TWW: Long fictional night
Dec. 18th, 2024 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe West Wing - 7.16 Election Night part 1
As this episode was mainly about the campaigns waiting…for voting to start, for some data to come in, we got TWW’s version of a sex comedy. We also got too brief (?) interactions at the White House, as the staffers there, like the campaign aides and candidates, realised there wasn’t much they could do now.
The opening had team Santos at a hotel bar, sharing a drink at the end of the last night of campaigning. Cress Williams had turned up again, and I was a little shocked that Lester didn’t end up hooking up with Lou, given that I thought they’d had chemistry in the past. Hmm, was Lou going off with 23 year old Otto (mildly amusing as their interactions the next day were?) meant to balance Bruno and the ‘near graduate student’? Although that being one of his superstitious habits on election night was utterly skeevy.
But the biggest deal of this scene was Josh/Donna. Josh was completely surprised by all of the couplings revealed. Unsurprisingly, Donna was not. She also seemed willing to give her man a second shot. This time he took the invitation to leave his chair and go after his woman.
What followed for the rest of the day was Josh being Josh, as in the terrible rousing speech at the 6 A.M. meeting, and Donna really having to take charge, emotionally speaking. The kind take was that he was under great stress and disliked having so little to do. We had the running gag of various permutations of speeches for the end of the night. Helen got Matt to sleep! Win for Mrs Santos. (I did wonder if she actually voted for him. Presumably so.) There was the weather to worry about. I may have had some 2024-influenced reaction to recognising the Democratic ground game at work. Then numbers started coming in from all over, and they didn’t make any sense.
Josh got wound up enough that he all but exploded, and Donna was deputised to go talk sense to him. (At least some of the campaign knowing that they were an item.) She managed to point out that he hadn’t had enough sleep for ages and just had to wait it out. The only figures that would count would be when the votes were counted.
At the White House, Charlie was pestering a reluctant CJ to look at job offers. She wanted to put it off until January, (on the podcast, Malina made the point that this was on taxpayers’ money) but there was a telling scene where she walked into an empty Oval Office, recognising that this was the last real day of their administration. Charlie finally got his way by stating outright that he wanted to keep working for her, and their interaction was delightful, so I was actually a bit sad we’d seen so little of it recently.
Meanwhile Will and Kate had voted, and were talking about the future (in a corridor). He let slip that he was thinking of going back to California, Kate did not take it well. Props to him for recognising why she might have gone weird, as he was proposing to move and they hadn’t discussed their future. He sketched out a future where he was coming back and forth from California, and although neither of them could manage the words ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’, that’s what he meant. So then she started laying out what her future plans might be. I was amused that my theory that she might well have voted for Vinick was backed up. (Wonder if this will turn out to be a dealbreaker for him.)
But the episode took a turn, as Annabeth went to wake Leo up. They played it well dramatically, with us not seeing her once she’d gone into the bathroom, just hearing her voice, like the security detail, who couldn’t have protected Leo from this. On the podcast, they discussed the choice of camera angle, which I hadn’t fully taken in, and that you could interpret it as not wanting to remain in that dark moment, or that it was the POV of Leo’s departing consciousness. The podcast also praised the mood, and noted that any win of a state was usually seen from the losing camp’s perspective, but almost felt sorry for Josh for not enjoying the joy, and very nearly ruining things.
7.17 Election Night part 2
This kicked up a notch dramatically, with the death of Leo – which was handled about as well as it could have been, with the actors tapping into their actual grief for John Spencer, most of all the ones who’d worked with him longest – and then as the final results came in. While I appreciated that they mentioned Mallory and gave due regard to Jed’s family having known Leo personally, I thought Margaret’s grief wasn’t given any especial notice, she was there, but that was it. But Hrishi praised it and the general subtlety of how the news about Leo’s death was conveyed to everyone.
I loved the recognition that Leo was Josh’s work father figure, although I hadn’t picked up on the callback to Donna having to tell Josh, during a moment of victory for Bartlet, that his father had died. I loved Donna being a step ahead of Josh, who was shown throughout to be struggling with grief, while also being repeatedly pulled back into the reality of the final stretches of the campaign.
I enjoyed the two candidates being honourable, willing to honour the results. As teased out on the podcast, they had slightly different motivations. Josh reminded Santos of where he was at in his political life: win or lose, he was the presumptive nominee for the next election. For the older Vinick, this felt like his last shot, as he’d moved to the centre more than the right wing of his party (in shorthand) was comfortable with and, thanks to the nuclear accident, his strategy hadn’t paid off.
They tackled what Leo’s death meant for the election – fair questions – and any political advantage or disadvantage. Santos claimed he was asking for a vote for a vision, but his foreign policy ballast was gone, and if they were voting for him, nobody knew who would be replacing that gap or the stand-in role for (young, healthy) Santos. And, at the same time, there was a personal loss for Santos, for Vinick and for Bruno.
The election kinda took over as the episode went on, with more results coming in, and reminders of the other elections going on, HA! Suck it, Doug! (Dougs do not do well in The West Wing.) It was increasingly close, and it seemed that it would be the candidates’ home states, Texas and California, that would decide this, but that was a fake out as both states went for their men and it came down to Oregon and Nevada.
I liked how they brought Bartlet back into it with CJ coming to tell him and us the result.
Santos’s speech acknowledged that it had been neck and neck, but the last moment of the episode was personal, with Donna witnessing Josh grieving that Leo wasn’t there to share in the win, despite Josh having put so much into getting it.
As this episode was mainly about the campaigns waiting…for voting to start, for some data to come in, we got TWW’s version of a sex comedy. We also got too brief (?) interactions at the White House, as the staffers there, like the campaign aides and candidates, realised there wasn’t much they could do now.
The opening had team Santos at a hotel bar, sharing a drink at the end of the last night of campaigning. Cress Williams had turned up again, and I was a little shocked that Lester didn’t end up hooking up with Lou, given that I thought they’d had chemistry in the past. Hmm, was Lou going off with 23 year old Otto (mildly amusing as their interactions the next day were?) meant to balance Bruno and the ‘near graduate student’? Although that being one of his superstitious habits on election night was utterly skeevy.
But the biggest deal of this scene was Josh/Donna. Josh was completely surprised by all of the couplings revealed. Unsurprisingly, Donna was not. She also seemed willing to give her man a second shot. This time he took the invitation to leave his chair and go after his woman.
What followed for the rest of the day was Josh being Josh, as in the terrible rousing speech at the 6 A.M. meeting, and Donna really having to take charge, emotionally speaking. The kind take was that he was under great stress and disliked having so little to do. We had the running gag of various permutations of speeches for the end of the night. Helen got Matt to sleep! Win for Mrs Santos. (I did wonder if she actually voted for him. Presumably so.) There was the weather to worry about. I may have had some 2024-influenced reaction to recognising the Democratic ground game at work. Then numbers started coming in from all over, and they didn’t make any sense.
Josh got wound up enough that he all but exploded, and Donna was deputised to go talk sense to him. (At least some of the campaign knowing that they were an item.) She managed to point out that he hadn’t had enough sleep for ages and just had to wait it out. The only figures that would count would be when the votes were counted.
At the White House, Charlie was pestering a reluctant CJ to look at job offers. She wanted to put it off until January, (on the podcast, Malina made the point that this was on taxpayers’ money) but there was a telling scene where she walked into an empty Oval Office, recognising that this was the last real day of their administration. Charlie finally got his way by stating outright that he wanted to keep working for her, and their interaction was delightful, so I was actually a bit sad we’d seen so little of it recently.
Meanwhile Will and Kate had voted, and were talking about the future (in a corridor). He let slip that he was thinking of going back to California, Kate did not take it well. Props to him for recognising why she might have gone weird, as he was proposing to move and they hadn’t discussed their future. He sketched out a future where he was coming back and forth from California, and although neither of them could manage the words ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’, that’s what he meant. So then she started laying out what her future plans might be. I was amused that my theory that she might well have voted for Vinick was backed up. (Wonder if this will turn out to be a dealbreaker for him.)
But the episode took a turn, as Annabeth went to wake Leo up. They played it well dramatically, with us not seeing her once she’d gone into the bathroom, just hearing her voice, like the security detail, who couldn’t have protected Leo from this. On the podcast, they discussed the choice of camera angle, which I hadn’t fully taken in, and that you could interpret it as not wanting to remain in that dark moment, or that it was the POV of Leo’s departing consciousness. The podcast also praised the mood, and noted that any win of a state was usually seen from the losing camp’s perspective, but almost felt sorry for Josh for not enjoying the joy, and very nearly ruining things.
7.17 Election Night part 2
This kicked up a notch dramatically, with the death of Leo – which was handled about as well as it could have been, with the actors tapping into their actual grief for John Spencer, most of all the ones who’d worked with him longest – and then as the final results came in. While I appreciated that they mentioned Mallory and gave due regard to Jed’s family having known Leo personally, I thought Margaret’s grief wasn’t given any especial notice, she was there, but that was it. But Hrishi praised it and the general subtlety of how the news about Leo’s death was conveyed to everyone.
I loved the recognition that Leo was Josh’s work father figure, although I hadn’t picked up on the callback to Donna having to tell Josh, during a moment of victory for Bartlet, that his father had died. I loved Donna being a step ahead of Josh, who was shown throughout to be struggling with grief, while also being repeatedly pulled back into the reality of the final stretches of the campaign.
I enjoyed the two candidates being honourable, willing to honour the results. As teased out on the podcast, they had slightly different motivations. Josh reminded Santos of where he was at in his political life: win or lose, he was the presumptive nominee for the next election. For the older Vinick, this felt like his last shot, as he’d moved to the centre more than the right wing of his party (in shorthand) was comfortable with and, thanks to the nuclear accident, his strategy hadn’t paid off.
They tackled what Leo’s death meant for the election – fair questions – and any political advantage or disadvantage. Santos claimed he was asking for a vote for a vision, but his foreign policy ballast was gone, and if they were voting for him, nobody knew who would be replacing that gap or the stand-in role for (young, healthy) Santos. And, at the same time, there was a personal loss for Santos, for Vinick and for Bruno.
The election kinda took over as the episode went on, with more results coming in, and reminders of the other elections going on, HA! Suck it, Doug! (Dougs do not do well in The West Wing.) It was increasingly close, and it seemed that it would be the candidates’ home states, Texas and California, that would decide this, but that was a fake out as both states went for their men and it came down to Oregon and Nevada.
I liked how they brought Bartlet back into it with CJ coming to tell him and us the result.
Santos’s speech acknowledged that it had been neck and neck, but the last moment of the episode was personal, with Donna witnessing Josh grieving that Leo wasn’t there to share in the win, despite Josh having put so much into getting it.
