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shallowness) wrote2024-04-06 01:20 pm
shallowness) wrote2024-04-06 01:20 pm
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Synthesis in two different ways
The West Wing - 6.16 Drought Conditions
So, this season's two storylines are brought back together here, as all the Democratic candidates would be attending a party at the White House, and all the staff were being very strict about the President not showing favouritism (or were they?) We gradually learned that Toby was grieving, back too soon at work, and of course it turned out to be more complicated than that.
In the opening, I could follow the half about Josh briefing Santos, and the fact that the campaign was now headed for Super Tuesday but Toby’s encounter at the bar with the Mysterious Lady baffled me. (I have to apologise but my sense was that she was a prostitute who also offered counselling services, not so much that this was a tryst, as they went for on the podcast, going on to discuss how you had to fall in love a little to work for a campaign.) I therefore only partly engaged with this strand, because I knew it had to belong to its own timeline and would be clarified by the end of the episode. It was. Ouch.
The whole President not taking sides thing was mainly for the staffers, not the candidates, as Josh tried to get back into the White House – not a problem for Will and Donna as the VP’s staff. Debbie was a lioness.
Meanwhile CJ’s job was made harder because of a stain on her clothes and the lack of a Josh figure in the administration, which Leo wasn’t quite filling. Cliff Calleigh was back, being an obnoxious lobbyist, although he turned out to be right that they didn’t have the votes and probably not even the right priority for handling droughts or potential droughts. (And, as per usual, they didn’t really think of global warming as a factor.) Really interesting that CJ had assumed that Santos’s campaign would be short lived and she could hold Josh’s post open (they haven’t really filled her old post yet, have they!?)
When first offered the job, Cliff said ‘no’ because it was a ‘temp job’. (Yeah, but a prestigious one.) He also did it obnoxiously, just as the visiting Josh was being obnoxious. CJ cleverly brought Cliff in front of the President, partly because he was one of the few people they were letting Bartlet talk to.
We learned Margaret was pregnant (surely a case of the actress being pregnant and they decided to ride with it, because they could, because it’s Margaret.)
Charlie tried to set Kate up with a guy he knew from the gym (and though he explained why, not knowing his name? Male privilege. Although Kate wanting to do security checks? Military overreach?) Lots of back and forth on this, with me staring at her curled fringe, before she realised he was one of her ex-husbands.
The pay-off would be her, having decided to get back out there dating-wise, considering Will, who, at first, just wanted to hang out quietly, but, presumably, having been rebuffed by Donna, ended up silently considering her too. On the one hand, Kate could do better (certainly than someone who’s knackered and all over the country because he’s running a presidential campaign), but on the other, Will doesn’t seem to have quite the ego that would find her military expertise and all that challenging. The opposite, in fact. (IIRC I was more pro them than against as a couple, if not all that bothered about them. Having listened to the screenwriter on the podcast, the whole Will/Donna thing in the previous episode seems like even weirder kite flying.)
The weightier aspect of this episode was, of course, Toby’s grief, which he didn’t want to talk about. It gradually emerged that he had also felt abandoned by Josh, Josh who had never thought to talk to him about a future candidate, or brought him in as he was considering Santos, who Toby didn’t rate. They really went after Josh as Toby’s work brother on the podcast, but we learned too that David had abandoned him (and his family.)
And so Toby had leaked to the Senator (and because I wasn’t sure if their first name was Ricky or Vicky I never made the connection with the lady at the bar. Ah, it was Ricky and meant to be gender neutral.) This mightily annoyed Josh, because said senator was taking their arc as the plucky underdog in the Democratic race, and because he didn’t think the underlying argument about healthcare had much purchase. (Apparently it would in real 2016, Josh.) It took Leo to point out to Toby that he was backing a spoiler, not someone who was fighting for the soul of the party as Toby liked to think of it.
I bought that Toby was in an emotional state where he would have a physical fight, but I’m not sure that I did that Josh was. Even though what Toby had done to Josh, who we know has gone all for the Santos campaign, was bad. Yes, they could both press each other’s buttons, but I was disappointed that it had slipped Josh’s mind that Toby had lost his brother and wasn’t in a great place, which might be a mitigating circumstance. Richard Schiff pointed out something about the blocking making it seem like something the characters chose to do and it they’d avoided that, the fight scene might have worked better. I haven’t gone back to look at it again.
CJ had to be chief of staff (no, you need time off because your work is suffering) and friend as Toby slowly revealed that his brother had in fact died by suicide, not his cancer. Their scene was touching and perfect. But Leo maybe gave better advice about David (and that unknowingly.)
Toby realising Leo was right that he was an insider and he could and should warn the Senator off kind of worked objectively, but not emotionally. As was true of the whole oblique conversation at the bar for me.
There was a lot of talk about the symbolism of glasses used throughout the episode on the podcast, but I was too caught up in personal issues to do with glasses and a prescription being personal to feel that either. So, I don’t know, this episode didn’t quite do it for me, although there were some great individual scenes in it.
Oh, I haven’t mentioned Donna dragging Josh into a closet – of course he had to comment on it – because she recognised where Senator Spoiler’s healthcare speech had come from.
6.17 A Good Day
This ep featured yet another do at the White House
Most of this was very silly. So, Cliff is the new Josh, as in the legislative fixer, and was now tasked with proving himself by passing legislation related to stem cell research. This involved getting Democrat politicians who were out campaigning back to Washington, and outsmarting Speaker Haffley. For some reason, I thought that Santos had stood down as a Senator already, which is stupid in hindsight.
It was Santos who came up with a plan, so Cliff and Josh didn’t have to interact too much, because it was awkward for Josh having to deal with the person with his old job in his old office. (And that he was Cliff, of all people!) Cliff was also very much learning the job. While I sort of enjoyed ‘operation sleepover’ – wasn’t that what CJ called it? It was silly. (I didn’t quite get the ‘heist = exiting’ memo.) Santos’s flying skills came in handy again.
More seriously, we got to see his leadership chops. I don’t know how much of that was the seniority of the actor on the show as the character among his fellow legislators. But I did like that this was his first interaction with Donna, and though they could have focused on her reaction to seeing him a little more (after the scare on the sofa), she got a chance to see that Josh had ignored conventional wisdom to back Santos for a reason. There was more focus on the desire to debate the issues with ‘Arkensas’, although I thought they made a fair point about not getting deep enough into the issues on the podcast, and in hindsight, that they hadn’t explained how the Democrats had ‘got’ the Speaker this time.
So, there were serious points about democracy, a reminder that all the Democrats were on the same team, under the President, even while the campaign for the nomination continued, but honestly the most serious subplot was actually the one where the politically engaged kids were frustrated to be handed off…eventually to AnnaBeth, who gave them a tour until Toby saw something in the boy agitating for a serious discussion about lowering the voting age. Something that reminded him of himself, as he’d expressed similar complaints about 10 minutes not being enough time for anything of substance to CJ.
So, that subject got discussed, and the kid got the prize of being able to put two questions to the President and get answered seriously in the press room. Only two of the party got to speak, and I was narked that the girl had to be the one who had to ameliorate her pushier, male co-campaigner, mainly because CJ, Abbey and Kate were having to do similar stuff in the ep. (So, I was glad to hear that director Richard Schiff was cognisant of that, watching it back for the podcast.)
Kate had to deal with – it felt like – not fully grown men getting overexcited about the shenanigans of irresponsible men. With guns, because they were hunters, around the border in Canada. Arguably some of those men were politicians on both sides. But I think the criticisms about this subplot being neither dramatic nor quite silly enough were fair.
Meanwhile the President’s ego bristled at having to meet the economist who’d won the Nobel Prize the same year as him for work on the other side of the continuum. They got snide at each other. CJ and Abbey had to run interference. Bartlet’s ego got a win after the other overexerted himself with a tango (as if being the actual US President wasn’t win enough, as CJ pointed out), and then there was a serious point about politics and economics and the deficit, which Bartlet won too although he was given food for thought. That would be the subject of the press conference. They carped about how that could have gone further too in the podcast!
Cliff was at it with the male ego thing. The fact that he was wearing a dark shirt and jacket for most of the episode stood out to me, so I was glad it got picked up on the podcast. He had some interaction with Donna where he acknowledged that being in charge of stuff instead of being an assistant suited her, and suggested they catch up in a way that suggested there was still interest there. She didn’t quite exhibit the same lack of fizzle as with Will, although it felt like it was as much about emphasising Cliff’s history with these characters and changed position.
I think I’m in the camp that’s a little confused about why this episode is relatively popular, too. And the point about Schiff having to direct this episode when all his prep time was taken up by a very demanding episode acting-wise was fair.
So, this season's two storylines are brought back together here, as all the Democratic candidates would be attending a party at the White House, and all the staff were being very strict about the President not showing favouritism (or were they?) We gradually learned that Toby was grieving, back too soon at work, and of course it turned out to be more complicated than that.
In the opening, I could follow the half about Josh briefing Santos, and the fact that the campaign was now headed for Super Tuesday but Toby’s encounter at the bar with the Mysterious Lady baffled me. (I have to apologise but my sense was that she was a prostitute who also offered counselling services, not so much that this was a tryst, as they went for on the podcast, going on to discuss how you had to fall in love a little to work for a campaign.) I therefore only partly engaged with this strand, because I knew it had to belong to its own timeline and would be clarified by the end of the episode. It was. Ouch.
The whole President not taking sides thing was mainly for the staffers, not the candidates, as Josh tried to get back into the White House – not a problem for Will and Donna as the VP’s staff. Debbie was a lioness.
Meanwhile CJ’s job was made harder because of a stain on her clothes and the lack of a Josh figure in the administration, which Leo wasn’t quite filling. Cliff Calleigh was back, being an obnoxious lobbyist, although he turned out to be right that they didn’t have the votes and probably not even the right priority for handling droughts or potential droughts. (And, as per usual, they didn’t really think of global warming as a factor.) Really interesting that CJ had assumed that Santos’s campaign would be short lived and she could hold Josh’s post open (they haven’t really filled her old post yet, have they!?)
When first offered the job, Cliff said ‘no’ because it was a ‘temp job’. (Yeah, but a prestigious one.) He also did it obnoxiously, just as the visiting Josh was being obnoxious. CJ cleverly brought Cliff in front of the President, partly because he was one of the few people they were letting Bartlet talk to.
We learned Margaret was pregnant (surely a case of the actress being pregnant and they decided to ride with it, because they could, because it’s Margaret.)
Charlie tried to set Kate up with a guy he knew from the gym (and though he explained why, not knowing his name? Male privilege. Although Kate wanting to do security checks? Military overreach?) Lots of back and forth on this, with me staring at her curled fringe, before she realised he was one of her ex-husbands.
The pay-off would be her, having decided to get back out there dating-wise, considering Will, who, at first, just wanted to hang out quietly, but, presumably, having been rebuffed by Donna, ended up silently considering her too. On the one hand, Kate could do better (certainly than someone who’s knackered and all over the country because he’s running a presidential campaign), but on the other, Will doesn’t seem to have quite the ego that would find her military expertise and all that challenging. The opposite, in fact. (IIRC I was more pro them than against as a couple, if not all that bothered about them. Having listened to the screenwriter on the podcast, the whole Will/Donna thing in the previous episode seems like even weirder kite flying.)
The weightier aspect of this episode was, of course, Toby’s grief, which he didn’t want to talk about. It gradually emerged that he had also felt abandoned by Josh, Josh who had never thought to talk to him about a future candidate, or brought him in as he was considering Santos, who Toby didn’t rate. They really went after Josh as Toby’s work brother on the podcast, but we learned too that David had abandoned him (and his family.)
And so Toby had leaked to the Senator (and because I wasn’t sure if their first name was Ricky or Vicky I never made the connection with the lady at the bar. Ah, it was Ricky and meant to be gender neutral.) This mightily annoyed Josh, because said senator was taking their arc as the plucky underdog in the Democratic race, and because he didn’t think the underlying argument about healthcare had much purchase. (Apparently it would in real 2016, Josh.) It took Leo to point out to Toby that he was backing a spoiler, not someone who was fighting for the soul of the party as Toby liked to think of it.
I bought that Toby was in an emotional state where he would have a physical fight, but I’m not sure that I did that Josh was. Even though what Toby had done to Josh, who we know has gone all for the Santos campaign, was bad. Yes, they could both press each other’s buttons, but I was disappointed that it had slipped Josh’s mind that Toby had lost his brother and wasn’t in a great place, which might be a mitigating circumstance. Richard Schiff pointed out something about the blocking making it seem like something the characters chose to do and it they’d avoided that, the fight scene might have worked better. I haven’t gone back to look at it again.
CJ had to be chief of staff (no, you need time off because your work is suffering) and friend as Toby slowly revealed that his brother had in fact died by suicide, not his cancer. Their scene was touching and perfect. But Leo maybe gave better advice about David (and that unknowingly.)
Toby realising Leo was right that he was an insider and he could and should warn the Senator off kind of worked objectively, but not emotionally. As was true of the whole oblique conversation at the bar for me.
There was a lot of talk about the symbolism of glasses used throughout the episode on the podcast, but I was too caught up in personal issues to do with glasses and a prescription being personal to feel that either. So, I don’t know, this episode didn’t quite do it for me, although there were some great individual scenes in it.
Oh, I haven’t mentioned Donna dragging Josh into a closet – of course he had to comment on it – because she recognised where Senator Spoiler’s healthcare speech had come from.
6.17 A Good Day
This ep featured yet another do at the White House
Most of this was very silly. So, Cliff is the new Josh, as in the legislative fixer, and was now tasked with proving himself by passing legislation related to stem cell research. This involved getting Democrat politicians who were out campaigning back to Washington, and outsmarting Speaker Haffley. For some reason, I thought that Santos had stood down as a Senator already, which is stupid in hindsight.
It was Santos who came up with a plan, so Cliff and Josh didn’t have to interact too much, because it was awkward for Josh having to deal with the person with his old job in his old office. (And that he was Cliff, of all people!) Cliff was also very much learning the job. While I sort of enjoyed ‘operation sleepover’ – wasn’t that what CJ called it? It was silly. (I didn’t quite get the ‘heist = exiting’ memo.) Santos’s flying skills came in handy again.
More seriously, we got to see his leadership chops. I don’t know how much of that was the seniority of the actor on the show as the character among his fellow legislators. But I did like that this was his first interaction with Donna, and though they could have focused on her reaction to seeing him a little more (after the scare on the sofa), she got a chance to see that Josh had ignored conventional wisdom to back Santos for a reason. There was more focus on the desire to debate the issues with ‘Arkensas’, although I thought they made a fair point about not getting deep enough into the issues on the podcast, and in hindsight, that they hadn’t explained how the Democrats had ‘got’ the Speaker this time.
So, there were serious points about democracy, a reminder that all the Democrats were on the same team, under the President, even while the campaign for the nomination continued, but honestly the most serious subplot was actually the one where the politically engaged kids were frustrated to be handed off…eventually to AnnaBeth, who gave them a tour until Toby saw something in the boy agitating for a serious discussion about lowering the voting age. Something that reminded him of himself, as he’d expressed similar complaints about 10 minutes not being enough time for anything of substance to CJ.
So, that subject got discussed, and the kid got the prize of being able to put two questions to the President and get answered seriously in the press room. Only two of the party got to speak, and I was narked that the girl had to be the one who had to ameliorate her pushier, male co-campaigner, mainly because CJ, Abbey and Kate were having to do similar stuff in the ep. (So, I was glad to hear that director Richard Schiff was cognisant of that, watching it back for the podcast.)
Kate had to deal with – it felt like – not fully grown men getting overexcited about the shenanigans of irresponsible men. With guns, because they were hunters, around the border in Canada. Arguably some of those men were politicians on both sides. But I think the criticisms about this subplot being neither dramatic nor quite silly enough were fair.
Meanwhile the President’s ego bristled at having to meet the economist who’d won the Nobel Prize the same year as him for work on the other side of the continuum. They got snide at each other. CJ and Abbey had to run interference. Bartlet’s ego got a win after the other overexerted himself with a tango (as if being the actual US President wasn’t win enough, as CJ pointed out), and then there was a serious point about politics and economics and the deficit, which Bartlet won too although he was given food for thought. That would be the subject of the press conference. They carped about how that could have gone further too in the podcast!
Cliff was at it with the male ego thing. The fact that he was wearing a dark shirt and jacket for most of the episode stood out to me, so I was glad it got picked up on the podcast. He had some interaction with Donna where he acknowledged that being in charge of stuff instead of being an assistant suited her, and suggested they catch up in a way that suggested there was still interest there. She didn’t quite exhibit the same lack of fizzle as with Will, although it felt like it was as much about emphasising Cliff’s history with these characters and changed position.
I think I’m in the camp that’s a little confused about why this episode is relatively popular, too. And the point about Schiff having to direct this episode when all his prep time was taken up by a very demanding episode acting-wise was fair.
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I also love Drought Conditions, mostly for how well the party scene is shot and how good everyone looks in it. The fight scene is cringetastic and I try to repress the memory of that, though. A+ Donna/Josh in the closet moment, a classic.
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There are always going to be good elements everywhere. Thinking about the two episodes, a lot rides on how the A-plot lands for the overall reaction.