TWW: Fortuitous timing?
Sep. 13th, 2024 08:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessFWIW, I watched these episodes in August, typed up my reaction, but it took a while to catch up on the podcasts, and then a Presidential debate happened. The timing wasn’t really as serendipitous as it seemed.
7.7 The Debate (West Coast) (apparently the second run because they did two) (watched on a DVD that’s probably a region 2 DVD).
I did not enjoy this much at all. I can see why they got all excited about filming it live (and airing it live, twice), but it left me unexcited and sometimes unconvinced. (I thought Alda did a better job of sounding like a politician reacting at the time than Smits, who had more weird hesitations – was it a case of relative theatre experience?) Several of the dramatic bits, like where they needed roving mics or the heckler did not go that smoothly, which I suppose you could argue was true to a live debate. Some of their interrupting each other worked better, and then there were times when one would let the other speak and speak and it didn’t feel true, it felt like them sticking to the script, or taking a moment to sneak a peek at it, although apparently they were working off autocue.
Admittedly, I’m not a fan of debates. As a non-American, I’ve watched reports and read summaries of the last two presidential debates and read summaries, but I did the same for the TV debates in the recent UK general election. I dislike the real thing. I wanted the staffers’ conniptions when their guys decided to break the rules! Or when they thought their guy had made a telling point. Or the opposite. Basically, I wanted a normal West Wing episode, and note that none of the main cast apart from the candidates were in this episode.
On the issues, it felt very basic – guess who was in favour of tax cuts and leaving everything to the markets, and guess who wasn’t? (Some things don’t change at all, others do). And I wondered, ‘those are extras, right?’ about the audience’ (it turns out some of them were writers and relatives, and others were ‘bigwigs’.) I’d like to know what the moderator (presumably someone who was a moderator in real life) thought of it all. (The podcast confirmed that he had experience in the field, but was working in other areas, which is why he didn’t turn it down as others had because they didn’t want to be in a fictional representation of their real job.) Also, whether Martin Sheen felt disappointed that he hadn’t had a chance to do something like this. Malina admitted to feeling both disappointed and relieved it he wasn’t involved on the podcast, which feels fair. Although I thought that the podcast devoting two episodes to this episode was a bit much, getting the views of two people steeped in real life debate prep was interesting. They raised the point that since this episode aired, debates in a less structured style are more the norm, but that the roaming wouldn’t have been possible, because the lighting wouldn’t have been set up for it.
To be Watsonian, FWIW, Santos got under Vinick’s skin more, although there was plenty of animus between both men. In the closing speeches, Santos was more personal about leadership, Vinick stuck to expressing his ‘Government should get out of the way’ philosophy. The experts said that Santos won slightly, but that they felt that Vinick was often written like a Democrat’s idea of a Republican and made some surprising mistakes for someone who was meant to be an experienced debater.
7.8 The Undecideds
Thank goodness, a normal episode, where the reaction to the debate was that some commentators were calling it a tie (fair) and Santos had only got a tiny bump. (Yeah, so, was it worth doing it like that, show?) The Santos campaign were muttering about scheduling – it seemed to be Santos’s fault for always taking more press questions and adding new things (like the debate.) Donna tried to bring a brewing news story to everyone’s attention, but did it in a way that meant the big reveal hit the credits. And that was that a Latino cop had shot an African-American child in LA, where Santos was headed that very weekend after having to reschedule (because of the debate.) How to handle that and the racial tensions involved would be the throughline for the campaign.
Actually, no, it didn’t feature much during CJ, Kate, Will and Margaret’s working weekend at the White House. (Bartlet was conveniently in Camp David.) CJ had come in to do some wedding planning, and got pulled into managing a foreign affairs debacle involving two nuclear powers. It was a continuation of the Russians being behind a series of assassinations plot (which still doesn’t make too much sense.) She and Kate tried to have a word with the Chinese. It didn’t go well, and so Will became the de facto wedding planner. I frankly thought the couple should have just got a wedding licence and got married in court, as the White House’s suggested list was massive, Ellie’s would-be maid of honour (apparently called Ariana Grand if I heard it right. Hee) was flagged by the DEA, and there were concerns about whether child labour had been involved in the creation of her wedding dress of choice. I keep wondering if Margaret would have been better at it than Will, but I think Ellie would have cried anyway.
It seemed like they were building up to the Secretary (an older gentleman who looked like he could have been a grandfather) to join some dots about the menu that eluded CJ and Kate, and reveal to them that Ellie was pregnant. Because we already knew this, it didn’t feel like an earth-shattering reveal (I daresay that this White House would have preferred that a first daughter hadn’t got knocked up out of wedlock, but it’s no federal law-breaking leak.) As Malina said on the podcast, CJ’s subplot felt like an excuse to foist the wedding stuff on to Will for laughs, but it never really got into outright funny territory.
Also, Margaret somehow knew Ellie was preggers, because of course she did.
Also 2, CJ caught Kate looking consideringly at Will when he was being uber Willish in casuals. Apparently, both are mini golf enthusiasts. (Will and Kate, not CJ.) (Like Hrishi on the podcast, I took that at face value.)
A newcomer on the campaign was Lester, a young African-American (played by the same guy who plays Lavon on Hart of Dixie in a more unexpected The West Wing/HoD crossover than the Veeps.) Apparently he was their most senior black staff member. Also, he had mad flirty energy with Lou, who put her foot in it with the congressman. Donna was part of the gaggle trying to manage their boss, the schedule and the story. Santos went to see the dead child’s mother, mainly because the Mayor had. It was going okay with the mother (perhaps too well, claimed the podcast), but an uncle got angry because the detail was stopping another family member from coming. The big question was what was Santos going to say at an already arranged visit to a black church (in LA)? He suggested reading a psalm.
They scrambled to get Leo to back him up, and Josh came to the White House to beg CJ to get the President to come to LA too. She said she’d raise it. (They made a point of questioning whether Bartlet was all in in supporting Santos, but whither the rest of the Democrats? Wouldn’t a senior African-American have carried more weight with the congregation?) CJ also mentioned Toby to Josh, guilting him enough to go visit him, for a reunion that went as badly as could be expected, given the last few times they’d met, what Toby had done and what Josh was doing. The podcast, quite fairly, raised the point that it was reckless for Josh to visit Toby at this juncture and risk exposing the campaign.
Josh came back the next day, probably taunted by Toby’s barbs about him always leaving, also probably wanting to win their argument, which turned out to be about whether Santos would or should win. I didn’t entirely buy Toby’s argument that the fact that Santos had walked away and that a man (always a man) needed the arrogance to believe he deserved to be President to be a President and make the tough calls. I don’t think that having the perspective to walk away or changing your mind are automatic fails. And as they said on the podcast, it was ignoring Bartlet’s ambivalence, even though he did have an ego. Josh couldn’t quite answer the question the way that Toby framed it, which felt weak.
It was all right, though, the episode would claim. Despite the team’s nervousness, and our having seen Matt admit his fears to Helen, he turned up and, I believe the phrase is ‘went to church’, doing a bit of soaring rhetoric about finding compassion, not anger, name checking MLK and winning the crowd over (to my mind, I felt that there was a bit of cosplaying going on, but hey, I’m not American. The American podcasters were not impressed, finding his speech too vague.) So, the viewers had an answer.
Absolutely fair criticism from Hrishi that they didn’t have writing staff of colour (for that matter, the number of women credited wasn’t close to representative either), and that that may have explained the lack of digging into Latino-African American tensions. I think I liked this episode more and the previous episode less than them.
7.7 The Debate (West Coast) (apparently the second run because they did two) (watched on a DVD that’s probably a region 2 DVD).
I did not enjoy this much at all. I can see why they got all excited about filming it live (and airing it live, twice), but it left me unexcited and sometimes unconvinced. (I thought Alda did a better job of sounding like a politician reacting at the time than Smits, who had more weird hesitations – was it a case of relative theatre experience?) Several of the dramatic bits, like where they needed roving mics or the heckler did not go that smoothly, which I suppose you could argue was true to a live debate. Some of their interrupting each other worked better, and then there were times when one would let the other speak and speak and it didn’t feel true, it felt like them sticking to the script, or taking a moment to sneak a peek at it, although apparently they were working off autocue.
Admittedly, I’m not a fan of debates. As a non-American, I’ve watched reports and read summaries of the last two presidential debates and read summaries, but I did the same for the TV debates in the recent UK general election. I dislike the real thing. I wanted the staffers’ conniptions when their guys decided to break the rules! Or when they thought their guy had made a telling point. Or the opposite. Basically, I wanted a normal West Wing episode, and note that none of the main cast apart from the candidates were in this episode.
On the issues, it felt very basic – guess who was in favour of tax cuts and leaving everything to the markets, and guess who wasn’t? (Some things don’t change at all, others do). And I wondered, ‘those are extras, right?’ about the audience’ (it turns out some of them were writers and relatives, and others were ‘bigwigs’.) I’d like to know what the moderator (presumably someone who was a moderator in real life) thought of it all. (The podcast confirmed that he had experience in the field, but was working in other areas, which is why he didn’t turn it down as others had because they didn’t want to be in a fictional representation of their real job.) Also, whether Martin Sheen felt disappointed that he hadn’t had a chance to do something like this. Malina admitted to feeling both disappointed and relieved it he wasn’t involved on the podcast, which feels fair. Although I thought that the podcast devoting two episodes to this episode was a bit much, getting the views of two people steeped in real life debate prep was interesting. They raised the point that since this episode aired, debates in a less structured style are more the norm, but that the roaming wouldn’t have been possible, because the lighting wouldn’t have been set up for it.
To be Watsonian, FWIW, Santos got under Vinick’s skin more, although there was plenty of animus between both men. In the closing speeches, Santos was more personal about leadership, Vinick stuck to expressing his ‘Government should get out of the way’ philosophy. The experts said that Santos won slightly, but that they felt that Vinick was often written like a Democrat’s idea of a Republican and made some surprising mistakes for someone who was meant to be an experienced debater.
7.8 The Undecideds
Thank goodness, a normal episode, where the reaction to the debate was that some commentators were calling it a tie (fair) and Santos had only got a tiny bump. (Yeah, so, was it worth doing it like that, show?) The Santos campaign were muttering about scheduling – it seemed to be Santos’s fault for always taking more press questions and adding new things (like the debate.) Donna tried to bring a brewing news story to everyone’s attention, but did it in a way that meant the big reveal hit the credits. And that was that a Latino cop had shot an African-American child in LA, where Santos was headed that very weekend after having to reschedule (because of the debate.) How to handle that and the racial tensions involved would be the throughline for the campaign.
Actually, no, it didn’t feature much during CJ, Kate, Will and Margaret’s working weekend at the White House. (Bartlet was conveniently in Camp David.) CJ had come in to do some wedding planning, and got pulled into managing a foreign affairs debacle involving two nuclear powers. It was a continuation of the Russians being behind a series of assassinations plot (which still doesn’t make too much sense.) She and Kate tried to have a word with the Chinese. It didn’t go well, and so Will became the de facto wedding planner. I frankly thought the couple should have just got a wedding licence and got married in court, as the White House’s suggested list was massive, Ellie’s would-be maid of honour (apparently called Ariana Grand if I heard it right. Hee) was flagged by the DEA, and there were concerns about whether child labour had been involved in the creation of her wedding dress of choice. I keep wondering if Margaret would have been better at it than Will, but I think Ellie would have cried anyway.
It seemed like they were building up to the Secretary (an older gentleman who looked like he could have been a grandfather) to join some dots about the menu that eluded CJ and Kate, and reveal to them that Ellie was pregnant. Because we already knew this, it didn’t feel like an earth-shattering reveal (I daresay that this White House would have preferred that a first daughter hadn’t got knocked up out of wedlock, but it’s no federal law-breaking leak.) As Malina said on the podcast, CJ’s subplot felt like an excuse to foist the wedding stuff on to Will for laughs, but it never really got into outright funny territory.
Also, Margaret somehow knew Ellie was preggers, because of course she did.
Also 2, CJ caught Kate looking consideringly at Will when he was being uber Willish in casuals. Apparently, both are mini golf enthusiasts. (Will and Kate, not CJ.) (Like Hrishi on the podcast, I took that at face value.)
A newcomer on the campaign was Lester, a young African-American (played by the same guy who plays Lavon on Hart of Dixie in a more unexpected The West Wing/HoD crossover than the Veeps.) Apparently he was their most senior black staff member. Also, he had mad flirty energy with Lou, who put her foot in it with the congressman. Donna was part of the gaggle trying to manage their boss, the schedule and the story. Santos went to see the dead child’s mother, mainly because the Mayor had. It was going okay with the mother (perhaps too well, claimed the podcast), but an uncle got angry because the detail was stopping another family member from coming. The big question was what was Santos going to say at an already arranged visit to a black church (in LA)? He suggested reading a psalm.
They scrambled to get Leo to back him up, and Josh came to the White House to beg CJ to get the President to come to LA too. She said she’d raise it. (They made a point of questioning whether Bartlet was all in in supporting Santos, but whither the rest of the Democrats? Wouldn’t a senior African-American have carried more weight with the congregation?) CJ also mentioned Toby to Josh, guilting him enough to go visit him, for a reunion that went as badly as could be expected, given the last few times they’d met, what Toby had done and what Josh was doing. The podcast, quite fairly, raised the point that it was reckless for Josh to visit Toby at this juncture and risk exposing the campaign.
Josh came back the next day, probably taunted by Toby’s barbs about him always leaving, also probably wanting to win their argument, which turned out to be about whether Santos would or should win. I didn’t entirely buy Toby’s argument that the fact that Santos had walked away and that a man (always a man) needed the arrogance to believe he deserved to be President to be a President and make the tough calls. I don’t think that having the perspective to walk away or changing your mind are automatic fails. And as they said on the podcast, it was ignoring Bartlet’s ambivalence, even though he did have an ego. Josh couldn’t quite answer the question the way that Toby framed it, which felt weak.
It was all right, though, the episode would claim. Despite the team’s nervousness, and our having seen Matt admit his fears to Helen, he turned up and, I believe the phrase is ‘went to church’, doing a bit of soaring rhetoric about finding compassion, not anger, name checking MLK and winning the crowd over (to my mind, I felt that there was a bit of cosplaying going on, but hey, I’m not American. The American podcasters were not impressed, finding his speech too vague.) So, the viewers had an answer.
Absolutely fair criticism from Hrishi that they didn’t have writing staff of colour (for that matter, the number of women credited wasn’t close to representative either), and that that may have explained the lack of digging into Latino-African American tensions. I think I liked this episode more and the previous episode less than them.
