The West Wing: "Tell your friend POTUS he's got a funny name."

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The West Wing: "Tell your friend POTUS he's got a funny name."

Giodo!: Oct 29, 2003

Ash Lael posted:

I love West Wing, but hate this scene so much.

1. Every single fundie knows the first commandment is "Worship the Lord your God".
2. For crying out loud Toby, "Honour your mother and father" is the FIFTH commandment.

If you're seriously going to have a character showing up another character by correcting them on a well known factoid, get the goddamn correction right.

(The first episode I saw was episode 1 of season 2 and honestly it's probably a much better starting point for the series.)

I don't know where Toby gets the 3rd Commandment thing from, but Bartlett is conspicuously Catholic and the Catholic ten commandments are a little different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Catholic_and_Lutheran_Christianity

# ¿ Jul 7, 2011 16:22

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:37

Giodo!: Oct 29, 2003

Maybe I'm dumb but I always thought a romance between Ainsley and Sam would have been interesting.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2011 16:38

Giodo!: Oct 29, 2003

Whenever my girlfriend randomly asks me what I'm thinking about and I'd normally say "nothing" because I'm thinking about something stupid like fantasy football or Kristen Bell and I don't want to talk about it, now I just say "Sam Seaborn." For some reason that is always a satisfactory and sufficient answer.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2011 17:04

Giodo!: Oct 29, 2003

The West Wing is pretty accurate on a lot of its little details, so it is pretty jarring when you catch something incorrect or inconsistent (although, given that the show is not particularly concerned with the continuity of its own plotlines, the latter are not all that uncommon). President Bartlet putting the Surgeon General into the line of presidential succession in season 1 before his first state of the union speech always makes me laugh. This Jed Bartlet! Come on!

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 15:51

Giodo!: Oct 29, 2003

JULIAN ASSANGE posted:

I... didn't know that. But then I'm not American.

Knowing what we do behind-the-scenes with the Bartlet administration, it makes a lot of sense for him to give a huge amount of power to his Chief of Staff and not so much to his VP. Not sure it would play so well politically, but seeing how I had no idea that Biden did so much, maybe the public just doesn't care. Would it have hurt him in congress? That would have been an interesting plotline, better than most of what they did in s5.

But yeah, delegation of power in the Executive Branch is 100% up to the President.

It's not at all uncommon for VPs to have a very limited or specific role. I don't think that it would hurt a president politically, because the VP doesn't have any constitutional responsibilities other than to wait for the president to die and to cast tie breakers in the Senate. I'd say, without being an expert, that the relationship between Bartlet and Hoynes is probably closer to what you generally get than what we saw with Bush/Cheney.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2013 16:35

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:37

Giodo!: Oct 29, 2003

DarkCrawler posted:

Yeah, House of Cards is good, in an entirely different way.

Also, Kevin Spacey knocks it out of the park in every scene. I really don't care that much about the other characters, but Kevin loving Spacey is way more then enough to carry it himself.

I think that his wife, zoey, and Rep. Russo are all really great, well-realized characters. As a Washingtonian, I think the show is also fantastic at capturing the way a lot of people here treat power and politics. Which was not something the West Wing's idealized characters ever really cared about.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2013 13:36

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The West Wing: "Tell your friend POTUS he's got a funny name."