TWW: Holy Night & Guns Not Butter
Jul. 22nd, 2022 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessIt's ages since I rewatched these, but it took me a while to listen to The West Wing Weekly episodes and get enough time to put my thoughts in order.
4.11 Holy Night
I had expectations, because I’ve liked TWW’s Christmas episodes a lot on this rewatch, but for me, personally, this ep began unfortunately with a night-time-set scene with subtitles (I had to get up and stand next to the set to peer at them. Subtitles and I haven’t got on for a couple of years now.) Emotionally, Josh somehow stole this ep even though he was petty over Donna having a love life, while she’d sucked it up over Amy, and he was emotionally incontinent about it around Leo (heh). I’d already discerned/remembered why Josh was pushing for Toby to have a rapprochement with his father, well, discerned, not remembered, because Josh also brought up his dead sister, who I’d forgotten.
It felt as though that was a slight realignment of the Josh-Toby relationship, because the big thing about this ep was that although Rob Lowe was in the titles (I checked) and Sam was mentioned, he wasn’t seen, while Josh Malina was in the credits and Will was in Sam’s office. (I liked Toby’s interaction with Will all ep.)
Was it to balance all that change and novelty that we had the return of Danny AND Zoey, love interests past? Danny had more plot relevance, what with bringing back the Shariff assassination, and thus dragging CJ and Josh into the circle. I did have a bit of an ‘of all the reporters that cricket fan had to talk to, it was Danny’s reaction when he told CJ how he’d got on the scent of the trail, although having thought a little more, I suppose it might not have been happenstance that Danny talked to him. I also responded with, ‘I hope that’s Danny’ when some unexpected Santa surprised and snogged CJ. (Gail got mentioned rather charmingly.)
I was also all team Charlie as opposed to Zoey’s annoying new boyfriend, Jean-Paul, was as slappable as a French royal descendant would be as written on a very American show.
Oh, and we had the return of psychiatrist Stanley, both as a nod to continuity, as he’d been introduced in a Christmas episode, and as a way for Jed to start expressing his feelings about killing Sharriff. The podcasters made some fair criticisms about both aspects, but they didn’t really make the link of Leo getting involved with the situation in Bethlehem and his sense of guilt over the Israeli foreign minister’s death.
I loved the moment where Charlie tried to give Donna an out to go on her romantic break, but she was too noble/much of a workaholic to abandon Josh/the job.
I also liked that Toby and his bosses were setting Will up and that it was clear Will had already won Toby over (in as much as he would.) It was fun to watch Wil’s confidence shatter upon facing The President, while his instincts were sound. But, yeah, we hadn’t yet seen him speak truth to power as he claimed he would, which was picked up on in the podcast.
But the throughline of Toby, facing fatherhood, and his understandable issues with his father (Josh was all ‘Give him a break,’ but these were serious crimes) didn’t work for me. I appreciate Richard Schiff tying that into Jed and Leo needing to forgive themselves on the podcast, where there was also discussion of the interlinking theme of things that had been hidden coming into the open, but also, fathers and sons’ storylines have to do much more running to get a reaction out of me by now than they would from my younger self and do from male viewers because there are just so many of them.
The not-Hufflepuffs were just weird – although CJ seemed to get more scolded for leering over them than any men get on the show for similar behaviour. Or that’s what I took from Carole pulling ‘ma’am’ on her.
I suppose I liked it in bits, but I wasn’t hooked by the beginning nor the main throughline, which has something to do with where I was at watching it.
4.12 Guns Not Butter
I liked this slightly more. Josh was really wound up, because the pressure was on him to get a foreign aid Bill passed. From the outside, the attempt to get a Democrat from a state that didn’t like foreign aid onboard and how she was hiding from him meant that they really should have had a back-up plan sooner.
Zoey’s boyfriend was still around, being unrelentingly annoying, so much so that it pushed Charlie into doing something he’d never do. From my perspective, the repeated question about ‘Wasn’t Zoey growing up well?’ (and what kind of response did you think you would get from youngish men in this milieu, Papa Jed?) elicited a much more ambivalent response from me. Rubbing her new beau in her ex’s face is fairly immature payback. But Charlie getting a memo from the Secretary of Defence when he’d just tried to pull some strings - they turned into a bell rope on him – was funny, as was the temporary alliance between Papa Jed and Charlie. The reason why Zoey and Charlie had broken up - Charlie spending too much time at his boss, her dad’s behest - was elegantly snuck in.
The whole business with the goat (and I did think ‘isn’t that a male goat?’ before it became explicit) was a bit like a rerun of the turkey, but the set-up of Will being hazed and CJ clearly not knowing exactly who he was, and so letting slip that Toby and Josh were deliberately behind said hazing, not the staff corporate, worked well, as did Bartlet insisting everyone had to join in the lame photo op with him.
I liked the layers as the arguments for foreign aid were deployed. I really loved Donna and Josh discussing all they’d done – that he called her out on stalkery behaviour, the positive of her ruse letting her in on where the skulking senator was, her seeming to have stuck up a relationship with the chef, and her putdown of her boss/beloved never having asked her to hide (although, in fairness, most of the time she’d been working for him, they were working for the President, so it’s a different dynamic) while on the minus, she named the names.
But Bartlet’s analysis that what was driving Josh was wanting to be the guy the guy depends on was spot on, although I take the point made in the podcast that that wasn’t quite shown up as clearly as it could have been in this episode. I loved that it emerged that Josh was overcompensating on this day because they hadn’t followed his suggested strategy for passing this Bill in the first place, but had done it another way, which was why it was going so badly.
And as Josh and Donna concluded, it was getting more difficult to get their agenda through and win over the politicos they needed, which is a nice set-up for the second administration.
[Edited for typos 28/1/25.]
4.11 Holy Night
I had expectations, because I’ve liked TWW’s Christmas episodes a lot on this rewatch, but for me, personally, this ep began unfortunately with a night-time-set scene with subtitles (I had to get up and stand next to the set to peer at them. Subtitles and I haven’t got on for a couple of years now.) Emotionally, Josh somehow stole this ep even though he was petty over Donna having a love life, while she’d sucked it up over Amy, and he was emotionally incontinent about it around Leo (heh). I’d already discerned/remembered why Josh was pushing for Toby to have a rapprochement with his father, well, discerned, not remembered, because Josh also brought up his dead sister, who I’d forgotten.
It felt as though that was a slight realignment of the Josh-Toby relationship, because the big thing about this ep was that although Rob Lowe was in the titles (I checked) and Sam was mentioned, he wasn’t seen, while Josh Malina was in the credits and Will was in Sam’s office. (I liked Toby’s interaction with Will all ep.)
Was it to balance all that change and novelty that we had the return of Danny AND Zoey, love interests past? Danny had more plot relevance, what with bringing back the Shariff assassination, and thus dragging CJ and Josh into the circle. I did have a bit of an ‘of all the reporters that cricket fan had to talk to, it was Danny’s reaction when he told CJ how he’d got on the scent of the trail, although having thought a little more, I suppose it might not have been happenstance that Danny talked to him. I also responded with, ‘I hope that’s Danny’ when some unexpected Santa surprised and snogged CJ. (Gail got mentioned rather charmingly.)
I was also all team Charlie as opposed to Zoey’s annoying new boyfriend, Jean-Paul, was as slappable as a French royal descendant would be as written on a very American show.
Oh, and we had the return of psychiatrist Stanley, both as a nod to continuity, as he’d been introduced in a Christmas episode, and as a way for Jed to start expressing his feelings about killing Sharriff. The podcasters made some fair criticisms about both aspects, but they didn’t really make the link of Leo getting involved with the situation in Bethlehem and his sense of guilt over the Israeli foreign minister’s death.
I loved the moment where Charlie tried to give Donna an out to go on her romantic break, but she was too noble/much of a workaholic to abandon Josh/the job.
I also liked that Toby and his bosses were setting Will up and that it was clear Will had already won Toby over (in as much as he would.) It was fun to watch Wil’s confidence shatter upon facing The President, while his instincts were sound. But, yeah, we hadn’t yet seen him speak truth to power as he claimed he would, which was picked up on in the podcast.
But the throughline of Toby, facing fatherhood, and his understandable issues with his father (Josh was all ‘Give him a break,’ but these were serious crimes) didn’t work for me. I appreciate Richard Schiff tying that into Jed and Leo needing to forgive themselves on the podcast, where there was also discussion of the interlinking theme of things that had been hidden coming into the open, but also, fathers and sons’ storylines have to do much more running to get a reaction out of me by now than they would from my younger self and do from male viewers because there are just so many of them.
The not-Hufflepuffs were just weird – although CJ seemed to get more scolded for leering over them than any men get on the show for similar behaviour. Or that’s what I took from Carole pulling ‘ma’am’ on her.
I suppose I liked it in bits, but I wasn’t hooked by the beginning nor the main throughline, which has something to do with where I was at watching it.
4.12 Guns Not Butter
I liked this slightly more. Josh was really wound up, because the pressure was on him to get a foreign aid Bill passed. From the outside, the attempt to get a Democrat from a state that didn’t like foreign aid onboard and how she was hiding from him meant that they really should have had a back-up plan sooner.
Zoey’s boyfriend was still around, being unrelentingly annoying, so much so that it pushed Charlie into doing something he’d never do. From my perspective, the repeated question about ‘Wasn’t Zoey growing up well?’ (and what kind of response did you think you would get from youngish men in this milieu, Papa Jed?) elicited a much more ambivalent response from me. Rubbing her new beau in her ex’s face is fairly immature payback. But Charlie getting a memo from the Secretary of Defence when he’d just tried to pull some strings - they turned into a bell rope on him – was funny, as was the temporary alliance between Papa Jed and Charlie. The reason why Zoey and Charlie had broken up - Charlie spending too much time at his boss, her dad’s behest - was elegantly snuck in.
The whole business with the goat (and I did think ‘isn’t that a male goat?’ before it became explicit) was a bit like a rerun of the turkey, but the set-up of Will being hazed and CJ clearly not knowing exactly who he was, and so letting slip that Toby and Josh were deliberately behind said hazing, not the staff corporate, worked well, as did Bartlet insisting everyone had to join in the lame photo op with him.
I liked the layers as the arguments for foreign aid were deployed. I really loved Donna and Josh discussing all they’d done – that he called her out on stalkery behaviour, the positive of her ruse letting her in on where the skulking senator was, her seeming to have stuck up a relationship with the chef, and her putdown of her boss/beloved never having asked her to hide (although, in fairness, most of the time she’d been working for him, they were working for the President, so it’s a different dynamic) while on the minus, she named the names.
But Bartlet’s analysis that what was driving Josh was wanting to be the guy the guy depends on was spot on, although I take the point made in the podcast that that wasn’t quite shown up as clearly as it could have been in this episode. I loved that it emerged that Josh was overcompensating on this day because they hadn’t followed his suggested strategy for passing this Bill in the first place, but had done it another way, which was why it was going so badly.
And as Josh and Donna concluded, it was getting more difficult to get their agenda through and win over the politicos they needed, which is a nice set-up for the second administration.
[Edited for typos 28/1/25.]
no subject
Date: 2022-07-23 02:35 am (UTC)I like Holy Night quite a bit more than you seem to have (though yes, fathers & sons are overused not only in general, but in this show in particular; I will never get over Josh's mom being the only mother to have any significance to her child (okay, and Charlie's dead mom) but still never getting to appear on screen) - but that's mostly because Josh's survivor's guilt forms so much of the basis of why I love him, and it's on blatant display here.
Good point about CJ being scolded, however jokingly, over lovingly eyeing the a cappella boys! Now I'm annoyed with Carol.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-23 11:14 am (UTC)It must be, and it works well as a way of making the audience accept the new character.
I suspect I would have warmed more to Holy Night at a dfferent time in my life, and may yet do so.
Josh's survivor's guilt forms so much of the basis of why I love him, and it's on blatant display here.
Totally agree.
Now I'm annoyed with Carol.
I'm not sure how much of it was Carol feeling bad because she felt the same attraction, (because that may have been there in how it was played) but I can't see her chiding any of the boss men for similar behaviour.