Just the one episode each (like the olden days)
The West Wing - 1.13 Take Out The Trash Day
I remember two moments (just before the ad breaks) where I really felt for CJ and Leo (after he’d been disappointed by his ‘friend’ as Bartlet had warned.) The title was easily translatable as ‘a good day to bury bad news’ because of this show, I guess. The storylines continue to loop back to past events - we thought we knew what the assistants’ gossip was about, and I thought Zoey was going to come into Sam’s office, but it turned out to be the leaker of Leo’s rehab, and his later encounter with her (aka notyet!Paris Geller) offered a counterweight to the conversation he’d had earlier in the day. So, with Josh and Sam going into a meeting about the investigation/deposition/what was going to happen next, there was hate crime legislation after the Lydell murder, and CJ’s issues because of her relationship with Danny (not funny joking there, Toby.)
And CJ was having a tough time. She felt forced to give up (or try to) her thing with Danny, which hadn’t been moving on much because of her professional commitments, anyway. But this episode was about her paying the price of that commitment in other ways.
Mandy was more professional - she was right to notice the grieving father’s hesitancy, only of course it wasn’t what we thought, and was able to make the correct, detached call after hearing what he had to say, which CJ struggled with. (But I like CJ more than Mandy, even if I disagreed with her or saw that she again went too strong in saying the parents would definitely be there to the press. And some of it is prioritisation, the wheeling-and-dealing because loyalty to Leo is more important to them than the other. Compromise and protecting the President is the job. She must have known that, but she was living through it and CJ cut a hugely sympathetic figure as she wrestled with all this.
(And still the gender inequality is present: Mrs Landingham telling all the assistants that they worked for very important people and it was all too easy to holler at the screen ‘men’, with confidence. I enjoyed Mrs L’s appearances all episode, though. I’d like to see more of her dynamic with Margaret and the other assistants, and how the seniority of their bosses plays out versus the assistants’ experience, age etc. Anyway, Donna was the one who (rightly) told, because she’s the more important character to the show and there was a hint of an echo in talk of Karen Larson having let her feelings for her boss cloud her judgment.
Powerful to see Leo get angry and then later have to explain something of what addiction is. On the other hand, Sam’s obsession with the 10 Commandments town wore thin fast with me. (But the podcast pointed out that this had links with the objections raised over hate crime being thought crime.) I can’t say I was sufficiently invested I the PBS debate beyond making a cheap crack about Fox News, but I snickerd at Josh and Sam being called stupid.
BSG 3.13 Taking a Break from All Your Worries
Mainly juxtaposing the leaders trying to work out what to do with Gaius Baltar (no mention of Caprica) and Lee (and to a certain extent Kara, Dee and Sam in that order) struggling with his relationship issues.
So, Gaius was suicidal, which added a new twist to questions of justice and of the best means of interrogation that we’ve covered before. His experiences mainly got him to decide he wasn’t a Cylon (who was the vision of one of the five he saw? I couldn’t tell - was it a hybrid? Have we seen her before?) What struck me, certainly in the interrogation with Gaeta, when he was most in control, was that we saw his smarts - more in handling Gaeta than in spotting that others were listening in, which was fairly obvious. And as Six said, he could have given more away. Because he was so quick to absolve himself of guilt, he made a compelling case for being a dupe about the initial Cylon attack and having a gun to his head during the occupation. So, while I think Roslin did right by not spacing him - he probably will have more useful information, if they can trust it, as well as cause all kinds of damage - letting him have a trial will probably not lead to justice for what he actually did.
The drugging process that Adama could be read as a description of Six in Baltar’s head - in his babbling Baltar neatly laid out his dilemmas over her, not that the listeners understood that. But at least Roslin grasped the stuff about the five.
I noted that Edward James Olmos directed and seemed fascinated by an effect where rainbows appeared in shot. So there’s a bar…somewhere in the fleet. Tyrrell and Kallie (so they are married!) were having problems to complement with Lee’s and cement a friendship that I don’t really remember from before, except the Tyrrells’ issues didn’t seem to be as serious, and when Lee tried to compare Tyrrell’s past love for Sharon with his feelings for Kara he overlooked the whole Cylon who shot Adama thing.
So, Sam and Kara are estranged and he’s now living elsewhere, which raises an interesting question about any Galacticans getting shacked up with civilians. (I appreciated the intimacy of the final scene between Roslin and Adama.) Sam seemed to be hoping for the best, and thinking about the whole Kara’s Destiny thing, while she changed her mind a few times, making Lee’s frustration at her understandable. It’s going to be tough to trust her.
But it was mainly about Lee and Dee’s marriage, or Lee’s angst. Dee’s sense that it was over, that Lee wasn’t giving her enough attention for her to think about trusting him was understandable. He plummeted as he realised what this meant. As I’d lost something that afternoon, but found it before going to bed, I was overly invested in the losing the wedding ring symbolism - he never did find it, did he? Great look, sprawling drunk in a corridor Major Apollo. It seemed like he was sincere in the big speech about being in love with Dee and recognising she was good for him (easy crack about the waistline duly made), but then Kara walked into the bar and the push and pull rumbles on.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/454427.html.
I remember two moments (just before the ad breaks) where I really felt for CJ and Leo (after he’d been disappointed by his ‘friend’ as Bartlet had warned.) The title was easily translatable as ‘a good day to bury bad news’ because of this show, I guess. The storylines continue to loop back to past events - we thought we knew what the assistants’ gossip was about, and I thought Zoey was going to come into Sam’s office, but it turned out to be the leaker of Leo’s rehab, and his later encounter with her (aka notyet!Paris Geller) offered a counterweight to the conversation he’d had earlier in the day. So, with Josh and Sam going into a meeting about the investigation/deposition/what was going to happen next, there was hate crime legislation after the Lydell murder, and CJ’s issues because of her relationship with Danny (not funny joking there, Toby.)
And CJ was having a tough time. She felt forced to give up (or try to) her thing with Danny, which hadn’t been moving on much because of her professional commitments, anyway. But this episode was about her paying the price of that commitment in other ways.
Mandy was more professional - she was right to notice the grieving father’s hesitancy, only of course it wasn’t what we thought, and was able to make the correct, detached call after hearing what he had to say, which CJ struggled with. (But I like CJ more than Mandy, even if I disagreed with her or saw that she again went too strong in saying the parents would definitely be there to the press. And some of it is prioritisation, the wheeling-and-dealing because loyalty to Leo is more important to them than the other. Compromise and protecting the President is the job. She must have known that, but she was living through it and CJ cut a hugely sympathetic figure as she wrestled with all this.
(And still the gender inequality is present: Mrs Landingham telling all the assistants that they worked for very important people and it was all too easy to holler at the screen ‘men’, with confidence. I enjoyed Mrs L’s appearances all episode, though. I’d like to see more of her dynamic with Margaret and the other assistants, and how the seniority of their bosses plays out versus the assistants’ experience, age etc. Anyway, Donna was the one who (rightly) told, because she’s the more important character to the show and there was a hint of an echo in talk of Karen Larson having let her feelings for her boss cloud her judgment.
Powerful to see Leo get angry and then later have to explain something of what addiction is. On the other hand, Sam’s obsession with the 10 Commandments town wore thin fast with me. (But the podcast pointed out that this had links with the objections raised over hate crime being thought crime.) I can’t say I was sufficiently invested I the PBS debate beyond making a cheap crack about Fox News, but I snickerd at Josh and Sam being called stupid.
BSG 3.13 Taking a Break from All Your Worries
Mainly juxtaposing the leaders trying to work out what to do with Gaius Baltar (no mention of Caprica) and Lee (and to a certain extent Kara, Dee and Sam in that order) struggling with his relationship issues.
So, Gaius was suicidal, which added a new twist to questions of justice and of the best means of interrogation that we’ve covered before. His experiences mainly got him to decide he wasn’t a Cylon (who was the vision of one of the five he saw? I couldn’t tell - was it a hybrid? Have we seen her before?) What struck me, certainly in the interrogation with Gaeta, when he was most in control, was that we saw his smarts - more in handling Gaeta than in spotting that others were listening in, which was fairly obvious. And as Six said, he could have given more away. Because he was so quick to absolve himself of guilt, he made a compelling case for being a dupe about the initial Cylon attack and having a gun to his head during the occupation. So, while I think Roslin did right by not spacing him - he probably will have more useful information, if they can trust it, as well as cause all kinds of damage - letting him have a trial will probably not lead to justice for what he actually did.
The drugging process that Adama could be read as a description of Six in Baltar’s head - in his babbling Baltar neatly laid out his dilemmas over her, not that the listeners understood that. But at least Roslin grasped the stuff about the five.
I noted that Edward James Olmos directed and seemed fascinated by an effect where rainbows appeared in shot. So there’s a bar…somewhere in the fleet. Tyrrell and Kallie (so they are married!) were having problems to complement with Lee’s and cement a friendship that I don’t really remember from before, except the Tyrrells’ issues didn’t seem to be as serious, and when Lee tried to compare Tyrrell’s past love for Sharon with his feelings for Kara he overlooked the whole Cylon who shot Adama thing.
So, Sam and Kara are estranged and he’s now living elsewhere, which raises an interesting question about any Galacticans getting shacked up with civilians. (I appreciated the intimacy of the final scene between Roslin and Adama.) Sam seemed to be hoping for the best, and thinking about the whole Kara’s Destiny thing, while she changed her mind a few times, making Lee’s frustration at her understandable. It’s going to be tough to trust her.
But it was mainly about Lee and Dee’s marriage, or Lee’s angst. Dee’s sense that it was over, that Lee wasn’t giving her enough attention for her to think about trusting him was understandable. He plummeted as he realised what this meant. As I’d lost something that afternoon, but found it before going to bed, I was overly invested in the losing the wedding ring symbolism - he never did find it, did he? Great look, sprawling drunk in a corridor Major Apollo. It seemed like he was sincere in the big speech about being in love with Dee and recognising she was good for him (easy crack about the waistline duly made), but then Kara walked into the bar and the push and pull rumbles on.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/454427.html.