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I'm watching the Season 6/7 campaign and man, I totally forgot how bad The Debate is. Strikes against: -It's a gimmick episode. I'll admit this is a personal issue as I hate the 9/11 episode and the CJ documentary episode. -It's one of the worst examples of West Wing political fantasies (long goofy speeches, rounds of applause for democracy, having a "real" debate). -The "live" televising is problematic because of dropped lines and awkward pauses (which is arguably intentional to give it a live debate feel, but Smits really struggled here). -Despite wanting to be a "real" debate, it suffers from the same issue of watching two candidates re-explain their platforms that the audience already knows. Clips of that is good. 40 minutes of is not.
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Jan 1, 2013 03:35
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JohnSherman posted:Every time I see this I can't help laughing whenever Bradley Whitford is on screen. I swear, the guy looks like he's wearing a really awful fatsuit. The "movie-star handsome Louis CK" joke was pretty good, too.
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Feb 20, 2013 14:51
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LordPants posted:I just started watching Season 5 too, it's like a balloon slowly deflating on my tv screen. And the way the characterizations just jump off the map is actually kind of amazing. Anyway, the Supremes happens and that makes up for it but it is still a shock the drop in quality. (I really like seasons 6 and 7 though). I want to dislike this arc, and yet it gave us John Goodman. Season 5 has its flaws, but I think it's best viewed through the lens of how the administration works without Sam. Josh runs unchecked and self-destructs, Toby loses his goddamned mind trying to run the show by himself, CJ becomes the moral voice in senior staff meetings, and the administration flounders around without direction.
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Aug 19, 2013 23:01
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I just got to Season 6. The scene where Leo suffers a heart attack in the woods is so disorienting and viscerally painful.
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Aug 21, 2013 15:01
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And that's Amy Adams who drives Josh, Toby, and Donna across Indiana in a soy-diesel truck.
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Sep 3, 2013 20:12
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^^ agreed to some extent, but I probably would've liked Will more if the impetus for backing Russell was pragmatism. Instead, it actually was a form of idealism (the "hand-picked by Bartlett" nonsense) until he really starts battling with Josh and then the writers get us to believe that Will did this because Russell had the best shot (instead of being the best man).meatbag posted:I don't really like Will because his character does a complete 180. Idealistic enough to try and get a dead man elected, and later on he supports Bingo Bob because he's the most realistic candidate. Agreed. I know that the response to this complaint is, "Will thought that Bartlett & Co. believed in Russell," but that makes no sense because Will was involved in those conversations and cowrote the "triumph of mediocrity" speech. I like Josh Malina in basically everything he's done (even Scandal, which is a hilariously stupid show), but he was sold out by the writers once the Bingo Bob storyline began. i am the bird fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 15:16
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I'm really enjoying the podcast. I didn't expect this level of insight out of Josh (sorry bro), and I love that he's quick to critique the show's failures. I'm in the middle of a rewatch now and I'm just constantly reminded that Sorkin's antagonists are god awful. They're always dumb as poo poo and/or cartoonishly evil so that the Bartlet crew can clown on them with shitthatdidnthappen.txt style monologues.
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May 5, 2016 01:19
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Nah, I'm not talking about the representation of Republican intransigence (which is actually explained as tribalism/struggle to get or maintain power). That's rarely even used in resolutions of the week to week plots. I'm talking about the fact that anytime there's an antagonist character, it's not enough for them to be wrong. They have to also have some deep fundamental flaw that's only revealed in the last act. poo poo that is never actually related to the plot in question but magically solves everything without actually discussing the underlying issue, or ensures that the audience REALLY hates the person in question. Military guy trashing Bartlet's lack of military experience (a fair critique established within the WW universe). Well, it turns out he lied about his medals, so he's wrong. Bartlet crew is sexist toward Ainsley? Well, that's okay because here's some random dudes we've never met and it turns out they're the real sexists. Don't know how to solve the mandatory minimum argument? Well, that's okay because here's a bunch of conveniently placed congresspeople who all have connections to drug charges suddenly. This ambassador cheated on his wife, but just so you know he's a REAL bad guy, he's also a super racist. Bartlet crew makes homophobic jokes on the regular? That's okay because here's some real homophobes. Yes, this poo poo exists in real life but it doesn't make for compelling conflict in the show when everyone's a scooby doo villain and our protagonists are squeaky clean boy/girl scouts. It's even worse when the antagonist's flaws are used to justify something lovely about the Bartlet crew. i am the bird fucked around with this message at 13:03 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 5, 2016 13:00
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It's still decent television but you just have to imagine that the actors drew their dialogue and motivations from a hat each week.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:39
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Will's loyalty to Bingo Bob makes no sense for the character because he knows Bob Russell is a joke from day 1. He's introduced as a political wunderkind so he'd obviously recognize that, and there's an entire scene where he and Toby write that mocking speech for Russell. I love Josh Malina but all of his storylines are dumb as hell, especially the romance with Kate (another poorly written character).
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Sep 1, 2016 01:23
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Each part of the two-parter is great. I did laugh at Schlamme's aside about how casting a southerner seemed antithetical to Sorkin's language, though. 
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Sep 29, 2016 15:39
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I'd watch an Arnold Vinick president mini-series of him having to deal with the far right wing of his party after winning election in 2014. Imagine 6 episodes of Alan Alda scolding shithead conservatives in Sorkinese.
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Mar 23, 2017 18:19
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Matt Zerella posted:And my favorite WW episode to this day is the one where they get a far left and far right judge on the court instead of centrists. But in true Sorkin fashion, the far right judge is actually secretly good because he's smart and respects the office. The West Wing absolutely pushes the ideas that decorum and civility matter more than material concerns, that polite reasoning will rule the day, and that hard work and intellect will get you wherever you need to go. The ideology in the show is toxic and its popularity is a good indicator of where white liberals are hilariously out of touch. It's also pretty clearly Sorkin's belief (see: The Newsroom and the recent public talk where he is STUNNED that people consider Hollywood to be sexist and racist) TWW is masterful television, no doubt, but it's hard to watch and not see how tone deaf its politics are.
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Apr 18, 2017 15:44
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Eh, I don't want to blow it out of proportion but it's not unfair to say that TWW influences our political society. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/why-the-west-wing-is-a-terrible-guide-to-american-democracy/263084/ quote:At a ceremony honoring Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reported that politicians in Burma have told her they've been attempting to understand democracy by watching Aaron Sorkin's celebrated show. It's actually not the first time a foreign official has made such a claim: European Union Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton told Newsweek in 2010 that she learned about America and "the mechanics of Washington life" from being "an avid viewer of The West Wing." Hillary Clinton, for her part, said she told one of the Burmese politicians that "I think we can do better than that." http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/04/aaron-sorkin-west-wing quote:It’s been nearly 6 years since the series finale of The West Wing, and more than 12 since the one-hour drama, which Sorkin created and largely wrote, first walked and talked its way through NBC’s Wednesday-night lineup; and yet you might think the series never ended, given the currency it still seems to enjoy in Washington, the frequency with which it comes up in D.C. conversations and is quoted or referenced on political blogs. In part this is because the smart, nerdy—they might prefer “precocious”—kids who grew up in the early part of the last decade worshipping the cool, technocratic charm of Sorkin’s characters have today matured into the young policy prodigies and press operatives who advise, brief, and excuse the behavior of the most powerful people in the country. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/west-wing-nostalgia/482022/ quote:The White House press briefing has been presided over by its share of celebrity guests over the years, but when C.J. Cregg took the podium on April 29, it might’ve marked the first appearance of a fictional character. “Josh is out today, he has ... I believe it’s a root canal?” she quipped, probably referring to the incumbent Press Secretary Josh Earnest—or was it Josh Lyman, who had once stepped in for C.J. after her own dental emergency? Either way, she’d lost none of her poise. “Let’s be honest, I’m better at this than he is anyway,” she joked. Add in this kind of cultural capital (and the podcast, the cast showing up in political ads, Martin Sheen on the trail as President Bartlet, etc.) and it's pretty clear that TWW does influence the way people think about and discuss politics.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:00
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WampaLord posted:Sure, I'm not saying it has 0 impact, but the impact it has is trivial at best. The Dems were bad long before TWW ever existed and politicians were just as awful. Oh, for sure. I can't make a real case that it's more influential than it is just representative, but TWW nostalgia (for a time that never was) is real in my social circles and it's frustrating as hell.
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Apr 18, 2017 16:05
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Mu Zeta posted:The one with Glenn Close and William Fichtner? Sorkin had nothing to do with that episode. I actually like that episode though. I see nothing wrong with wanting judges that aren't pricks. I know it's not Sorkin but it's the same Sorkinesque belief that being smart and civil = being good. The ultra right wing judge is not a 'prick' because he's smart and civil, unlike those other conservatives. Just, uh, nevermind that his rulings will gently caress over underserved people and undermine almost everything that the Bartlet administration fights for. edit: imagine a world where advisors tell the president to dual-nominate RBG and Scalia, and then they all nod knowingly when the two of them engage in friendly banter about the law. It's not unrealistic for people to fantasize about that horseshit (for evidence: read any of the gushing essays about the RBG/Scalia friendship) but it's dumb as all hell and no good partisan, ideologue, or policy wonk would advocate for it unless they bought into an awful belief that ignored material concerns in favor of tone/civility/tradition/etc. -- which means that the Bartlet team is either a) bad at their jobs or b) dumb as poo poo. i am the bird fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 17:21
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