Surely there's a question mark missing
The West Wing: 1.21 Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics and 1.22 What Kind of a Day Has It Been
I preferred 'Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics' slightly, because I was more engaged by the polling storyline and the CJ stuff than the military situation and the spaceship, although I appreciated the structure of the season finale, and of course, the high drama. I really appreciated the comic punctuation in both episodes.
But to (try to) discuss them in order, it was interesting to see Reiko Aylesworth, who has popped up in the third and fourth seasons of Scorpion, playing a student or a ‘waitress’, as Bartlet (?) put it, which rankled with me more than Bartlet calling Laurie a prostitute after calling her a call girl, learning her name and saying nice things about her getting her law degree. Even though what she did to Laurie was low, they both had to fund their education in a way that Bartlet’s own daughters never had to worry about. Which just goes to show that this is all complicated emotional territory.
ANYWAY, though, I mainly was mystified about the status of Sam and Laurie’s relationship. People who had sex and then have a weirdly intense friendship? What does Mallory think of where they are now? I get that he likes the idea of being Laurie’s mentor, getting her towards that career in law, and, yes, the focus is what the story getting out means for his position, but I was mystified at her making such a big deal of his coming to her graduation. Does she not have family? Is she really bad at making friends because she’s too busy with her job? (The only one of Laurie’s other friends we see was willing to sell her out for money. So, yes?) Those were not cheap gifts from Sam. Is this a specific cultural thing? (Beyond the briefcase.) Because it seems very different from my experiences of higher education on this side of the pond, which, granted, wasn’t in the Russell Group, but around the same time. (So, I was nodding as they went through these points on the podcast, although I didn’t reach the point of feeling that sorry for presumably orphaned, lonely Laurie.)
That was the main thing I got hung up on, although when Sam did technically listen to everyone’s advice not to go, but thought he’d found a safe looophole, I felt self-righteous, because I thought he could have just sent her flowers, which might have been less dangerous/incriminatory. And cheaper than fancy briefcases. But anyway, Sam did listen to CJ and tell her this time, who got to be forthright with Leo as she handled it, though I have to admit it was weird for me to hear the Daily Mirror referred to as ‘The London Daily Mirror’. So it could have been worse, and let us never speak of this plotline again.
Toby got to be big brotherly - which would tie in nicely with Sam’s discovery that Toby had an actual brother he never knew about in the next ep.
I was mainly there for the vindication of CJ, because she not only got to do her job over Sam, but she got to clear the air with Leo, and it seemed that he was more the problem as the gateway to the President than her and Bartlet, even if Josh and she were specifically discussing her relationship with Bartlet, which is the one that counts, and the President wasn’t much listening to her in their scene. But CJ was right to pick up on Leo not mentioning her belief that they’d go up in the ratings given what’s happened all season (after many of the guys second guessing their questions while she held steady and showed her expertise.) This back and forth with Leo isn’t over, it would return in the next ep, but it was SWEET to see her be so vindicated, to be able to reclaim the coming into the office and saying she was wrong, and that they’d done better than even she had predicted.
And the mens had been wrong about it.
Joey and Josh were cute - who could withstand the well-deployed raspberry, twice - and I liked that she’d become CJ’s confidante, but I couldn’t help wondering how Joey had got into the inner circle of getting the polling results. Heh, poor Al Kiefer.
Mandy was around, but, like, so were Ed and Larry, while there was still more Margaret amazingness, and I enjoyed them trying to overawe the guy from the panel to do their bidding and its consequences with Bartlet and the man who only agreed with him about campaign funding. The way that Charlie knowing the cheating Ambassador played out worked, although we never got the full details of what had happened, and didn’t need to, because Charlie’s direct boss is POTUS, and he was sacking the Ambassador and more interested in knowing he’d been right about Charlie knowing the man than caring how. (It took the podcast to point out to me that this was a rehash of a similar important white man knowing Charlie from a previous job, let alone the retcon over the Attorney General’s race. But I thought the former played out differently.)
Also, after all this time, Toby is surprised that Jed Bartlet knows stuff about Micronesia? The funnies on this show are a big, big part of why I’m so fond of it.
And there were funnies in 'What Kind of Day Has It Been', even if it was ultimately more serious, with everyone teasing the President about hubristically wanting to watch the softball. Or Josh having to jog. And in case I forget to mention it, the slapstick of smart Josh forgetting about the lack of chair.
But anyway, the structure. Starting at one point in time and then rolling back to show how we got there is an overused trope on much inferior shows, but it worked to have that jolt of adrenaline and real danger affecting our protagonists, in the first taster, and then in the more extended way it played out the second time. The threat to Zoey/Charlie/the President has been building up all season. And yet, during the day, one of the situations was the lost pilot in Iraq, which tied in so beautifully to CJ getting to prove how she ought to be in the inner circle, while another involved Toby’s anxiety over his brother, and everyone looking out for him. Not to mention Josh getting lectured for talking about the military situation as a political opportunity and accepting it. (I…do not quite come from the same place on these American characters’ reverence for the military, but obviously, he had forgotten that this was a human being and got lost in the game of politics for a second there.) The intimation that Josh could have got the Veep to the White House was tantalising (as both backstory and foreshadowing of Season 7 Spoiler.)
But yeah, CJ showed what she can do when she gets the right information, LEO. He was tetchy about giving it to her, but she knew her business, and we got some development on her and Danny. I actually liked that she’d deliberately used him as part of her obfuscation - it was probably to prove a point, but not just to her colleagues. And the tone of their confrontation - as she said, he did put that weird emphasis on the publication I hadn’t heard of - was fun too. (Could this be taken as a sign of her getting a confidence boost from the previous episode also?)
Again, Mandy was there in the prep for the town hall meeting, but not engaged in any of the other plotlines. I wouldn’t care to tot up how many episodes Moira Kelly’s presence in the credits has felt utterly redundant.
And I did enjoy how the second showing of events was richer and deeper. It was a nice echo of 'Celestial Navigation' in a way, and a more engaged Bartlet than in other meetings with the public. (The podcast was really good about highlighting nuances that added to this.)
Like Joshua Molina on the podcast, I’m a first-time rememberer, so I’m fairly sure I remember what happens next here. And knowing that I could press the ‘next’ button to rewatch it whenever I felt like it, instead of having to wait months in suspense like before changed the viewing experience.
Right. I’m going to have a think about my favourite episodes of this season, seeing as other people are so definite, whereas I, in the absence of a musical episode in space, am vaguer. Plus, I may listen to the interview with Aaron Sorkin before starting on season 2.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/457043.html.
I preferred 'Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics' slightly, because I was more engaged by the polling storyline and the CJ stuff than the military situation and the spaceship, although I appreciated the structure of the season finale, and of course, the high drama. I really appreciated the comic punctuation in both episodes.
But to (try to) discuss them in order, it was interesting to see Reiko Aylesworth, who has popped up in the third and fourth seasons of Scorpion, playing a student or a ‘waitress’, as Bartlet (?) put it, which rankled with me more than Bartlet calling Laurie a prostitute after calling her a call girl, learning her name and saying nice things about her getting her law degree. Even though what she did to Laurie was low, they both had to fund their education in a way that Bartlet’s own daughters never had to worry about. Which just goes to show that this is all complicated emotional territory.
ANYWAY, though, I mainly was mystified about the status of Sam and Laurie’s relationship. People who had sex and then have a weirdly intense friendship? What does Mallory think of where they are now? I get that he likes the idea of being Laurie’s mentor, getting her towards that career in law, and, yes, the focus is what the story getting out means for his position, but I was mystified at her making such a big deal of his coming to her graduation. Does she not have family? Is she really bad at making friends because she’s too busy with her job? (The only one of Laurie’s other friends we see was willing to sell her out for money. So, yes?) Those were not cheap gifts from Sam. Is this a specific cultural thing? (Beyond the briefcase.) Because it seems very different from my experiences of higher education on this side of the pond, which, granted, wasn’t in the Russell Group, but around the same time. (So, I was nodding as they went through these points on the podcast, although I didn’t reach the point of feeling that sorry for presumably orphaned, lonely Laurie.)
That was the main thing I got hung up on, although when Sam did technically listen to everyone’s advice not to go, but thought he’d found a safe looophole, I felt self-righteous, because I thought he could have just sent her flowers, which might have been less dangerous/incriminatory. And cheaper than fancy briefcases. But anyway, Sam did listen to CJ and tell her this time, who got to be forthright with Leo as she handled it, though I have to admit it was weird for me to hear the Daily Mirror referred to as ‘The London Daily Mirror’. So it could have been worse, and let us never speak of this plotline again.
Toby got to be big brotherly - which would tie in nicely with Sam’s discovery that Toby had an actual brother he never knew about in the next ep.
I was mainly there for the vindication of CJ, because she not only got to do her job over Sam, but she got to clear the air with Leo, and it seemed that he was more the problem as the gateway to the President than her and Bartlet, even if Josh and she were specifically discussing her relationship with Bartlet, which is the one that counts, and the President wasn’t much listening to her in their scene. But CJ was right to pick up on Leo not mentioning her belief that they’d go up in the ratings given what’s happened all season (after many of the guys second guessing their questions while she held steady and showed her expertise.) This back and forth with Leo isn’t over, it would return in the next ep, but it was SWEET to see her be so vindicated, to be able to reclaim the coming into the office and saying she was wrong, and that they’d done better than even she had predicted.
And the mens had been wrong about it.
Joey and Josh were cute - who could withstand the well-deployed raspberry, twice - and I liked that she’d become CJ’s confidante, but I couldn’t help wondering how Joey had got into the inner circle of getting the polling results. Heh, poor Al Kiefer.
Mandy was around, but, like, so were Ed and Larry, while there was still more Margaret amazingness, and I enjoyed them trying to overawe the guy from the panel to do their bidding and its consequences with Bartlet and the man who only agreed with him about campaign funding. The way that Charlie knowing the cheating Ambassador played out worked, although we never got the full details of what had happened, and didn’t need to, because Charlie’s direct boss is POTUS, and he was sacking the Ambassador and more interested in knowing he’d been right about Charlie knowing the man than caring how. (It took the podcast to point out to me that this was a rehash of a similar important white man knowing Charlie from a previous job, let alone the retcon over the Attorney General’s race. But I thought the former played out differently.)
Also, after all this time, Toby is surprised that Jed Bartlet knows stuff about Micronesia? The funnies on this show are a big, big part of why I’m so fond of it.
And there were funnies in 'What Kind of Day Has It Been', even if it was ultimately more serious, with everyone teasing the President about hubristically wanting to watch the softball. Or Josh having to jog. And in case I forget to mention it, the slapstick of smart Josh forgetting about the lack of chair.
But anyway, the structure. Starting at one point in time and then rolling back to show how we got there is an overused trope on much inferior shows, but it worked to have that jolt of adrenaline and real danger affecting our protagonists, in the first taster, and then in the more extended way it played out the second time. The threat to Zoey/Charlie/the President has been building up all season. And yet, during the day, one of the situations was the lost pilot in Iraq, which tied in so beautifully to CJ getting to prove how she ought to be in the inner circle, while another involved Toby’s anxiety over his brother, and everyone looking out for him. Not to mention Josh getting lectured for talking about the military situation as a political opportunity and accepting it. (I…do not quite come from the same place on these American characters’ reverence for the military, but obviously, he had forgotten that this was a human being and got lost in the game of politics for a second there.) The intimation that Josh could have got the Veep to the White House was tantalising (as both backstory and foreshadowing of Season 7 Spoiler.)
But yeah, CJ showed what she can do when she gets the right information, LEO. He was tetchy about giving it to her, but she knew her business, and we got some development on her and Danny. I actually liked that she’d deliberately used him as part of her obfuscation - it was probably to prove a point, but not just to her colleagues. And the tone of their confrontation - as she said, he did put that weird emphasis on the publication I hadn’t heard of - was fun too. (Could this be taken as a sign of her getting a confidence boost from the previous episode also?)
Again, Mandy was there in the prep for the town hall meeting, but not engaged in any of the other plotlines. I wouldn’t care to tot up how many episodes Moira Kelly’s presence in the credits has felt utterly redundant.
And I did enjoy how the second showing of events was richer and deeper. It was a nice echo of 'Celestial Navigation' in a way, and a more engaged Bartlet than in other meetings with the public. (The podcast was really good about highlighting nuances that added to this.)
Like Joshua Molina on the podcast, I’m a first-time rememberer, so I’m fairly sure I remember what happens next here. And knowing that I could press the ‘next’ button to rewatch it whenever I felt like it, instead of having to wait months in suspense like before changed the viewing experience.
Right. I’m going to have a think about my favourite episodes of this season, seeing as other people are so definite, whereas I, in the absence of a musical episode in space, am vaguer. Plus, I may listen to the interview with Aaron Sorkin before starting on season 2.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/457043.html.