TWW: On offers you can't refuse
Feb. 9th, 2025 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessIn contrast to the news, The West Wing - 7.20 The Last Hurrah
No Josh in this episode, which just emphasised how central he’s been to the seventh season. Amy was now working for Santos alongside Lou and other familiar faces, Sam was busy sorting his life out/Rob Lowe was too expensive for what they could give him. But mainly it was about the contrast between the Santoses working out how to navigate their new reality, and Vinick doing the same but oh so differently.
His situation was brutal. Being called Ernie! Having no Helen equivalent to tell him that he was done, never mind the nuclear accident, the stench of losing followed him around. Had he won, the party would have accepted his politics, but he hadn’t and they would continue to revert to type (this was before the Tea Party…). They had Ray Sullivan! Arnie could claim he was his creation as much as he liked, Sullivan was the future and he was the past. They talked about his age having been a big deal then on the podcast, but to me it was the losing and the politics.
He was sympathetic in the fact that he hadn’t quite caught up with this reality, and of course it would be hard to give up thinking like a politician.
All the contrasts with the demands on Santos’s time as he picked his Cabinet etc, were made all the clearer as he called on Vinick for a meeting.
Helen was absolutely right that their kids’ wellbeing as they were meeting their agents should be a priority. Her naivete bounced off CJ well as she met the staff, (the lack of the Bartlets making the shock greater was pointed to on the podcast) and in the scene where she unexpectedly walked into the Oval Office. The realisation that their home in Texas would never be the same, and that they weren’t quite in the same financial bracket as the Bartlets had been with their farm, kept being hammered home. I liked that it was Matt who pushed for a public school and some normality for the kids. (Helen could have done with a Donna, but eh, she hadn’t officially accepted the job offer.)
Santos deserved his smirk as his future Secretary of State outlined what he needed to do about the Chinese and the Russians and proved why he was the right person for the job. (Idealism! What could have been! They mad a persuasive argument for SoS being a job where you could put country first over party.) Also, I liked the very human proof of Vinick’s ego that it was the rival candidate Santos was considering that pushed him over (and it would probably annoy Sullivan, putative next Republican nominee, that he’d take this job.) It did make Santos look good, as well as providing a route for getting Baker as Veep through Congress.
7.21 Institutional Memory
This episode focused on the White House as it wound right down and mainly focused on CJ. (I guess Charlie is going to follow here in her wake. What about Margaret though?) They flipped the usual gender dynamics with Danny being the one to play Donna in the romantic relationship, Toby being really astute about it (although not going the extra step to see that maybe it wasn’t great that The White House had been such a male world).
As they hashed out on the podcast, there was occasionally a sense of working backwards from the flashforward scheme, but more than a couple of dialogue scenes that flowed very well, CJ/Danny, CJ/Will, Cj/Margaret and CJ/Toby, but also Kate and Will figuring things out as their future job prospects became clearer.
I liked the journey that Will and Kate went on in this episode in one way, although I think that despite their efforts to make their burgeoning relationship work (where they were both putting in the effort in contrast to what was happening with CJ/Danny), Will’s campaign making him move to somewhere that Kate couldn’t really was going to jeopardise it. (Hrishi pointed out on the podcast that the flashforward hadn’t ruled it out entirely.)
Kate coming to the conclusion that Will would stand for the seat and win before him, when she isn’t a political operative, worked, and it is a nice callback to Will’s introduction where he’s now grown to take them same step as Sam did, but in a slightly different way. As for Kate, she was disappointed that there would be no place for her in the new administration (as if Santos and team had intuited that she hadn’t voted for him!) And it was plausible, e.g. she was linked to the Khazakstan situation and ran counter to their finding positions for so many old faces, but very few of those still working in the White House for the Bartlet administration.
It was so good that we had some resolution between CJ and Toby, believable that she felt angry and betrayed and was so loyal to Bartlet and his administration that she hadn’t brought herself to move on on a personal level until Andi (mother of Toby’s children!) forced the issue on her. Very nice moment where Toby just shooed her out and stopped her from wallowing/avoiding Danny, but watched her go. And the clips they played on the podcast highlighted that Toby was definitely telling her he loved her by the tone of his voice. I thought they made valid points about expecting his imprisonment and the whole experience having deeply affected Toby.
I very much liked the use of CJ’s secret service detail.
Although she was slow to realise that these were the last two weeks, the sense that CJ was done with the White House came through (and the lingering sense that she’d be crowding Josh) when Santos gave her the job offer, even though her mad budget had some method behind it, and Santos would be lucky to have her stay. After nearly blowing it, CJ got her chance to give her relationship with Danny a try and thinking about what she wanted to do. Xander Berkley made for a credible billionaire philanthropist, different take to the usual personals I see him play, although, again, in this year of 2025 A.D. the contrast between the West Wing and real-life versions is STARK! Though we didn’t see her refuse Santos, in a contrast to his win of getting Vinick on board in the previous episode, by the end of the episode, we knew that refusal was coming.
I thought that the interview with editor Janet Ashikaga on the podcast was really interesting, and it might behove professional bodies to get young actors to listen to experienced editors.
No Josh in this episode, which just emphasised how central he’s been to the seventh season. Amy was now working for Santos alongside Lou and other familiar faces, Sam was busy sorting his life out/Rob Lowe was too expensive for what they could give him. But mainly it was about the contrast between the Santoses working out how to navigate their new reality, and Vinick doing the same but oh so differently.
His situation was brutal. Being called Ernie! Having no Helen equivalent to tell him that he was done, never mind the nuclear accident, the stench of losing followed him around. Had he won, the party would have accepted his politics, but he hadn’t and they would continue to revert to type (this was before the Tea Party…). They had Ray Sullivan! Arnie could claim he was his creation as much as he liked, Sullivan was the future and he was the past. They talked about his age having been a big deal then on the podcast, but to me it was the losing and the politics.
He was sympathetic in the fact that he hadn’t quite caught up with this reality, and of course it would be hard to give up thinking like a politician.
All the contrasts with the demands on Santos’s time as he picked his Cabinet etc, were made all the clearer as he called on Vinick for a meeting.
Helen was absolutely right that their kids’ wellbeing as they were meeting their agents should be a priority. Her naivete bounced off CJ well as she met the staff, (the lack of the Bartlets making the shock greater was pointed to on the podcast) and in the scene where she unexpectedly walked into the Oval Office. The realisation that their home in Texas would never be the same, and that they weren’t quite in the same financial bracket as the Bartlets had been with their farm, kept being hammered home. I liked that it was Matt who pushed for a public school and some normality for the kids. (Helen could have done with a Donna, but eh, she hadn’t officially accepted the job offer.)
Santos deserved his smirk as his future Secretary of State outlined what he needed to do about the Chinese and the Russians and proved why he was the right person for the job. (Idealism! What could have been! They mad a persuasive argument for SoS being a job where you could put country first over party.) Also, I liked the very human proof of Vinick’s ego that it was the rival candidate Santos was considering that pushed him over (and it would probably annoy Sullivan, putative next Republican nominee, that he’d take this job.) It did make Santos look good, as well as providing a route for getting Baker as Veep through Congress.
7.21 Institutional Memory
This episode focused on the White House as it wound right down and mainly focused on CJ. (I guess Charlie is going to follow here in her wake. What about Margaret though?) They flipped the usual gender dynamics with Danny being the one to play Donna in the romantic relationship, Toby being really astute about it (although not going the extra step to see that maybe it wasn’t great that The White House had been such a male world).
As they hashed out on the podcast, there was occasionally a sense of working backwards from the flashforward scheme, but more than a couple of dialogue scenes that flowed very well, CJ/Danny, CJ/Will, Cj/Margaret and CJ/Toby, but also Kate and Will figuring things out as their future job prospects became clearer.
I liked the journey that Will and Kate went on in this episode in one way, although I think that despite their efforts to make their burgeoning relationship work (where they were both putting in the effort in contrast to what was happening with CJ/Danny), Will’s campaign making him move to somewhere that Kate couldn’t really was going to jeopardise it. (Hrishi pointed out on the podcast that the flashforward hadn’t ruled it out entirely.)
Kate coming to the conclusion that Will would stand for the seat and win before him, when she isn’t a political operative, worked, and it is a nice callback to Will’s introduction where he’s now grown to take them same step as Sam did, but in a slightly different way. As for Kate, she was disappointed that there would be no place for her in the new administration (as if Santos and team had intuited that she hadn’t voted for him!) And it was plausible, e.g. she was linked to the Khazakstan situation and ran counter to their finding positions for so many old faces, but very few of those still working in the White House for the Bartlet administration.
It was so good that we had some resolution between CJ and Toby, believable that she felt angry and betrayed and was so loyal to Bartlet and his administration that she hadn’t brought herself to move on on a personal level until Andi (mother of Toby’s children!) forced the issue on her. Very nice moment where Toby just shooed her out and stopped her from wallowing/avoiding Danny, but watched her go. And the clips they played on the podcast highlighted that Toby was definitely telling her he loved her by the tone of his voice. I thought they made valid points about expecting his imprisonment and the whole experience having deeply affected Toby.
I very much liked the use of CJ’s secret service detail.
Although she was slow to realise that these were the last two weeks, the sense that CJ was done with the White House came through (and the lingering sense that she’d be crowding Josh) when Santos gave her the job offer, even though her mad budget had some method behind it, and Santos would be lucky to have her stay. After nearly blowing it, CJ got her chance to give her relationship with Danny a try and thinking about what she wanted to do. Xander Berkley made for a credible billionaire philanthropist, different take to the usual personals I see him play, although, again, in this year of 2025 A.D. the contrast between the West Wing and real-life versions is STARK! Though we didn’t see her refuse Santos, in a contrast to his win of getting Vinick on board in the previous episode, by the end of the episode, we knew that refusal was coming.
I thought that the interview with editor Janet Ashikaga on the podcast was really interesting, and it might behove professional bodies to get young actors to listen to experienced editors.
