TWW: Swiss Diplomacy & Arctic Radar
Jun. 11th, 2022 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe West Wing 4.9 Swiss Diplomacy
The morning after the victory celebrations, and I have to admit I felt I was missing out on some things as I was watching it, like whatever Josh had dumped back on Donna to solve about some people and their cheque bouncing, possibly in Asia? (I feel better about that after listening to the writers of the ep try to explain it on the podcast.) I certainly didn’t see the reveal that the President had been trying to help Hoynes, not Hoynes helping himself, coming. Were those what the thank you letters and calls had been about?
Before that, Bartlet was in boisterous, jocular mood, coasting on his win, and even though Leo was right, it was a little much, still at it in front of the press. Oh well, the main moral dilemma brought him down. It could be argued that making the only surgeon who could do the op an Iranian who’d escaped the country because of the revolution that had brought the hardline regime in was a bit on the nose, although it gave Abbey a good scene, and I enjoyed Debbie scolding said surgeon, regardless of the serious nature of what he was there for. She’s settled in nicely.
There was a sense of a shift for everyone, no more campaigning for Bartlet, knowing that they needed to make these four years (well, less because of the election cycle) count, and having to adjust to this before they were ready, because the other Democrats weren’t going to give the next candidacy to Hoynes and Josh was compromised when it came to influencing them because of his past with Hoynes. It was interesting to be reminded of the context of recent history at the time.
Toby was caught up in post-election business, trying to give a booted friend of the administration the job of her dreams, getting stymied by a law that had blindsided them making it a senatorial confirmation. (Ha, I did follow that.) I expected his discovery of all the posts needing senatorial confirmations to go somewhere, maybe another win, but instead we got a nice speech about her being okay with losing because she’d fought the good fight. The way they talked about greenhouse gasses felt so quaint, I even went ‘oh Kyoto’ when they mentioned that agreement.
It’s interesting that the podcast thought Bartlet and the automatic signatures was going somewhere and jumped on a passing sexist comment that kind of passed me by.
Sam was jetting off to start his own campaign and learned that Will would not be helping on it, partly because he was tired, partly because he was clear-sighted about too many bossyboots. This happened in a very short press conference.
When Sam did return, he got a nice moment with the President, who ordered him to campaign as himself and not be too loyal to the President’s record for his own good.
4.10 Arctic Radar
Again, not sure I was on top of everything in this ep, but there were two barnstormers, the first being Bartlet’s meltdown about the diplomats and the parking fines, just so funny, especially when tied in with his frustration at not being able to at least discuss this female fighter jet being dishonourably discharged thing, and Charlie having to tell him he’d probably bellowed at the secretary. I belly laughed, and even though I remembered the cheesy group ‘I serve at the pleasure of the President’, Leo’s delivery of it, and the sense of Bartlet being more than able to grapple with the responsibility of his second term felt earned and was touching.
The other barnstormer was Toby and Will’s final scene. Some of it had been built up – Sam’s note was a Chekhov’s gun, and we knew Will was this great writer and had been set up so well that he had to come work at the West Wing. Still, the writing, acting and I actually noticed this beautiful camera movement (it was good to have the director discuss his thinking on the podcast.) Will delivered writing that Toby approved of, the snappy ‘concrit’ and the change of heart to start working immediately and ditch his well-earned holiday (get used to it). As the podcast pointed out, they made clear that Will was one of our guys.
But Toby being in a writing slump threw me. It felt like…where has that come from? In hindsight, it informed some of Sam’s attitude towards him, which was kind of unspoken. A part of me wondered if it was the news of the pregnancy, but it seemed that it had been even longer. Of course, it added pressure for the inauguration speech. Will’s diagnosis and own strengths, if not quite a replacement for Sam, the potential to compensate for Toby’s weaknesses, was promising, but the inevitable question, knowing that Sorkin would also leave at the end of this season and if Toby was tired, well, surely Sorkin who’d written so much to such a high standard was tired, was in my end. On the podcast, they took the view that he was writing from experience, if not from right then.
The other main throughline was the case that CJ raised with the President and he said he wasn’t going to be likely to weigh in on, but did. I tended to agree with the ‘She disobeyed an order’ view, although I did come to concede that there was some merit in the whole accusation of sexist double standards around said order, except I didn’t love how that argument was made. It was really striking that so many men were rumbling about ‘the women’ not liking it. Amy aside, we didn’t have any female characters directly express their view on it, Donna was stopped from doing so, (because Donna was mainly in a romcom, which I’ll come back to,) and CJ never opined about it, she just professionally raised it and professionally advised her boss on it. Otherwise it was all ‘my woman says this’ or ‘my womenfolk say this’ or ‘here’s what I think’. One of those women being Jordan, who I now know we’ll never see. On the podcast, they made the valid point that it’s not just the people who are like the people in question who can be offended.
But when Toby mentioned some African American speechwriter, he was clearly male, and yeah, no wonder it’s a limited pool of presidential speechwriters, because they mostly seem to be well-educated lawyers that you draw from, and I bet all the women in Toby’s department are assistants and secretaries. (Which probably reflects who’d got to be speechwriters around then.)
On the other hand, there was the resumption of Josh/Donna and Jack questioning to Josh’s face about his feelings for her, his assistant, was probably intentional in the context of this case where fraternisation was pooh-poohed in the armed forces. Amy might have turned up (so she’s taking on this case, but not campaigning for Sam like she said she would? Okay.) but it seems clear that Josh/Amy is done. Meanwhile Donna showed how awful she is at romance by asking Josh to see if this guy likes her, which seems like a schoolyard move, and probably not something to ask of Josh (Charlie might have been the only one who could do it smoothly) even if he didn’t have Feelings about it. The endearing stories that spewed out of his mouth were cringey to a naval officer.
Jack was droll, though, about his own aide, and Donna got asked out. I’m enjoying Josh having to pine, especially because I thought that all the business with the Star Trek pin and the lecture on when fannishness becomes a fetish was a rehash of the Lemon Lyman stuff. As I thought, ‘Well, I’ll take that stuff about Romulans and Cardassians as a DS9 reference,’ and couldn’t think of any Cardassian/Romulan pairings I was into, I decided to blithely ignore Sorkin’s views on how fans should behave.
Otherwise, I noted that this was Will’s first time in the West Wing and interacting with one of the regulars who wasn’t Sam, and smiled at Toby being sure he’d find something annoying about him. I also enjoyed CJ putting Mr News Magazine in his place, which was, essentially, to admit that he wasn’t very talented, which might explain the bluster.
Oh, and to go back to the start, that was a very, very short final Cabinet meeting. I liked how they used that detail of courtesy, and we already knew half of them would be going. I didn’t try very hard to see if anyone we’d seen before as a Cabinet Secretary was there, or Hoynes, for that matter. Funny to learn that IRL the second Obama administration wondered if this was precedent.
[Edited for typos 26/1/25.]
The morning after the victory celebrations, and I have to admit I felt I was missing out on some things as I was watching it, like whatever Josh had dumped back on Donna to solve about some people and their cheque bouncing, possibly in Asia? (I feel better about that after listening to the writers of the ep try to explain it on the podcast.) I certainly didn’t see the reveal that the President had been trying to help Hoynes, not Hoynes helping himself, coming. Were those what the thank you letters and calls had been about?
Before that, Bartlet was in boisterous, jocular mood, coasting on his win, and even though Leo was right, it was a little much, still at it in front of the press. Oh well, the main moral dilemma brought him down. It could be argued that making the only surgeon who could do the op an Iranian who’d escaped the country because of the revolution that had brought the hardline regime in was a bit on the nose, although it gave Abbey a good scene, and I enjoyed Debbie scolding said surgeon, regardless of the serious nature of what he was there for. She’s settled in nicely.
There was a sense of a shift for everyone, no more campaigning for Bartlet, knowing that they needed to make these four years (well, less because of the election cycle) count, and having to adjust to this before they were ready, because the other Democrats weren’t going to give the next candidacy to Hoynes and Josh was compromised when it came to influencing them because of his past with Hoynes. It was interesting to be reminded of the context of recent history at the time.
Toby was caught up in post-election business, trying to give a booted friend of the administration the job of her dreams, getting stymied by a law that had blindsided them making it a senatorial confirmation. (Ha, I did follow that.) I expected his discovery of all the posts needing senatorial confirmations to go somewhere, maybe another win, but instead we got a nice speech about her being okay with losing because she’d fought the good fight. The way they talked about greenhouse gasses felt so quaint, I even went ‘oh Kyoto’ when they mentioned that agreement.
It’s interesting that the podcast thought Bartlet and the automatic signatures was going somewhere and jumped on a passing sexist comment that kind of passed me by.
Sam was jetting off to start his own campaign and learned that Will would not be helping on it, partly because he was tired, partly because he was clear-sighted about too many bossyboots. This happened in a very short press conference.
When Sam did return, he got a nice moment with the President, who ordered him to campaign as himself and not be too loyal to the President’s record for his own good.
4.10 Arctic Radar
Again, not sure I was on top of everything in this ep, but there were two barnstormers, the first being Bartlet’s meltdown about the diplomats and the parking fines, just so funny, especially when tied in with his frustration at not being able to at least discuss this female fighter jet being dishonourably discharged thing, and Charlie having to tell him he’d probably bellowed at the secretary. I belly laughed, and even though I remembered the cheesy group ‘I serve at the pleasure of the President’, Leo’s delivery of it, and the sense of Bartlet being more than able to grapple with the responsibility of his second term felt earned and was touching.
The other barnstormer was Toby and Will’s final scene. Some of it had been built up – Sam’s note was a Chekhov’s gun, and we knew Will was this great writer and had been set up so well that he had to come work at the West Wing. Still, the writing, acting and I actually noticed this beautiful camera movement (it was good to have the director discuss his thinking on the podcast.) Will delivered writing that Toby approved of, the snappy ‘concrit’ and the change of heart to start working immediately and ditch his well-earned holiday (get used to it). As the podcast pointed out, they made clear that Will was one of our guys.
But Toby being in a writing slump threw me. It felt like…where has that come from? In hindsight, it informed some of Sam’s attitude towards him, which was kind of unspoken. A part of me wondered if it was the news of the pregnancy, but it seemed that it had been even longer. Of course, it added pressure for the inauguration speech. Will’s diagnosis and own strengths, if not quite a replacement for Sam, the potential to compensate for Toby’s weaknesses, was promising, but the inevitable question, knowing that Sorkin would also leave at the end of this season and if Toby was tired, well, surely Sorkin who’d written so much to such a high standard was tired, was in my end. On the podcast, they took the view that he was writing from experience, if not from right then.
The other main throughline was the case that CJ raised with the President and he said he wasn’t going to be likely to weigh in on, but did. I tended to agree with the ‘She disobeyed an order’ view, although I did come to concede that there was some merit in the whole accusation of sexist double standards around said order, except I didn’t love how that argument was made. It was really striking that so many men were rumbling about ‘the women’ not liking it. Amy aside, we didn’t have any female characters directly express their view on it, Donna was stopped from doing so, (because Donna was mainly in a romcom, which I’ll come back to,) and CJ never opined about it, she just professionally raised it and professionally advised her boss on it. Otherwise it was all ‘my woman says this’ or ‘my womenfolk say this’ or ‘here’s what I think’. One of those women being Jordan, who I now know we’ll never see. On the podcast, they made the valid point that it’s not just the people who are like the people in question who can be offended.
But when Toby mentioned some African American speechwriter, he was clearly male, and yeah, no wonder it’s a limited pool of presidential speechwriters, because they mostly seem to be well-educated lawyers that you draw from, and I bet all the women in Toby’s department are assistants and secretaries. (Which probably reflects who’d got to be speechwriters around then.)
On the other hand, there was the resumption of Josh/Donna and Jack questioning to Josh’s face about his feelings for her, his assistant, was probably intentional in the context of this case where fraternisation was pooh-poohed in the armed forces. Amy might have turned up (so she’s taking on this case, but not campaigning for Sam like she said she would? Okay.) but it seems clear that Josh/Amy is done. Meanwhile Donna showed how awful she is at romance by asking Josh to see if this guy likes her, which seems like a schoolyard move, and probably not something to ask of Josh (Charlie might have been the only one who could do it smoothly) even if he didn’t have Feelings about it. The endearing stories that spewed out of his mouth were cringey to a naval officer.
Jack was droll, though, about his own aide, and Donna got asked out. I’m enjoying Josh having to pine, especially because I thought that all the business with the Star Trek pin and the lecture on when fannishness becomes a fetish was a rehash of the Lemon Lyman stuff. As I thought, ‘Well, I’ll take that stuff about Romulans and Cardassians as a DS9 reference,’ and couldn’t think of any Cardassian/Romulan pairings I was into, I decided to blithely ignore Sorkin’s views on how fans should behave.
Otherwise, I noted that this was Will’s first time in the West Wing and interacting with one of the regulars who wasn’t Sam, and smiled at Toby being sure he’d find something annoying about him. I also enjoyed CJ putting Mr News Magazine in his place, which was, essentially, to admit that he wasn’t very talented, which might explain the bluster.
Oh, and to go back to the start, that was a very, very short final Cabinet meeting. I liked how they used that detail of courtesy, and we already knew half of them would be going. I didn’t try very hard to see if anyone we’d seen before as a Cabinet Secretary was there, or Hoynes, for that matter. Funny to learn that IRL the second Obama administration wondered if this was precedent.
[Edited for typos 26/1/25.]
