All Episodes Talk: Walk With Me

[HyeChaps]

They are ending tonight with the kidnapping and then the pilot

[Bastet]

The actor who played Marion Cotesworth-Haye has died after a fantastically long life, and in her honor I'd like to revisit this fabulous moment of C.J. unable to control her laughter:

[Cetacean]

"The Francis Scott Key key".  Heh.

Loved that scene...

[sinkwriter]

"You know what happened? I didn't have my game face on."  Lol. 🤣

[Cetacean]

At this time of year I have to watch In Excelsis Deo even though I am reduced to sobs at the end.  Makes me appreciate all that I have.

[Crs97]

We have gotten sucked back into watching the series.  Well, the Sorkin years.  I always forget how much I loathe Donna, but never more than Someone’s Going to Emergency, Someone’s Going to Jail when she tells her friend Sam needs to be flattered into taking up the pardoning case.  Sam is devastated when he realizes she told Stephanie that he has to have his ego stroked.  Then she gets to be his moral compass on whether he’s right to want to tell her friend the truth?!?  By the time she is comforting him I want to scream; then she invites herself to Sam’s night out with Josh and Toby, forgetting her friend is still there, calling her family from Donna’s desk.  
 

I really disliked that character.

[ProudMary]

The "Mandatory Minimums" episode aired on May 3, 2000, over 22 years ago.

https://youtu.be/Xrw3GPQYzPA

[Guest]

On 12/15/2022 at 11:31 PM, Crs97 said:

We have gotten sucked back into watching the series.  Well, the Sorkin years.  I always forget how much I loathe Donna, but never more than Someone’s Going to Emergency, Someone’s Going to Jail when she tells her friend Sam needs to be flattered into taking up the pardoning case.  Sam is devastated when he realizes she told Stephanie that he has to have his ego stroked.  Then she gets to be his moral compass on whether he’s right to want to tell her friend the truth?!?  By the time she is comforting him I want to scream; then she invites herself to Sam’s night out with Josh and Toby, forgetting her friend is still there, calling her family from Donna’s desk.  
 

I really disliked that character.

Donna is easily my least favorite main character and that episode is probably my least favorite season 2 episode. It’s only competition is The Stackhousr Filibuster.

[Guest]

Swiss Diplomacy annoys the crap out of me. 
 

First, the doctor has very real safety concerns about his family and Jed basically tells him “they’ll be safe because trust me.” 

Abby makes a horrible analogy to the doctor who set John Wilkes Booth’s leg- that doctor was not worried that Booth’s family would kill his family if he didn’t set it right. Also, Abby lecturing anyone anywhere at anytime about medical ethics is beyond laughable. Remind me how many states medical boards she violated with her mail order prescription fraud? Yeah. 
 

[MaryMitch]

HLN (CNN's Headline News) is playing a West Wing marathon through Sunday. All day and night with the exception of a few hours in the morning.

[Bastet]

I've been watching the marathon here and there and, damn, season two is some of the best television ever produced in the medium's history.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Bastet

[Artsda]

I've been glued to HLN, this show was so good. I miss the early seasons.

[Cetacean]

Just now, Artsda said:

I've been glued to HLN, this show was so good. I miss the early seasons.

Me, too!  I had to travel today and missed a bunch, it broke my heart.  The early seasons were so perfect!  I wish this was a regular thing.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Bastet said:

I've been watching the marathon here and there and, damn, season two is some of the best television ever produced in the medium's history.

I’ve long held that position and specifically think “In This White House” is amazing in the range of emotions. You have tons of humor with the intro of Ainsley, a realistic problem they are working on solving, but then something that ends up superseding the crisis they thought they needed to solve at that point. The notes it hits are so perfect. 

[BooksRule]

I've been watching the marathon, too.  I've just had it on in the background while I did some chores around the house (and had to skip a few episodes when I went out to do a couple of errands), but I did catch bits and pieces here and there (including '18th and Potomac' first thing this morning.  Mrs. Landingham! :( 

I know that HLN had started showing the series before the holidays but I hadn't had a chance to watch any of it.  I'm hoping they'll keep showing them after the marathon, even if it's just a couple of episodes a day.  I haven't seen this show since it originally aired and would like to watch all of them. 

One complaint I have is that the closed-captioning sucks.  When I'm watching a show that has a lot of conversation, fast dialogue back and forth, accents (such as British), or lots of jargon (like in medical dramas) I like to have the closed captioning on so that I don't miss anything important. You would think that someone was trying to caption a live news broadcast.  Sometimes there isn't any captioning at all, and when it's there it's always delayed and by the time the words show up on on screen the characters have moved on (or walked down the hall a ways, hee!) and the words don't match what they are saying. Or whole phrases get left out. 

[Cetacean]

13 hours ago, BooksRule said:

One complaint I have is that the closed-captioning sucks. 

It is really awful and very disjointed.  I wonder if it's left over from the original series when things weren't quite up to snuff.  I didn't need it back then, I was a lot younger!

Just watched the Simon Donovan murder episode. Knew it was coming but still cried.

[ProudMary]

5 hours ago, Cetacean said:

Just watched the Simon Donovan murder episode. Knew it was coming but still cried.

I tuned into the episode today just as Simon got the call that they had CJ's stalker in custody, so I knew what was coming next. I never paid attention to this small fact before, but when Simon called in for NYPD to be sent to the site after he apprehended the first armed robber, he gave his location as "a Korean grocery at 98th and Broadway." Why the hell was he 40+ blocks north of the NYC Theater District when he was going to meet up with CJ at the theater after the play? It makes no sense. 🤷‍♀️

[Cetacean]

12 minutes ago, ProudMary said:

Why the hell was he 40+ blocks north of the NYC Theater District when he was going to meet up with CJ at the theater after the play?

I expect most of the audience wouldn't know that kind of detail.   Not that the writers shouldn't have been better with continuity.

[Bastet]

4 hours ago, Cetacean said:

I expect most of the audience wouldn't know that kind of detail.   Not that the writers shouldn't have been better with continuity.

Sorkin wrote it, and he's a native New Yorker; grew up in Scarsdale, moved to the city after college, put on plays all over the theatre district, the whole works.  It's weird.

C.J. says Simon was on his way to the field office (when she's informed of his death), but that's all the way down in lower Manhattan.  So, yeah, I have no idea why he is where he is.

I don't much care for that episode, what with the extrajudicial execution and all, and, as much as I like Mark Harmon, I disliked that entire arc with his character.  So much so I saved this, from the TWoP recap (written by Linda Holmes, who wrote as Miss Alli back in her TWoP days):

Quote

Allison Janney is just so wonderful -- so true, and so appealing, and so right in every move she makes -- that she can almost save this miserable, badly-written debacle, in which it now appears that the stalker plot was hatched just so that she could be protected by Simon, just so that she could fall for him, just so that he could die. At some point, it all begins to feel more than a little bit pitifully manipulative.

And I suppose it's as good a time as any to mention that I am officially and thoroughly tired of the dramatic practice of placing strong and intelligent women at risk of violence -- or exposing them to actual violence -- as a road to hooking them up with a boyfriend. Stalked, raped, and beaten within an inch of their lives, television's population of bad-ass chicks has honestly suffered enough at this point. There has to be a better way, and if you can't find it, get the hell out of the way and go write episodes of Saved By The Bell: The PhD Years, because if I have to watch one more affair between a menaced woman and a cop, bodyguard, district attorney, federal agent, or vigilante boyfriend in which she learns the true meaning of love by winding up in a body cast or having to fear she will, I'm going to start a non-profit organization whose only purpose is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for every writer, director, studio, and addlepated, creatively bankrupt pinhead who can't break the habit. Enough.

 

Edited December 30, 2022 by Bastet

[geekgirl921]

I have been watching the marathon on HLN. I really love the early seasons. I really hate the Zoe dates an absolute ass episodes!

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, geekgirl921 said:

I really hate the Zoe dates an absolute ass episodes!

The French guy who's such a collection of stereotypes I'm surprised they didn't put him in a beret carrying around a baguette in one hand a glass of wine in the other.

I was bored by Charlie and Zoey to begin with*, and then that stupid triangle came along.

*Dule Hill was always the weak link among the core cast to me, which is not that much of a slam when you consider his age and the caliber of actors he was sharing scenes with, and I found Elisabeth Moss to be a distractingly bad actor (I'm assuming she's improved, given the career she's gone on to have, but the only thing I've seen her in as an adult is Us, and she was fine), so while I thought there were some fun moments in the Zoey-Charlie relationship, they all came from other people (like Leo asking about taking extra protection).

[Cetacean]

I forgot how dark season five was;  just started tuning back in this afternoon and will probably give it up.  The lovely young Korean pianist that wanted to defect was just a heartbreaking episode.  There is no joy, no humor just angst and yelling and discontent.  I guess I just blanked it out due to blind love.

The Zoey abduction was the beginning of the end.  

[PeterPirate]

The recent Harry and Meghan series reminded me of this scene. 

 

[AgathaC]

20 hours ago, Bastet said:

The French guy who's such a collection of stereotypes I'm surprised they didn't put him in a beret carrying around a baguette in one hand a glass of wine in the other.

I was bored by Charlie and Zoey to begin with*, and then that stupid triangle came along.

*Dule Hill was always the weak link among the core cast to me, which is not that much of a slam when you consider his age and the caliber of actors he was sharing scenes with, and I found Elisabeth Moss to be a distractingly bad actor (I'm assuming she's improved, given the career she's gone on to have, but the only thing I've seen her in as an adult is Us, and she was fine), so while I thought there were some fun moments in the Zoey-Charlie relationship, they all came from other people (like Leo asking about taking extra protection).

Yes to all of this. I was never terribly impressed with Charlie, though I felt like I was supposed to be. Part of it was the acting (which was in part due to age, experience and the people he was surrounded with). But part of it was just the character. He’s a genius. He’s raising his sister - while working 20-hour days and going to college? I just recall it all being a bit much.

And I never liked Zoe. Again, part of it was the actress, whom I’ve never really warmed to, but I just didn’t give a damn about her. I remember being a little more interested in Ellie and wanting to know more about her and her more complicated relationship with Jed. But that may have been due in large part to the fact we didn’t see her much.

Don’t get me started on the kidnapping story.

Another thing I remember being bothered by: Santos v. Vinick. I’m a Democrat, but I liked Vinick a lot more and was disappointed he lost. I thought they did too good a job presenting him as a good candidate, to the point I wasn’t rooting for the people I was supposed to love.

[caitmcg]

9 hours ago, AgathaC said:

Another thing I remember being bothered by: Santos v. Vinick. I’m a Democrat, but I liked Vinick a lot more and was disappointed he lost. I thought they did too good a job presenting him as a good candidate, to the point I wasn’t rooting for the people I was supposed to love.

I always thought it would’ve made a more interesting end to the show if Vinick won. Having Santos win was just so obvious, and probably also less realistic, in that it’s most common to have a party flip after a two-term president, for better or worse.

[oakville]

I am watching the marathon on HLN. I forgot how adamant that Leo & Josh were at trying to get Santos to accept the VP nomination from Russell.

[Bastet]

19 hours ago, caitmcg said:

I always thought it would’ve made a more interesting end to the show if Vinick won. Having Santos win was just so obvious, and probably also less realistic, in that it’s most common to have a party flip after a two-term president, for better or worse.

I had quit watching by then, so I can't speak to who was a more compelling candidate, but while on general principle I agree it would be more realistic for the Republican to win after eight years, this show was always a fantasy version of national politics, so I think it fitting to continue the fantasy by ending with another Democratic administration.  In real life, good chunks of what the Bartlet gang clawed through an ugly system to achieve would be dismantled by the next one, but in WW life I find it the natural ending to be that the next gang fights the same battle to expand on what they accomplished.

[HyeChaps]

IIRC, Vinick was supposed to win, however, with the sudden death of Leo, the writers thought that the audience was already saddened enough.

[Moose135]

1 hour ago, HyeChaps said:

IIRC, Vinick was supposed to win, however, with the sudden death of Leo, the writers thought that the audience was already saddened enough.

That's a long-time rumor, but from what I've seen, it's just a rumor.

[justmehere]

This whole thing is a fantastic read, but parts 4 & 5 discuss the campaign and planning who would follow Bartlet (starting with the section A Change is Gonna Come - and they did discuss Vinick winning):

The Definitive History of the West Wing

[wknt3]

21 hours ago, caitmcg said:

I always thought it would’ve made a more interesting end to the show if Vinick won. Having Santos win was just so obvious, and probably also less realistic, in that it’s most common to have a party flip after a two-term president, for better or worse.

 

1 hour ago, Bastet said:

I had quit watching by then, so I can't speak to who was a more compelling candidate, but while on general principle I agree it would be more realistic for the Republican to win after eight years, this show was always a fantasy version of national politics, so I think it fitting to continue the fantasy by ending with another Democratic administration.  In real life, good chunks of what the Bartlet gang clawed through an ugly system to achieve would be dismantled by the next one, but in WW life I find it the natural ending to be that the next gang fights the same battle to expand on what they accomplished.

The original plan according to multiple interviews I've seen with various actors and writers over the years was that Vinick would win, but that was changed after John Spencer died as the writers and producers thought it would just be too much loss  for the audience and for the fictional Bartlet administration to take.

[MaryMitch]

On 1/1/2023 at 5:32 PM, justmehere said:

This whole thing is a fantastic read, but parts 4 & 5 discuss the campaign and planning who would follow Bartlet (starting with the section A Change is Gonna Come - and they did discuss Vinick winning):

The Definitive History of the West Wing

THANK YOU for pointing out this article - the site has a LOT of other West Wing articles!

[Guest]

On 12/31/2022 at 10:54 AM, AgathaC said:

Yes to all of this. I was never terribly impressed with Charlie, though I felt like I was supposed to be. Part of it was the acting (which was in part due to age, experience and the people he was surrounded with). But part of it was just the character. He’s a genius. He’s raising his sister - while working 20-hour days and going to college? I just recall it all being a bit much.

And I never liked Zoe. Again, part of it was the actress, whom I’ve never really warmed to, but I just didn’t give a damn about her. I remember being a little more interested in Ellie and wanting to know more about her and her more complicated relationship with Jed. But that may have been due in large part to the fact we didn’t see her much.

Don’t get me started on the kidnapping story.

Another thing I remember being bothered by: Santos v. Vinick. I’m a Democrat, but I liked Vinick a lot more and was disappointed he lost. I thought they did too good a job presenting him as a good candidate, to the point I wasn’t rooting for the people I was supposed to love.

I’ve never been able to understand Charlie’s story. Even if you add in a fictional aunt or uncle who cares for Deanna when he travels, we saw him working basically around the clock and this was before colleges had so many virtual options. I can see him getting leeway for skipping classes because of who he was and doing some homework during downtime, but a prelaw course work?

I was just watching the kidnapping arc, and one small moment I like is when Abby is being even more bitchy than usual and then Liz storms out too, Ellie stays with Jed. Given the dialogue in Ellie about how she’s always known she isn’t his favorite, it’s just touching to see how their relationship had improved.

The mass scene at the end is always very moving to me as well. I’m not Catholic so it isn’t the ritual itself but how the whole thing is shot.

[DXD526]

So, how does HLN intend to deal with the fact that they got me used to being able to turn on the TV virtually anytime, and watch some TWW? 

That was a fun week! I'd forgotten a lot about the later seasons. I did remember, though, that I thought Santos was kind of an a-hole 20 years ago, and I still think so now. Vinick was the better candidate. 

[Artsda]

 

Schiff: What was done to Toby [in the final season] was wrong. I was deeply, deeply hurt by that.

It was character destruction, Aaron got that too since he felt he had to apologize for writing that wasn't done by him. I bet Aaron wishes he can erase/redo post season 4. 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Artsda

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Artsda said:

 

Schiff: What was done to Toby [in the final season] was wrong. I was deeply, deeply hurt by that.

It was character destruction, Aaron got that too since he felt he had to apologize for writing that wasn't done by him. I bet Aaron wishes he can erase/redo post season 4. 

On The West Wing Weekly podcast, Schiff said he thought certain writers were mad at him and took it out on Toby. I hate that thought. :(

[slasherboy]

Watched the recent marathon off and on. I watched TWW when it originally aired but haven't seen it much since. So, I forgot some stuff but surprised myself at how much I remembered.

Hated the later seasons but recorded (since it aired at 4:00 a.m. in my time zone) and watched the finale. 

I have a couple of questions. Did Charlie stop being Jed's body man for another position? What was it? Was he in Sam's old office? How did everybody end up, and I mean, who became couples, who stayed in the WH to work for Santos, etc.

Thanks for anybody who takes the time to answer.

[Crs97]

Slasher, I may not have all the details correct, but here is what I remember- Josh got Sam (I missed Sam and was so happy to see Rob Lowe return!) to come back and be his deputy cos.  Josh and Donna ended up together (blech).  Donna became the First Lady’s cos (blech again).  CJ and Danny ended up together, and she left the White House though Josh begged her to stay.  Sam’s replacement had an affair with a military person who was big in the later seasons, but they broke up when he ran for Congress.  Josh got some advice from Toby, but Toby did not return (I think he became a professor at Columbia maybe?).  I think Charlie did get a different job in Bartlett’s administration, but I don’t remember what.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Crs97

[labresq]

After Charlie got his law degree he left Pres Bartlett and worked for CJ when she was cos.  I don't remember where he went when Santos was elected.

[Moose135]

54 minutes ago, labresq said:

After Charlie got his law degree he left Pres Bartlett and worked for CJ when she was cos.  I don't remember where he went when Santos was elected.

He stopped working as body man after he graduated from college. I think he was getting ready to start law school after President Bartlett left office. 

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, Crs97 said:

Josh and Donna ended up together (blech).  Donna became the First Lady’s cos (blech again).  CJ and Danny ended up together, and she left the White House though Josh begged her to stay.

You forgot the blech on that last one (I agree on the first two).  CJ and Danny as an attraction that couldn't go anywhere because of their jobs yielded some cute moments.  When they brought him back, he pissed me off, and their relationship made no sense; the fact they shipped her off with him (and gave them a kid, right [I wasn't watching, but have read it was implied]?) as a "happy ending" has always made me want to puke. 

[CheshireCat]

I appreciated that Vinick was a decent and ethical guy who had values and that it was his team that wanted to play dirty and that he shut them down.
I did want Santos to win but the way they wrote Vinick would have made it okay had he won.

9 hours ago, deaja said:

I’ve never been able to understand Charlie’s story. Even if you add in a fictional aunt or uncle who cares for Deanna when he travels, we saw him working basically around the clock and this was before colleges had so many virtual options. I can see him getting leeway for skipping classes because of who he was and doing some homework during downtime, but a prelaw course work?

I never thought about this but yeah, that's quite a stretch.

As far as Charlie, the character and actor is concerned, I liked both. But I agree with a post above about the love triangle. I didn't like that and I think the relationship with Zoe was handled poorly anyway. They never really broke up on the show as far as I remember but Zoe was suddenly with another guy which didn't really make her very sympathetic, in my eyes. The way she acted about her new boyfriend didn't help either. Not only was it cliché but why was she such a snob about him and why was he so arrogant? France's royal family is completely defunct. The country is a republic, like Germany or the US or Austria. He may still have had a title but that's really it. There really was no justification for the way any of the three acted. Zoe didn't need to act like this guy was such a great catch because he was really just a French citizen, he had no reason to act like he was better than Charlie and Charlie had no reason to feel threatened (especially since I think Charlie was the better catch anyway considering his academic and work achievements. What did French Guy have to show for?)

The kidnapping was even worse. First of all, how realistic is this? It looks like a massive Secret Service failure and there never seemed to be an investigation of that.
Second, if they felt it was necessary to address the line of succession (I didn't) I'm sure they could have found another way to do it. There are plenty of options.

 

6 hours ago, deaja said:

On The West Wing Weekly podcast, Schiff said he thought certain writers were mad at him and took it out on Toby. I hate that thought. :(

How immature, if true. Unfortunately, when I see some of what's written on TV, I can believe it. It's still infuriating; you'd think someone who makes this much money would be a bit more professional.

 

3 hours ago, Bastet said:

 CJ and Danny as an attraction that couldn't go anywhere because of their jobs yielded some cute moments.  When they brought him back, he pissed me off, and their relationship made no sense; the fact they shipped her off with him (and gave them a kid, right [I wasn't watching, but have read it was implied]?) as a "happy ending" has always made me want to puke. 

I liked that they got their happy ending but I agree, it never made sense because he was suddenly just there again. Kind of like how Charlie and Zoe broke up. I think if you don't want to take the time to flesh out those stories, don't bother with them.

Danny and CJ could have been an interesting story at the beginning. If I remember correctly, it was CJs rule that she didn't want to date Danny and while I see the conflict of interest, it could have been interesting to address that.
I also think that they wasted CJ's time as CoS. I didn't like how they treated the women on that show in general then they finally put a woman into the position as CoS which is historic anyway but by that time, they seemed to have run out of ideas about what to do with the WH, so she never really got to do anything meaningful. At least not as far as I can remember.

[Crs97]

7 hours ago, Bastet said:

When they brought him back, he pissed me off, and their relationship made no sense; the fact they shipped her off with him (and gave them a kid, right [I wasn't watching, but have read it was implied]?) as a "happy ending" has always made me want to puke. 

I didn’t watch enough to see the details of their rekindled relationship, but I am sure the blech would come eventually.  Yes, in the first episode that last season the president mentioned wanting a picture of the baby.

4 hours ago, CheshireCat said:

I also think that they wasted CJ's time as CoS.

I still remember thinking it was ridiculous that she was promoted from press secretary to cos.  

[ProudMary]

I'm glad HLN aired this holiday West Wing marathon because it's created so much new activity in this forum!

Some random comments:

Season 6 was pretty much a disaster IMO, until Josh left the White House to run the Santos' campaign. From that point on, I've looked at 6/7 as a pretty good West Wing spinoff with Josh as the main character and a healthy dose of a few of the other WW  characters (Donna, Will, Leo.) I enjoyed the campaign(s), but then I've alwas been a fan of both Jimmy Smits and of Alan Alda. Everything that was happening at the lame duck White House was boring to me. I was not a fan of the Kate Harper character and never really bought into CJ as COS. 

I didn't care for the Annabeth character either, but I generally find Kristin Chenowith annoying. (I know most people love her and I'm in the minority with this opinion.) "The Hubbert Peak" episode got me wondering. 🤔 It was one of the early appearances of the Annabeth character and also included a good-sized role for an actress I really like, Rachael Harris. I wonder if she had auditioned for the Annabeth role and instead was given the one-shot as a consolation prize. I would have liked the Annabeth role much better if Harris was acting it. JMO, of course.

One small item on the series finale that bugged me: Following the inauguration, when President and Mrs. Santos are walking out of the Capitol Building to bid farewell to the Bartlets and we have a nicely written exchange between the incoming and outgoing Presidents, Ron Butterfield is standing there and President Bartlet just silently gets into the limo. No final words to the man who's headed up POTUS's security detail for the previous eight years??? It just seemed weird to me on re-watch. Butterfield was already heading up Santos' detail during the transition, so I'll have to assume he and the President had parting words offscreen when he moved over to Santos, but a few onscreen words on the Capitol steps for the audience would have killed the writers?

[geekgirl921]

On 12/31/2022 at 2:15 AM, PeterPirate said:

The recent Harry and Meghan series reminded me of this scene. 

 

I just re watched this one last night. It is one of my favorites but now I have He Remains an English man stuck in my head.

[Bastet]

7 hours ago, Crs97 said:

Yes, in the first episode that last season the president mentioned wanting a picture of the baby.

That makes me even angrier than saddling her with Danny.  C.J. never gave any indication she wanted children (at least during the years I watched, and I've never read about her saying anything later).  Even when she was drunk with Abbey, Amy, and Donna, and said the job is all she has, she doesn't even have a cat, she didn't say she wanted to have kids someday, and that would have been a perfectly natural time for it to come up.  And then at some point there's a kid in the Oval Office, I think, maybe one of Bartlet's grandkids, and C.J. has to be in there with him/her and she's uncomfortable and wants away. 

But they just had to throw that in, because TV writers cannot conceive (no pun intended) of a married/similarly partnered woman not wanting a baby, so if you're writing a happy ending for her, of course you toss in a kid.  It's like a foregone conclusion to them, with no one ever stopping to consider whether this particular female character would logically have a child.  And there was no definitive statement she didn't want them, no, but we never heard (again, at least in the years I watched) her yearn for one, and at her age if that was something she wanted, she'd need to be thinking about it.  So it would have been very nice not to have mentioned a baby.  People can fankwank they had one the next year if they want to, and others could fanwank C.J. was one of the few child-free by choice main characters, presented positively, on TV.

[caitmcg]

On 1/1/2023 at 1:22 PM, Bastet said:

I had quit watching by then, so I can't speak to who was a more compelling candidate, but while on general principle I agree it would be more realistic for the Republican to win after eight years, this show was always a fantasy version of national politics, so I think it fitting to continue the fantasy by ending with another Democratic administration.  In real life, good chunks of what the Bartlet gang clawed through an ugly system to achieve would be dismantled by the next one, but in WW life I find it the natural ending to be that the next gang fights the same battle to expand on what they accomplished.

Well, Vinick was also a creature of the WW fantasy machine (and a deliberate contrast to the actual administration of the time), an incredibly reasonable moderate Republican. Also a likable character, but that may have to do with his being played by (notorious non-Republican) Alan Alda. While the Santos win portrayed something that had not (yet) happened, a non-white candidate winning the presidency, story-wise, a Vinick win would’ve been more compelling to me than the wish-fulfillment aspect. 

[Crs97]

18 hours ago, Bastet said:

That makes me even angrier than saddling her with Danny.  C.J. never gave any indication she wanted children (at least during the years I watched, and I've never read about her saying anything later). 

I fanwave it as a Mitch Albom type story (which is beautiful, BTW):  https://people.com/books/mitch-albom-on-lessons-adopted-daughter-taught-him-before-she-died/

Wasn’t she traveling the world at the behest of the billionaire?  I can see them becoming parents this way: a child charmed their hearts rather than an innate desire for kids of their own.

[PeterPirate]

3 hours ago, Crs97 said:

Wasn’t she traveling the world at the behest of the billionaire?  I can see them becoming parents this way: a child charmed their hearts rather than an innate desire for kids of their own.

Plus, in Institutional Memory, Danny says he is fine with being "Mr. Cregg".  This was not a case of a competent female who settled for being "just a wife and a mother".

 

[Bastet]

41 minutes ago, PeterPirate said:

This was not a case of a competent female who settled for being "just a wife and a mother".

It has nothing to do with being "just" a wife and a mother, it's about a woman who showed no previous interest in doing so becoming a mother because that's what the majority of TV writers come up with for their female characters not for any reason rooted in her personality and circumstances.  Not mentioning anything, leaving it a Choose Your Own Adventure for viewers, would have been better than making a point of saying they had a baby.

As to the fanwank above, if what I quoted is accurate, Bartlet wanting to see pictures of "the baby", that makes the scenario of happening across a kid who prompted them into parenthood far less likely, but he could be one of those people who uses "baby" rather generously.  In the flash forward opening of the Bartlet presidential library in which this conversation occurs, how much time has passed since C.J. left the White House?