TWW with reduced onscreen Toby
Aug. 28th, 2023 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe West Wing - 5.19 Talking Points - no double bill, mainly because of the timing when I happened to watch it, and it was the last ep on the disc. So, there was also laziness involved.
I’d just been wondering why Toby wasn’t in the meeting where the staff were trying to convince the President to stick to the simple, positive message about the trade deal, and then saw that Richard Schiff had directed the episode, so that’s why there was waaaaay less Toby. Josh got the A-plot – economics vs politics over trade deals, while CJ got the B-plot about big media companies and the ensuing lack of diversity. Also, we met Kate, who I now know will stick around. Another thing that I remembered was enough to pull a face that Josh’s response to Donna’s valid request to get to go places when she’d worked on the trade deal too (not saying her cold shoulder treatment of her boss on a stressful day was valid, but it was entertaining) was to get her on the Middle East trip with Fitz. She asked for Belgium and you give her the Middle East? Oh, Josh. Even if it seemed elegant when he’d got to close the trade deal that went so sour on him because he’d asked to do more and all that had happened because of that, and he’s been ignoring Donna asking to do more for such a long while now.
And of course being dismissive of Intern!Ryan on his last day meant that Josh got served with schadenfreude because that internship (which Ryan had got because of his privilege) had got him a job that meant he was one more of Josh’s problems, with even Will distancing the Veep from the deal. The worst was having the head Republican just love ‘his’ trade deal. (I was failing to remember when Silicon Valley really became a thing.)
I kind of got why Ben and Leo were pushing back at CJ’s crusade, even if her briefing room stunt was cool. (Show, actually seeing her interact with Ben? Gives us a relationship to react to!) As there was some shadowing between what she and Josh were going through, her moment of solidarity with him was nice, when he had all these tough meetings, aggro from Donna, guilt, and bad news about tractors in Brussels from Ed and Larry.
It was one of those eps where I definitely didn’t follow everything – it felt really busy with civilian!Fitz turning up too – so I am reassured to learn that Hrishi and Josh felt likewise on the podcast. I think they argued that Josh shouldn’t have been as naïve about the impact of globalisation convincingly, and queried Bartlet’s position well. I think maybe Hrishi was reaching to argue that Leo had internalised the President’s position and was in a lineage with Josh and Ryan.
I’d just been wondering why Toby wasn’t in the meeting where the staff were trying to convince the President to stick to the simple, positive message about the trade deal, and then saw that Richard Schiff had directed the episode, so that’s why there was waaaaay less Toby. Josh got the A-plot – economics vs politics over trade deals, while CJ got the B-plot about big media companies and the ensuing lack of diversity. Also, we met Kate, who I now know will stick around. Another thing that I remembered was enough to pull a face that Josh’s response to Donna’s valid request to get to go places when she’d worked on the trade deal too (not saying her cold shoulder treatment of her boss on a stressful day was valid, but it was entertaining) was to get her on the Middle East trip with Fitz. She asked for Belgium and you give her the Middle East? Oh, Josh. Even if it seemed elegant when he’d got to close the trade deal that went so sour on him because he’d asked to do more and all that had happened because of that, and he’s been ignoring Donna asking to do more for such a long while now.
And of course being dismissive of Intern!Ryan on his last day meant that Josh got served with schadenfreude because that internship (which Ryan had got because of his privilege) had got him a job that meant he was one more of Josh’s problems, with even Will distancing the Veep from the deal. The worst was having the head Republican just love ‘his’ trade deal. (I was failing to remember when Silicon Valley really became a thing.)
I kind of got why Ben and Leo were pushing back at CJ’s crusade, even if her briefing room stunt was cool. (Show, actually seeing her interact with Ben? Gives us a relationship to react to!) As there was some shadowing between what she and Josh were going through, her moment of solidarity with him was nice, when he had all these tough meetings, aggro from Donna, guilt, and bad news about tractors in Brussels from Ed and Larry.
It was one of those eps where I definitely didn’t follow everything – it felt really busy with civilian!Fitz turning up too – so I am reassured to learn that Hrishi and Josh felt likewise on the podcast. I think they argued that Josh shouldn’t have been as naïve about the impact of globalisation convincingly, and queried Bartlet’s position well. I think maybe Hrishi was reaching to argue that Leo had internalised the President’s position and was in a lineage with Josh and Ryan.
