The West Wing - 1.14 Take This Sabbath Day
Such an excellent episode. I very much appreciated how funny it was, especially, say, in the first half, before the gravity of the decision President Bartlet had to make naturally took over. Our favourite workaholics - and the Sabbath day is meant to be a day of rest in Judaism and Christianity - are on the verge of a weekend, until Sam dumps a meeting on Josh (and Donna) and breaks his own perfectly legitimate plans to walk out of the office sans phone and (snerk) pager. (We’ve already seen the extraordinary demands of the job on various characters.) But as we already know, the call is about a man being sentenced to death first thing Monday and asking for the President to commute this sentence. Sam will end up getting chastised for telling his old schoolfellow where Toby worships (which, yeah) and by Leo for trying to make the case for pardoning, though I thought Sam’s response about how could they have been prepared for this specific case was fair, and isn’t this one of the decisions a President has to face?
I think I accidentally deleted my first thoughts here about watching Bartlet come to his decision (and understanding why if not agreeing with it.) And I think I commented on how Toby did get to express his view to the President, but then he’s more senior than Sam, even though I made derisory noises when he claimed to his rabbi that he didn’t influence policy, because he so does. Anyway, I appreciated his commenting on the singer practicing in the temple, partly because it hadn’t occurred to me but the show was being clever enough to draw attention to its tricks, which you accept in TV drama as a viewer, and because it absolutely would have occurred to Toby.
Meanwhile, it was striking that Mandy did not engage with the question at all (for that matter neither did Josh, but he had a whole other subplot.) She turned up and confabbed with CJ, who had to wrestle emotionally with her role in all this. I say this was striking because this is the episode that introduced Joey Lucas, and what an entrance, spitting fire, with the dissonance for the hearing viewer of her strong signing and body language and the voice of her male interpreter. Let alone the absurd scenario of hungover Josh in fishing clothes at the receiving end. I don’t know if it’s because I know she’s going to be a love interest for Josh (eh, it’s seeded here, though, he may be hungover, but he notices her legs), and that was part of the deal with Mandy, as the ex who got under his skin, but it’s an equally explosive introduction to Mandy’s terrible driving in the pilot, another female political operative fighting for her (male) candidate (but Joey isn’t dating him.) But in the interaction with President Bartlet - loved her awe at entering the Oval Office, while he padded around in more casual clothes - and the fact that she’s asked to seriously ponder the question of capital punishment already gives her more to do than Mandy ever got, and this viewer was all for the talent spotting at the end.
What jumped out at me in the final scene was how did Jed’s priest know Bartlet had talked this over with a Quaker? Obviously, he knew about Jed talking to him (and the Pope!), and knowing Toby (and Josh) was Jewish made the rabbi a reasonable inference, but Joey crossing paths with him…not quite the moment to be leaving the viewer think ‘divine inspiration’ so I found that a bit jarring after watching the characters wrestle with the morality, the politics and the justice of what was being done.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/454788.html.
I think I accidentally deleted my first thoughts here about watching Bartlet come to his decision (and understanding why if not agreeing with it.) And I think I commented on how Toby did get to express his view to the President, but then he’s more senior than Sam, even though I made derisory noises when he claimed to his rabbi that he didn’t influence policy, because he so does. Anyway, I appreciated his commenting on the singer practicing in the temple, partly because it hadn’t occurred to me but the show was being clever enough to draw attention to its tricks, which you accept in TV drama as a viewer, and because it absolutely would have occurred to Toby.
Meanwhile, it was striking that Mandy did not engage with the question at all (for that matter neither did Josh, but he had a whole other subplot.) She turned up and confabbed with CJ, who had to wrestle emotionally with her role in all this. I say this was striking because this is the episode that introduced Joey Lucas, and what an entrance, spitting fire, with the dissonance for the hearing viewer of her strong signing and body language and the voice of her male interpreter. Let alone the absurd scenario of hungover Josh in fishing clothes at the receiving end. I don’t know if it’s because I know she’s going to be a love interest for Josh (eh, it’s seeded here, though, he may be hungover, but he notices her legs), and that was part of the deal with Mandy, as the ex who got under his skin, but it’s an equally explosive introduction to Mandy’s terrible driving in the pilot, another female political operative fighting for her (male) candidate (but Joey isn’t dating him.) But in the interaction with President Bartlet - loved her awe at entering the Oval Office, while he padded around in more casual clothes - and the fact that she’s asked to seriously ponder the question of capital punishment already gives her more to do than Mandy ever got, and this viewer was all for the talent spotting at the end.
What jumped out at me in the final scene was how did Jed’s priest know Bartlet had talked this over with a Quaker? Obviously, he knew about Jed talking to him (and the Pope!), and knowing Toby (and Josh) was Jewish made the rabbi a reasonable inference, but Joey crossing paths with him…not quite the moment to be leaving the viewer think ‘divine inspiration’ so I found that a bit jarring after watching the characters wrestle with the morality, the politics and the justice of what was being done.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/454788.html.