TWW - the end of season 4
Jan. 22nd, 2023 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallowness4.22 Commencement
Pretty much everyone got something here, as we built up to the crescendo of Zoey being taken and Leo having to go tell Jed the news, a Jed who had been in protective father mode at the idea of Zoey leaving for three months in France anyway.
It was a bit convenient that Danny finally got his proof about Sharif and all that coming into play just as they were worried about the missing sleeper cell, but CJ and sleep-deprived Danny were so fun I’ll forgive it. (I felt like a lot of the nitpicks they had on the podcast about weird operational details could have be put down to ‘the needs of TV drama’.)
And see, I didn’t quite feel as much for Toby as Hrishi and Josh did on the podcast. I had mixed feelings about Toby’s big romantic gesture. You don’t throw a surprise like that on a very pregnant lady! Granted, he knew it was her dream house and not any old fancy house, but I didn’t like the whole ‘I thought you were being cute’ with the rejections thing. As Andi said, she’s a serious woman, and she’d been married to him already, so if she’d said no, she meant it. [Sidebar: ugh, Jean-Paul, slipping someone half an illegal drug without their explicit consent? I know we’re meant to detest him and be on Team Charlie but even without the comparison, that’s repulsive behaviour.] Anyway, that’s where I was most involved, not the reason Andi gave for rejecting Toby’s proposal.
In contrast, Charlie’s gesture was droll (especially with Josh coming along, which also conveniently got him out of the picture for Donna and Amy to obsess over him.) That whole encounter with Zoey was all Team Charlie, while Zoey was confused and having second thoughts about her holiday plans, and it was totally fair for him to question the kissing given everything she’d said and the champagne. Again, this was all about the contrast with Jean-Paul, but I don’t mind being sledgehammered by how Charlie is a keeper.
As to the other love story, yes, of course Josh was going to take the windfall comment the wrong way, Amy, and when she came out and asked Donna if she was in love with Josh, I was all, ‘Amy, you’re an intelligent woman. I can’t believe you even have to ask.’ Hrishi used this as another example of his strong case for this episode feeling like it was breaking all the usual rules. Bradley Whitford made a valid point that some of this narrative recklessness of sorts had to be Sorkin knowing it was his penultimate episode, while Josh was also right to say that TWW had earned the right to go a different way, be that with more personal stuff or the very different tone towards the end.
Taye Diggs showed up with some remarkable charisma
We’d had the cute bit of Zoey taking a snap of her father on this one occasion where his being the President was kind of cool as he delivered the speech, and we’d had all the amusement of Will and the changes to the speech and the gown making it tough to reach the pockets, and the lovely little moment with Abbey – that really was a cameo for her.
And all ep, Leo and Josh had been thinking about who the new Veep should be – I scrunched up my nose at Josh thinking of Leo, mainly because he’s more effective as Chief of Staff, and surely, politically (although I may have been influenced by memories of future seasons), wouldn’t you want to give it to a credible successor, a la Hoynes, not someone who’s the same age as your President with health issues? And one with all his personal baggage? Perhaps it spoke to Josh still reeling from Hoynes’s fall, and not thinking all that objectively. (I mean, yeah, he is also ambitious, but he’s got years ahead of him.)
I can respect Hrishi not rewatching this ep a lot, watching a woozy girl who’s drink had been spiked put me on edge (yes, emphasised by the music.) Even though J-P was being careless (and arrogant), not malicious, and Zoey wasn’t any girl, but a First Daughter with all these people who were meant to protect her, I empathised more with the dread of her situation than that of a parent facing their worst nightmare. Anyway, they deserved the very different ending, with the quick cuts to a distressed Zoey and the black text on a white background, the jaunty credits music seemed so incongruous.
4.23 Twenty Five
Having said that, and rewatched the finale, which ends on a big, dramatic moment and everything unresolved, har.
They played the opening scene, of a Jed who was wallowing in his empty-nesting being told the awful news strongly. I don’t think the intention of showing Bartlet’s thinking now working in slow motion (as per the podcast) quite transmitted itself to me as I watched it.
I was SO GLAD Josh was with Charlie as he learned the news, with the detail of Molly’s death, and then realised that J-P had given Zoey a drug – and it would later emerge that it hadn’t been ecstasy so much as a date-rape drug, taking me back to how I’d read that scene.
Will was the first to see the problem that would become apparent fast (although I remembered the broad strokes) i.e. that there was no Veep and Leo could step in all he liked, and you could see why Leo was trusted to know what the right thing to do was…he wasn’t constitutional. Sheen was, of course, marvellous at playing Jed the father whose mind was wandering to the worst scenarios, unable to make the calls fully as Fitz was a bit gung ho and Nancy had counter arguments, and there were global ramifications – because They had taken his baby girl. (So, what Schlamme suggested that the script was implying, i.e. that Nancy was right, isn’t going to play out in the next season? I’ll have to wait and see, because I don’t recall the detail. But oh, of course it was Emilio Estevez playing a younger Jed in the video footage.)
And Toby got to tell the other three (and Ginger!) that he was now the father of twins. As was said on the podcast, that’s one of the biggest things that’s ever happened to him, and what a time to have to share it. Nice wordless responses from the actors, especially Allison Janney, who conveyed CJ’s joy perfectly, while Joshua Malina said ’Mazel Tov’ a touch more authentically than I think Will Bailey actually would have. Toby should totally talk through what happened at the house with someone at some point. I remembered the whole ‘babies have hats’ thing and Molly being named for Molly, and Schiff played that monologue beautifully, even as the babies were babies.
I noted that Danny was nowhere to be seen this episode, just because it followed immediately, but we had Mike Casper and the Secretary for Agriculture return, and a cameo by Alan ‘Jim Robinson’ Dale. Speaking of casting, John Goodman was a great pick to convey a touch of abrasiveness for the two tribes thing that Josh was definitely feeling, but also a formidable presence and intelligence.
So, the reason I’ve been so slow in posting this (I watched these eps in December) has been wanting to catch up with The West Wing Weekly podcasts, including a special episode that was meant to be a season 4 overview, but was really an overview of all four seasons as written by Aaron Sorkin with Sorkin himself. There were some anecdotes that had been shared before on the podcast, but I’m willing to believe that, especially when Rob Lowe announced he was leaving, Sorkin regretted the decision not to turn Ainsley into a regular (I wondered whether being determined not to make that mistake again had affected decisions re Amy Gardner, even after she and Josh had broken up.) There was a really good case for Sorkin giving Toby some of his more autobiographical stuff, in part because Toby is a writer, but also because he was played by Richard Schiff. (As for the podcast, it’s fascinating that Hrishi hadn’t watched the last three seasons before.)
[Edited for typos 17/2/25.]
.
Pretty much everyone got something here, as we built up to the crescendo of Zoey being taken and Leo having to go tell Jed the news, a Jed who had been in protective father mode at the idea of Zoey leaving for three months in France anyway.
It was a bit convenient that Danny finally got his proof about Sharif and all that coming into play just as they were worried about the missing sleeper cell, but CJ and sleep-deprived Danny were so fun I’ll forgive it. (I felt like a lot of the nitpicks they had on the podcast about weird operational details could have be put down to ‘the needs of TV drama’.)
And see, I didn’t quite feel as much for Toby as Hrishi and Josh did on the podcast. I had mixed feelings about Toby’s big romantic gesture. You don’t throw a surprise like that on a very pregnant lady! Granted, he knew it was her dream house and not any old fancy house, but I didn’t like the whole ‘I thought you were being cute’ with the rejections thing. As Andi said, she’s a serious woman, and she’d been married to him already, so if she’d said no, she meant it. [Sidebar: ugh, Jean-Paul, slipping someone half an illegal drug without their explicit consent? I know we’re meant to detest him and be on Team Charlie but even without the comparison, that’s repulsive behaviour.] Anyway, that’s where I was most involved, not the reason Andi gave for rejecting Toby’s proposal.
In contrast, Charlie’s gesture was droll (especially with Josh coming along, which also conveniently got him out of the picture for Donna and Amy to obsess over him.) That whole encounter with Zoey was all Team Charlie, while Zoey was confused and having second thoughts about her holiday plans, and it was totally fair for him to question the kissing given everything she’d said and the champagne. Again, this was all about the contrast with Jean-Paul, but I don’t mind being sledgehammered by how Charlie is a keeper.
As to the other love story, yes, of course Josh was going to take the windfall comment the wrong way, Amy, and when she came out and asked Donna if she was in love with Josh, I was all, ‘Amy, you’re an intelligent woman. I can’t believe you even have to ask.’ Hrishi used this as another example of his strong case for this episode feeling like it was breaking all the usual rules. Bradley Whitford made a valid point that some of this narrative recklessness of sorts had to be Sorkin knowing it was his penultimate episode, while Josh was also right to say that TWW had earned the right to go a different way, be that with more personal stuff or the very different tone towards the end.
Taye Diggs showed up with some remarkable charisma
We’d had the cute bit of Zoey taking a snap of her father on this one occasion where his being the President was kind of cool as he delivered the speech, and we’d had all the amusement of Will and the changes to the speech and the gown making it tough to reach the pockets, and the lovely little moment with Abbey – that really was a cameo for her.
And all ep, Leo and Josh had been thinking about who the new Veep should be – I scrunched up my nose at Josh thinking of Leo, mainly because he’s more effective as Chief of Staff, and surely, politically (although I may have been influenced by memories of future seasons), wouldn’t you want to give it to a credible successor, a la Hoynes, not someone who’s the same age as your President with health issues? And one with all his personal baggage? Perhaps it spoke to Josh still reeling from Hoynes’s fall, and not thinking all that objectively. (I mean, yeah, he is also ambitious, but he’s got years ahead of him.)
I can respect Hrishi not rewatching this ep a lot, watching a woozy girl who’s drink had been spiked put me on edge (yes, emphasised by the music.) Even though J-P was being careless (and arrogant), not malicious, and Zoey wasn’t any girl, but a First Daughter with all these people who were meant to protect her, I empathised more with the dread of her situation than that of a parent facing their worst nightmare. Anyway, they deserved the very different ending, with the quick cuts to a distressed Zoey and the black text on a white background, the jaunty credits music seemed so incongruous.
4.23 Twenty Five
Having said that, and rewatched the finale, which ends on a big, dramatic moment and everything unresolved, har.
They played the opening scene, of a Jed who was wallowing in his empty-nesting being told the awful news strongly. I don’t think the intention of showing Bartlet’s thinking now working in slow motion (as per the podcast) quite transmitted itself to me as I watched it.
I was SO GLAD Josh was with Charlie as he learned the news, with the detail of Molly’s death, and then realised that J-P had given Zoey a drug – and it would later emerge that it hadn’t been ecstasy so much as a date-rape drug, taking me back to how I’d read that scene.
Will was the first to see the problem that would become apparent fast (although I remembered the broad strokes) i.e. that there was no Veep and Leo could step in all he liked, and you could see why Leo was trusted to know what the right thing to do was…he wasn’t constitutional. Sheen was, of course, marvellous at playing Jed the father whose mind was wandering to the worst scenarios, unable to make the calls fully as Fitz was a bit gung ho and Nancy had counter arguments, and there were global ramifications – because They had taken his baby girl. (So, what Schlamme suggested that the script was implying, i.e. that Nancy was right, isn’t going to play out in the next season? I’ll have to wait and see, because I don’t recall the detail. But oh, of course it was Emilio Estevez playing a younger Jed in the video footage.)
And Toby got to tell the other three (and Ginger!) that he was now the father of twins. As was said on the podcast, that’s one of the biggest things that’s ever happened to him, and what a time to have to share it. Nice wordless responses from the actors, especially Allison Janney, who conveyed CJ’s joy perfectly, while Joshua Malina said ’Mazel Tov’ a touch more authentically than I think Will Bailey actually would have. Toby should totally talk through what happened at the house with someone at some point. I remembered the whole ‘babies have hats’ thing and Molly being named for Molly, and Schiff played that monologue beautifully, even as the babies were babies.
I noted that Danny was nowhere to be seen this episode, just because it followed immediately, but we had Mike Casper and the Secretary for Agriculture return, and a cameo by Alan ‘Jim Robinson’ Dale. Speaking of casting, John Goodman was a great pick to convey a touch of abrasiveness for the two tribes thing that Josh was definitely feeling, but also a formidable presence and intelligence.
So, the reason I’ve been so slow in posting this (I watched these eps in December) has been wanting to catch up with The West Wing Weekly podcasts, including a special episode that was meant to be a season 4 overview, but was really an overview of all four seasons as written by Aaron Sorkin with Sorkin himself. There were some anecdotes that had been shared before on the podcast, but I’m willing to believe that, especially when Rob Lowe announced he was leaving, Sorkin regretted the decision not to turn Ainsley into a regular (I wondered whether being determined not to make that mistake again had affected decisions re Amy Gardner, even after she and Josh had broken up.) There was a really good case for Sorkin giving Toby some of his more autobiographical stuff, in part because Toby is a writer, but also because he was played by Richard Schiff. (As for the podcast, it’s fascinating that Hrishi hadn’t watched the last three seasons before.)
[Edited for typos 17/2/25.]
.
