The West Wing - General Discussion

[PeterPirate]

51 minutes ago, ProudMary said:

I nominated The Sopranos and M*A*S*H 

Go outside, turn around three times, curse, spit, and curse and spit.   😇

Edited July 3, 2022 by PeterPirate

[Bastet]

M*A*S*H won, but WW was the runner up.  Maybe next year.

[Cetacean]

2 hours ago, Bastet said:

M*A*S*H won, but WW was the runner up.  Maybe next year.

I voted for WW but, man, it was tough not to pick M*A*S*H.  Out of the thousands of series over the years, only a few stand out.

[PeterPirate]

When next year's nominations roll around, someone needs to pour Wheatena on Proud Mary's keyboard.  

Edited July 10, 2022 by PeterPirate

[ProudMary]

I solemnly swear NOT to nominate any show but The West Wing for G.O.A.T. next year! 

[Driad]

Who Do You Think You Are? will investigate the family histories of Allison Janney on July 24 and Bradley Whitford on August 7.  NBC, Sundays, 7 PM Eastern time.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Driad

[CheshireCat]

I just had a West Wing moment: I was so lost in thought that I opened the closet door and almost walked inside to go to the bathroom. I immediately thought of Ainsley. 😂 (I always wonder what she was doing in the closet for so long and why she didn't come out right away again...)

[labresq]

West Wing Moment:  Bill Russell died - he's the one Leo talked about when he said "he wouldn't throw an elbow" until he did just once.

I also was surprised nobody came here to talk about the giant Chinese object hurtling through space last week.

[ProudMary]

[PeterPirate]

From Pilot:

CJ - What's our problem? 
Toby - What to do when the Nina, the Pinta, and the Get-Me-The-Hell-Outta-Here hit Miami.  

Just a rando line that hit me while was watching Rings of Power. 

While I'm at it, I will add this line from H. Con-172:  

CJ - You're asking for a whole lot of pain, in exchange for which you get nothing but an old map.  

I may end up using this thread a lot because of ROP.   

Edited September 27, 2022 by PeterPirate

[circumvent]

I didn't know that there was a WW forum here, after all these years. I watched when it first ran and liked it. I watched a few years later and hated it. For one, women are just incompetent, even when they are being competent. The people working in the WW don't fight for anything, they just talk about fighting for things. It is painted as a leftist administration but it is really a middle of the road elitist liberal that despises any idea of people power. Racist to the core, but it is well intentioned racism so I guess people like to brush over that. Pro-police, pro-imperialism, against workers. They know more than anyone, they are better than anyone. Can't stand any of the characters, although I like some of the actors a lot.

So I am happy to know that I am not the only one and there is so much more I recently found out can be deconstructed to the last words on a very good podcast "The West Wing Thing" - despite some silly commentaries, they go straight to the bullshit Sorkin wrote. The show was really bad. 

[caitmcg]

7 hours ago, circumvent said:

For one, women are just incompetent, even when they are being competent. 

An Aaron Sorkin specialty, apparently.

Edited October 15, 2022 by caitmcg

[PeterPirate]

Aaron Sorkin should write a screenplay about a fictional mega-corporation that buys the rights to a beloved fantasy novel and then produces a TV show that is completely different from the source material.  After all, he has experience in having his work taken over by others.

Rob Reiner should direct the movie.  After all, he made This Is Spinal Tap.  

[PeterPirate]

From Inauguration, Part 1:

Aide - King Nawa of Bhutan died.
Bartlet - We'll send condolences. What's next?
Aide - The new king is Yeshey Pradhan Nawa.
Bartlet - Okay.
Aide - He's 13 years old.
Bartlet - Well, if he's old enough to marry Jerry Lee Lewis, I guess he's old enough to be king of Bhutan. What's next?

[CheshireCat]

My most recent rewatch was the episode in which Sam mulls over the elimination of the penny. Fittingly, my Facebook algorithm recommended a video of someone who made a dress out of 2651 pennies. I guess, she proved Sam's point ;-) (Although, I disagree with the notion in general. In Germany we have a saying: If you don't honor the penny, you're not worth the money. It means that you need to appreciate any amount of money no matter how small because it's money, too and I think instead, Sam should have contemplated ways to get the penny back into circulation).

[PeterPirate]

In Noel, Bernard says to CJ either
A) "You're a freakishly tall woman" or
B) "You're a freakish little woman"  

Version A appears in the subtitles on the DVDs.  Version B appears in the subtitles on HBO Max and also at West Wing Transcripts.  Until today I had always heard Version A, and was quite surprised to learn there was a Version B. 

This line (Version A) popped in my head while I was watching the actress who plays Princess Diana in the new season of The Crown.  But as it turns out, Version B applies to the actress playing Queen Elizabeth.  

[Cetacean]

5 hours ago, PeterPirate said:

In Noel, Bernard says to CJ either
A) "You're a freakishly tall woman" or
B) "You're a freakish little woman"  

B makes no sense, has to be A.  And that's how I always heard it.

[DXD526]

HLN is running a TWW marathon all weekend. 

[kav]

I just watched 6 straight hours of it from 6-12 ending with the documentary.  In the Westwing world, who was the last President that actually was President?  Also what number was Jeb?

[CheshireCat]

4 hours ago, kav said:

I just watched 6 straight hours of it from 6-12 ending with the documentary.  In the Westwing world, who was the last President that actually was President?  Also what number was Jeb?

I don't recall them mentioning which number President he was. They also had their presidential election season when the real world has midterms. I didn't watch it when it aired originally but since they also have made-up countries, I'm assuming that the creators - other than the Madam Secretary creators - wanted their very own universe.

In case you don't want to be spoiled:

Spoiler

There is a later episode when Bartlett attends a funeral and he attends with (I believe) two other living Presidents (one who was acting President), so his predecessors are fictional as well.

[Cetacean]

Game On - "What you've done in Florida is bring together the right with the far right".

[kav]

7 hours ago, CheshireCat said:

I don't recall them mentioning which number President he was. They also had their presidential election season when the real world has midterms. I didn't watch it when it aired originally but since they also have made-up countries, I'm assuming that the creators - other than the Madam Secretary creators - wanted their very own universe.

In case you don't want to be spoiled:

  Reveal spoiler

There is a later episode when Bartlett attends a funeral and he attends with (I believe) two other living Presidents (one who was acting President), so his predecessors are fictional as well.

I found a Presidential Timeline online which was interesting.

[Bastet]

15 hours ago, kav said:

In the Westwing world, who was the last President that actually was President?  Also what number was Jeb?

We don't know what number Jed Bartlet was, and, IIRC, the most-recent real president to be mentioned in the series was Nixon.

[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.