Jump to content

Type keyword(s) to search

Season Two

Guest

By Guest
in The West Wing

  • Reply
  • Start Topic

Recommended Posts

Guest

Guest

Please remember - no spoilers in this thread beyond where our newest poster has stated she has watched. This will later be merged with the existing Season 2 thread.

 

Thank you!

Link to comment
April Bloodgate

April Bloodgate

I've seen 1-3. After the 3 awesome episodes of What Kind of Day Has it Been and In the Shadow of Two Gunmen pts 1 & 2, I thought The Midterms was a bit of a letdown. But I recognize that a good season will ebb and flow. Also, I had seen the scene with Bartlett letting that radio host have it before, and it's still really great. I get others' complaints that she didn't really do anything in that moment to deserve it, but I think I'd do the same if I had the chance to chew out someone that awful.

Link to comment
Bastet

Bastet

Yes, although I like the Jenna Jacobs take-down, I have to admit it's a poorly-developed script; it doesn't establish adequate reason for Bartlet (or me) to publicly eviscerate the person that exists on the show, and I'm only enjoying it because she represents real-life people I'd love to see that happen to.  But, enjoying it I am, so I let it slide.  Especially because it's in such a great season; I probably wouldn't be as forgiving later on.

Link to comment
Melancholy

Melancholy

I was on Jed's side in The Midterms. It's really incredibly disrespectful to not stand when the President of the United States walks into a formal function at the White House. It's not an innocent faux-pas or fatigue- Jenna Jacobs was grand-standing....without the *standing*. People do reject invitations to the White House because they can't stand the current President and don't believe they can conform with the traditional respect. That's fine- I think I'd do that if a President Donald Trump or even a President George W. Bush invited me. However if you accept the invitation, you need to conform with the traditions to respect the President and actually, everyone at the function who WAS getting off their ass to stand and applaud, no matter their politics. 

 

These hyper-conservatives who make a living off OTT bigotry really have a playbook. I have little doubt that Jenna was rarin' to brag to folks at the party and on her radio show that she quietly sat and showed ole Josiah exactly what she thought of his immoral politics and she respects a *leader*, not some godless, Hollywood liberal who's destroying the social fabric of America, blah, blah, repulsive-cakes. Well, *fine*, now there's a whole other set of stories on how President Bartlet called her out for her disrespect and beat her at her own game of interpreting scripture. She did not leave, essentially a media party, as the winner of the story. 

Link to comment
April Bloodgate

April Bloodgate

I've now watched 4 and 5. I think they toned down Ainsley's accent between 4 and 5, which is a good call, in my opinion. She felt like a characiture of a southern Republican woman before (and not just because of the accent), but in episode 5 she seems more fleshed out as a realistic person who, while I may disagree with her views, is still likable.

Link to comment
Melancholy

Melancholy

Yeah, I don't agree with Ainsley's views but she's so delightful. IMO, Ainsley got her bone-deep conservatism from her childhood upbringing in North Carolina and her long family tradition in the Republican party. Her later roles at Smith College, Harvard Law School, clerking for a conservative Supreme Court justice all seem to have been directed at very cleverly but with complete bias and (admittedly adorable) chip-on-her-shoulder-resistance, finding intellectual justifications for her family's politics and stubbornly refusing to modify her politics. It's a great commentary- the smug anti-South abrasiveness that I find toxic in the Democratic party, as much as it shares my views, ensures that an Ainsley Hayes will just become even more bent on defending conservatism.

Link to comment
BW Manilowe

BW Manilowe

Done with episode 6. Did they say they fired Mandy and I just missed it, or did they just fade her out? I wish they hadn't given Donna a bigger role. I just don't enjoy her.

Mandy just disappeared, with no explanation for the character's absence--she was never even seen at the televised Rosslyn Town Hall Meeting where Jed & his entourage were shot, she just helped prep Jed at the WH beforehand. So we can't blame her disappearance on being killed or severely injured there (which might've actually been a good exit explanation). TWW fans say she went to "Mandyville". In real life Moira Kelly, who played Mandy, left the show at the end of S1 "by mutual agreement" (as they say) with the producers. I don't think anyone was really happy with how the character turned out--not the audience or the producers & others behind the scenes, anyway. But that's not necessarily to say she, herself, was/is a bad actress. The character was just a "bad fit" with the others.

Hang in there with Donna. I always liked her, but it takes a lot of other viewers/fans time to get into a good "groove" with her. Maybe you will too, in time.

Link to comment
Melancholy

Melancholy

(edited)

As I recall, lots of fans were complaining that Donna and Ainsley looked too much alike- and it was a meta joke. I don't really see it. Yeah, they're both emphatically in the Pretty Blonde Club but Donna's tall and Ainsley's petite, Donna has strong features and Ainsley has little ones. Clear differences. 

 

I wasn't wild about The Portland Trip either. I did like Josh's debate with the gay Republican as a well-written little snapshot of that period of gay marriage's history- but that's just a solidly written C-plot. I also feel a lot of pathos at Margaret anxiously worrying that Leo will relapse because his divorce papers came in. The education plot is meh- some cute little bits ("You think a Communist never wrote an elegant phrase? How do you think they got everybody to be Communist?") but more OTT indulgence than story. Jed's Notre Dame punishment of CJ plot isn't as funny as it think it is, even though Martin Sheen and Allison Janney are the funniest actors on the show, along with Brad Whitford. The hat gag was overplayed. And IMO, Jed was ridiculous with the grandiosity of the punishment for making fun of his alma mater but there's something particularly rotten about Danny joining in. It wasn't even obvious Nortre Dama razzing ala Jed's punishments (making CJ wear that hat and sing the fight song) - it was fucking with CJ's actual job duties as press secretary to control the information flow and making the other reporters and CJ's boss, Toby, believe that CJ couldn't handle the press (because Danny didn't announce the Notre Dame motive to anyone but CJ). Coming on the heels of The Lame Duck Congress, it really feels like quite a bit of Danny's movie wasn't Notre Dame so much as an itch to punish CJ for definitively rejecting him. 

Edited by Melancholy
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...