughts instead of feeling for him, but that’s a bit petty when Leo listened to Margaret about the grapefruit!
The podcast made much of the second episode having so many pay-offs and neat endings for many characters, which hadn’t registered for me, perhaps because I just watched the two eps without a break and enjoyed it.
Such a rich, brilliant opening to the season.
[Edited for typos 29/12/24.]
no subject
Date: 2022-04-02 11:46 pm (UTC)It always tickles me to see Amy Adams in this show long before she became the prestige actress she is today.
Do I remember rightly, does Josh call him in to be his Josh i.e. to do the job of being in the room /Oval Office permanently for the Santos presidency?
You remember correctly! I always wonder how often Sam must have irritated the Santos speechwriters by dropping in little lines and 'suggestions' in those years. You know he wouldn't be able to help himself.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 03:28 pm (UTC)Oh, of course, and they're doing different things.
You remember correctly! I always wonder how often Sam must have irritated the Santos speechwriters by dropping in little lines and 'suggestions' in those years. You know he wouldn't be able to help himself.
Phew, because I certainly couldn't have told the Persident what was happening with the dollar as Debbie did. And heh, that's so true about Sam not being able to help himself with the sugestions.