TWW: Fiction, fiction, fiction
Nov. 7th, 2024 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI watched these two episodes last week and would have posted this over the weekend, before You Know What happened, but I was posting about Strictly. I will say I absolutely blew up out of all proportion when It Takes Two announced the return of the Danceathon on the show. I think it’s a terrible idea, I can tell you right now that Aljiaz and Tasha will get full marks and Chris and Dianne will get the lowest marks, but that’s just five minutes of ‘chaos as entertainment’. I was not really angry about it. I haven't felt able to comment on the sad and angry posts appearing on my friends page as someone who is not from the USA.
The West Wing - 7.13 The Cold
Two parts to the opening, the first the nostalgia of dial-up and a group of ducklings navigating the internet, as team Santos traded promising polls after the whole nuclear thing and tried to see the latest from a newspaper, to the second, where they went knocking the hotel room doors of the rest of the team to tell them. Donna got Josh’s room, delighted at the news, he kissed her in celebration, paused, realised it was Donna, he was kissing Donna, and soon they were kissing but more for all the years of longing and because they were Josh and Donna.
(I’d forgotten that the kiss happened now, although I remembered the scene.)
And there would be a lot of looks, (fond ones, ones full of possibility) but at one point Josh talked – always a mistake – about how it had been inappropriate. Donna got advice from people who knew her at the White House and mocked her lack of game, because everyone knew she was talking about Josh. (But Will seemed to have conveniently forgot the whole chasing after her when he was her boss, and yeah, Josh is still her boss, even if not quite as directly.) And more importantly, I don’t think Josh has quite processed what he wants from her (oh, grow up, Josh, step up) so no wonder the talking was fairly bad, and no wonder he hesitated when Donna made her clear offer, and lost his chance. (One step forward to a new spot of exquisite torture for shippers, thanks guys.) They made an appropriate deal of it on the podcast, with Janelle Moloney tipping her hat to director Alex Graves for really kickstarting Josh/Donna on the show, and thus it being apt for him to direct this moment. And yeah, the surprise and that it happened in a mood of exultation were a big part of it landing delightfully.
But as we also discovered in an amusing enough way that Will and Kate are sleeping together, there was quite a lot happening on the romantic front. (But that whole connection Will made between a padded envelope and Kate’s bra was…gauche. Which is in character, and they seemed to be happy with each other. But they’re not in the same chain of command at all, so I don’t think his advice was all that sound. Still, he’s in the first flush of a new relationship, so I suppose I have to cut him slack.)
Quite a lot of other stuff was happening too, the boost in Santos’s support, the decline in Vinick’s after the nuclear debacle. Team Santos were gelling, firing on all cylinders (the podcast noted ways that the direction highlighted this, which I’d semi-consciously taken in). Team Vinick were facing pressure from Sullivan and the RNC to drop the failing strategy and staff. Bruno thought it was aimed at him, whilde Sheila knew better. Their offices, one suddenly noticed, were rather dark. Oh, and Vinick was going down with something, and it wasn’t allergies. It was something that would remind voters he was way older than Santos.
Between that and the ensuing delirium, Josh really should have known a shoe was going to fall. And it was ‘Khazakstan’, because it looked as though Bartlet was going to have to order a force of thousands (my brain eventually wondered if this was a proxy for Afghanistan, although they aren’t comparable and I don’t recall if the timing was quite right. It wasn’t. It was still Iraq in those days.) Him having to ask if they had suitable clothes for all these soldiers they were planning to send was not the Situation Room’s finest hour.
Anyway, with three weeks to go to the election, as we were constantly reminded, Bartlet knew that if he was going to okay this invasion/intervention, it was going to land on his successor’s watch and so called in both candidates, just as they’d been planning on going to capitalise on their gains or shore up support. Also, he wanted Leo.
Quality Debbie time, forcing the Prez to okay some pictures and being very rude to Vinick (heh) and deliberately keeping some doors open, so that Vinick could see that Leo was going in first – to replay Bartlet’s confidant. (Which turned out to be more touching than they could have known when writing and filming the scene.) They pointed out on the podcast that CJ had been more open with Josh as a fellow Democrat and former co-worker what the briefing was about.
More contrasts between the two teams, with the added dynamic of seeing Josh, Donna, Annabeth and Leo back in the White House, but with a whole new team, before the two candidates got a briefing, where both asked serious questions that spoke to their character. (Of course, Santos has a military background, Vinick not so much.) And then they got time with just them and Bartlet, where he acknowledged this would change the election and the start of the presidency for whoever won, and like it or not (they didn’t), they were going to have to grapple with it, because he was going to go in, and there was no exit strategy. As was said on the podcast, this episode was another that brought together both the administration and campaign strands effectively.
Sheila informed Vinick that she was going to have to be the sacrificial staffer, never mind his longstanding loyalty. He was going to need to play on the RNC’s terms (which he didn’t love). In an episode with lots of artful shots, we saw his lonely silhouette one he’d left the car, about to face the media, partly because of his cold, partly because of the blow he’d taken. (But while I was gripped in the moment, because I thought they’d built Sheila and her longstanding relationship with Vinick up, I really cared a lot more about Donna feeling rejected and Josh feeling rueful.)
7.14 Two Weeks Out
And Team Vinick were in the glums what with the new staffer Jane and ending up in the same places as Santos because it was now so close. The cold had gone, but Vinick’s hand was suffering after so many handshakes. At a human level, I winced for him. (It was rather pointed that Santos didn’t seem to be having any issues with his hand. The discussion on the podcast felt very pre-pandemic.) And the nuclear story was still there. (The Khazakstan military intervention wasn’t having much traction, which figures.)
Josh had a new helper, ‘Bob’ i.e. Toby, and I loved that their relationship had been patched up and Toby had reached a point where he was advising Santos’s campaign. Also, he could deal with Josh. He suggested a day in California for reasons that made sense, but unlike them, we knew that Vinick had decided after a week of one strategy that had maybe shored up his support but was pitting traditional Republicans against undecided independents that he needed to tackle the nuclear story. In San Andreas, California. (One of my issues with Jane was that she kept banging on about getting 51 per cent, not 50 states, but…isn’t it about the electoral college? Her colleagues’ issue was that they’d given up the original 50-state strategy because of events already.)
Bruno was now the staffer who seemed most concerned about how Vinick was doing (one poor young woman had to tend to his hand because he could only put in a sling in private.) The still troubled team managed to talk Jane out of leaving and give them one day of officially ignoring her advice.
The fact that the teams were always in the same places threw up an almost farcical situation where Santos’s briefcase got left behind and Bruno picked it up. When he cynically asked if their opponents would have done anything different, my answer was that it depended on who would have picked it up. Had it been Donna or Bram, I think they’d have handed it back.
Santos was soon asking for it, and his two temporary body men realised that nobody had taken responsibility for the case wherever they’d last been.
Bruno claimed it contained the election-winning thing that Vinick was now lacking. Slowly, slowly Vinick let him tell him, and no, it wasn’t Matt Santos’s very secret diary, but a cheque book (how quaint) in which he made a monthly payment to a former staff member who’d had a baby seven years ago.
By having his press conference, offering the press more answers than they wanted, Vinick not only wrested the free media Santos’s campaign had been hoping for from him, but found his groove as Straight-Talking Arnie, again, earning Toby’s reluctant admiration and Bruno’s less reluctant type too. (Which adds to the drama, although the podcast did feel that we were being told this a bit too strongly.)
Vinick decided to return the case, giving Josh, Lou and Bruno nasty shocks by asking for a private five minute meeting with Santos (I am amused by the Secret Service working as a message service.) It was an enjoyably prickly encounter, and Vinick made a valid point (as Bruno had done) about what if this came out if he were President. I’m not entirely convinced about the whole lack of vetting because he was always the underdog argument. Hadn’t Josh had made sure that there was opposition research and asked Santos what all his secrets were? Granted, I got the impression that Santos thinks his ne’er-do-well brother is family business and thus off limits, which seems naïve given he’s aiming to head the first family, he’s seen Baker’s wife’s mental ill health rule him out, and he’d just seen Vinick’s campaigning for the building of the nuclear facility bite him.
I didn’t remember all this, although I personally didn’t buy that Matt would have cheated on Helen, and I was already feeling sorry for the kid at the heart of it. Though I can see the argument that this is not a good secret for someone aiming to be a President to have. Santos was affronted that Vinick didn’t believe him, but I thought he needed to discuss it with Leo (probably Josh) because Vinick was right, it was a case (aargh, sorry) of when the story came out, not if. But this was less gripping (ha, sorry Vinick’s hand) than the previous episode, not necessarily because it was a campaign episode, but because the stakes seemed lower (ha, even with the revelation of a serious issue that threatened Santos’s election/future presidency.) Having said that, of course an episode written by Lawrence O’Donnell brought Vinick back stronger. But as there was no Donna on the episode, there was no follow-through for Josh/Donna.
The West Wing - 7.13 The Cold
Two parts to the opening, the first the nostalgia of dial-up and a group of ducklings navigating the internet, as team Santos traded promising polls after the whole nuclear thing and tried to see the latest from a newspaper, to the second, where they went knocking the hotel room doors of the rest of the team to tell them. Donna got Josh’s room, delighted at the news, he kissed her in celebration, paused, realised it was Donna, he was kissing Donna, and soon they were kissing but more for all the years of longing and because they were Josh and Donna.
(I’d forgotten that the kiss happened now, although I remembered the scene.)
And there would be a lot of looks, (fond ones, ones full of possibility) but at one point Josh talked – always a mistake – about how it had been inappropriate. Donna got advice from people who knew her at the White House and mocked her lack of game, because everyone knew she was talking about Josh. (But Will seemed to have conveniently forgot the whole chasing after her when he was her boss, and yeah, Josh is still her boss, even if not quite as directly.) And more importantly, I don’t think Josh has quite processed what he wants from her (oh, grow up, Josh, step up) so no wonder the talking was fairly bad, and no wonder he hesitated when Donna made her clear offer, and lost his chance. (One step forward to a new spot of exquisite torture for shippers, thanks guys.) They made an appropriate deal of it on the podcast, with Janelle Moloney tipping her hat to director Alex Graves for really kickstarting Josh/Donna on the show, and thus it being apt for him to direct this moment. And yeah, the surprise and that it happened in a mood of exultation were a big part of it landing delightfully.
But as we also discovered in an amusing enough way that Will and Kate are sleeping together, there was quite a lot happening on the romantic front. (But that whole connection Will made between a padded envelope and Kate’s bra was…gauche. Which is in character, and they seemed to be happy with each other. But they’re not in the same chain of command at all, so I don’t think his advice was all that sound. Still, he’s in the first flush of a new relationship, so I suppose I have to cut him slack.)
Quite a lot of other stuff was happening too, the boost in Santos’s support, the decline in Vinick’s after the nuclear debacle. Team Santos were gelling, firing on all cylinders (the podcast noted ways that the direction highlighted this, which I’d semi-consciously taken in). Team Vinick were facing pressure from Sullivan and the RNC to drop the failing strategy and staff. Bruno thought it was aimed at him, whilde Sheila knew better. Their offices, one suddenly noticed, were rather dark. Oh, and Vinick was going down with something, and it wasn’t allergies. It was something that would remind voters he was way older than Santos.
Between that and the ensuing delirium, Josh really should have known a shoe was going to fall. And it was ‘Khazakstan’, because it looked as though Bartlet was going to have to order a force of thousands (my brain eventually wondered if this was a proxy for Afghanistan, although they aren’t comparable and I don’t recall if the timing was quite right. It wasn’t. It was still Iraq in those days.) Him having to ask if they had suitable clothes for all these soldiers they were planning to send was not the Situation Room’s finest hour.
Anyway, with three weeks to go to the election, as we were constantly reminded, Bartlet knew that if he was going to okay this invasion/intervention, it was going to land on his successor’s watch and so called in both candidates, just as they’d been planning on going to capitalise on their gains or shore up support. Also, he wanted Leo.
Quality Debbie time, forcing the Prez to okay some pictures and being very rude to Vinick (heh) and deliberately keeping some doors open, so that Vinick could see that Leo was going in first – to replay Bartlet’s confidant. (Which turned out to be more touching than they could have known when writing and filming the scene.) They pointed out on the podcast that CJ had been more open with Josh as a fellow Democrat and former co-worker what the briefing was about.
More contrasts between the two teams, with the added dynamic of seeing Josh, Donna, Annabeth and Leo back in the White House, but with a whole new team, before the two candidates got a briefing, where both asked serious questions that spoke to their character. (Of course, Santos has a military background, Vinick not so much.) And then they got time with just them and Bartlet, where he acknowledged this would change the election and the start of the presidency for whoever won, and like it or not (they didn’t), they were going to have to grapple with it, because he was going to go in, and there was no exit strategy. As was said on the podcast, this episode was another that brought together both the administration and campaign strands effectively.
Sheila informed Vinick that she was going to have to be the sacrificial staffer, never mind his longstanding loyalty. He was going to need to play on the RNC’s terms (which he didn’t love). In an episode with lots of artful shots, we saw his lonely silhouette one he’d left the car, about to face the media, partly because of his cold, partly because of the blow he’d taken. (But while I was gripped in the moment, because I thought they’d built Sheila and her longstanding relationship with Vinick up, I really cared a lot more about Donna feeling rejected and Josh feeling rueful.)
7.14 Two Weeks Out
And Team Vinick were in the glums what with the new staffer Jane and ending up in the same places as Santos because it was now so close. The cold had gone, but Vinick’s hand was suffering after so many handshakes. At a human level, I winced for him. (It was rather pointed that Santos didn’t seem to be having any issues with his hand. The discussion on the podcast felt very pre-pandemic.) And the nuclear story was still there. (The Khazakstan military intervention wasn’t having much traction, which figures.)
Josh had a new helper, ‘Bob’ i.e. Toby, and I loved that their relationship had been patched up and Toby had reached a point where he was advising Santos’s campaign. Also, he could deal with Josh. He suggested a day in California for reasons that made sense, but unlike them, we knew that Vinick had decided after a week of one strategy that had maybe shored up his support but was pitting traditional Republicans against undecided independents that he needed to tackle the nuclear story. In San Andreas, California. (One of my issues with Jane was that she kept banging on about getting 51 per cent, not 50 states, but…isn’t it about the electoral college? Her colleagues’ issue was that they’d given up the original 50-state strategy because of events already.)
Bruno was now the staffer who seemed most concerned about how Vinick was doing (one poor young woman had to tend to his hand because he could only put in a sling in private.) The still troubled team managed to talk Jane out of leaving and give them one day of officially ignoring her advice.
The fact that the teams were always in the same places threw up an almost farcical situation where Santos’s briefcase got left behind and Bruno picked it up. When he cynically asked if their opponents would have done anything different, my answer was that it depended on who would have picked it up. Had it been Donna or Bram, I think they’d have handed it back.
Santos was soon asking for it, and his two temporary body men realised that nobody had taken responsibility for the case wherever they’d last been.
Bruno claimed it contained the election-winning thing that Vinick was now lacking. Slowly, slowly Vinick let him tell him, and no, it wasn’t Matt Santos’s very secret diary, but a cheque book (how quaint) in which he made a monthly payment to a former staff member who’d had a baby seven years ago.
By having his press conference, offering the press more answers than they wanted, Vinick not only wrested the free media Santos’s campaign had been hoping for from him, but found his groove as Straight-Talking Arnie, again, earning Toby’s reluctant admiration and Bruno’s less reluctant type too. (Which adds to the drama, although the podcast did feel that we were being told this a bit too strongly.)
Vinick decided to return the case, giving Josh, Lou and Bruno nasty shocks by asking for a private five minute meeting with Santos (I am amused by the Secret Service working as a message service.) It was an enjoyably prickly encounter, and Vinick made a valid point (as Bruno had done) about what if this came out if he were President. I’m not entirely convinced about the whole lack of vetting because he was always the underdog argument. Hadn’t Josh had made sure that there was opposition research and asked Santos what all his secrets were? Granted, I got the impression that Santos thinks his ne’er-do-well brother is family business and thus off limits, which seems naïve given he’s aiming to head the first family, he’s seen Baker’s wife’s mental ill health rule him out, and he’d just seen Vinick’s campaigning for the building of the nuclear facility bite him.
I didn’t remember all this, although I personally didn’t buy that Matt would have cheated on Helen, and I was already feeling sorry for the kid at the heart of it. Though I can see the argument that this is not a good secret for someone aiming to be a President to have. Santos was affronted that Vinick didn’t believe him, but I thought he needed to discuss it with Leo (probably Josh) because Vinick was right, it was a case (aargh, sorry) of when the story came out, not if. But this was less gripping (ha, sorry Vinick’s hand) than the previous episode, not necessarily because it was a campaign episode, but because the stakes seemed lower (ha, even with the revelation of a serious issue that threatened Santos’s election/future presidency.) Having said that, of course an episode written by Lawrence O’Donnell brought Vinick back stronger. But as there was no Donna on the episode, there was no follow-through for Josh/Donna.
