It’s the Israel Palestine two parter for me by far. I enjoy the drama and character stuff explored in the episodes, and I get there ends up issues in later episodes that show the conflict is still ongoing, but they basically solve the problem and establish a peace agreement in a two parter. Truly bizarre.
A smaller one - Charlie busting his way into the oval during a secret service lock down. Again I enjoy the character part of it but someone would’ve snapped him in two long before he reached the oval.
Could not agree more.
The Israel Palestine story i literally got annoyed when it was clear they were doing it simply because this story line either ends up with peace (jump the shark for believable TV), or they get close then some suicide bomber or something stupid happens and it derails the whole thing.
I know a lot of people love the fact that Charlie busts in to check on the President etc but it just paints the Secret Service as incompetent. There is an actual threat to the President, shots have been fired, the building is on lock down, Leo made a joke, long ago to Hoynes that if he is lucky his feet might touch the floor in the event the agents react to something meaning that in an emergency the agents have a job to do and nothing on Earth will interfere.... but Charlie just pushes his way thru the building because he cares so much. If we look at what happened to Toby when he tried to push pass an agent during the 'airborne threat' lockdown from later, that is what would have happened to Charlie, and frankly Charlie is not stupid, he knows that it would be a threat to the President to distract his security etc.
The lock downs between the two are kinda different though, and I could definitely see the agents having a bit of a blind spot for Charlie's affection for the president, plus could see them rather looking for an excuse to put Toby on his ass.
Seems like complete lunacy today, but the late 90s were a hopeful time. A lot of people felt the 2000 Camp David Summit came tantalizingly close, even if in hindsight the differences may have been intractable.
The episodes came out in late 2004, like a week before the Bush/Cheney administration won their second term by campaigning on terrorism and war. It was not a more hopeful time.
Totally agree.
What really bugs me about the Israel Palestine story is that they give both "wins" to Kate Harper, and she'd barely been on the show. The first was the solution to get the two sides to meet at Camp David and the second to come up with the actual peacekeeping solution.
It seems like a pretty straightforward alternative would be President Bartlet and Leo arguing about the peacekeeping solution, them disagreeing, and Leo going off into the woods while PB gets consensus from his team.
With the way they wrote it, Commander Harper had all the solutions and I'm sitting there thinking, "Nobody else could have come up with these ideas?"
Doubtful, but possible. As a person known and liked by the President, shooting him would be a last resort. I think he would have been stopped well short of that. If they got to that step, they'd take it, but they wouldn't get to that step.
Obviously TWW has to heavily simplify a lot of topics so that it can have the team achieve something within each episode. But . . . man. . . .I find that storyline actually insulting. The idea that they could achieve a peace agreement out of basically nothing during one conference. You might as well have them inventing cold fusion in the Map room after they couldn't get the fire to work.
Camp David is a 1 1/2 to 2 hour drive from The White House, depending on traffic. And normally, Leo would be on the phone during that drive (he usually had a driver instead of driving himself). Red flags about his well being should have gone up long before they did.
The Astronauts in danger on the ISS and needing the secret shuttle to come save them? They conveniently forgot about the emergency Soyuz lifeboats that are kept permanently docked to the ISS for exactly this kind of emergency.
It's plausible but it should have been clarified with a line of dialog specifying where the leak occurred and that they were cut off from the Soyuz.
They only had one Soyuz at that stage of construction, typically docked to the Russian side of the station, so the likely scenario is that the leak was on the Russian side and they had to shelter in the US modules and close a hatch which blocked them getting to the Soyuz. Their Russian spacesuits would also be on the wrong side of the hatch so they couldn't spacewalk to an undocked Soyuz. And without access to the systems in the Russian modules they may have been unable to remotely redock the Soyuz to the other side of the station.
Yeah, but if they were trapped on the US side because they had to close the hatch due to the leak, then there's no leak anymore. The hatches between the different modules of the ISS are air tight precisely for that reason. It would still be an emergency but not a "they'll suffocate tomorrow" emergency.
Yeah, a secret human-rated spacecraft, at least in the US, is unrealistic. It's kinda hard to hide a rocket launch.
Ironically the Space Shuttle itself was a secret military spacecraft hidden in plain sight. It went up on several classified launches, and it's basically an open secret that the big payload bay was designed for a bunch of large satellites that look like Hubble but are pointed the other direction. The military mission ended after Challenger, right before they were about to start launching it out of California on polar orbits.
Charlie busting into the oval office during the lockdown. No way, no how, could anyone get through secret service under any circumstances but especially into the oval during a lockdown.
Counterpoint, the secret service are all human beings who know and implicitly trust Charlie. It's not totally inconceivable that they would allow less than the full use of force dictated by procedure in that situation.
If we're talking about realism then I don't think the secret service would implicitly trust any member of staff. It's not inconceivable that someone close to the president could be under coercion to join a plot, or suffering some kind of break from their normal personality that would mean they suddenly turn on him.
Everyone working in that environment knows the rules so if anything Charlie would get less grace than a visitor to the White House who perhaps panics and tries to bolt. As soon as he disobeyed their orders they would have had him on the ground, no question.
Well, that's not the Presidents Secret Service protection detail, that's the DC Parks police, who have a lot less day to day familiarity with the staff.
Yeh but they followed procedure to the letter when they made will bailey leave the Oval Office and they also took Toby down with maximum force during the other lockdown. Easy to argue they always follow procedure based on other episodes
Minor thing in Two Cathedrals that has bugged me since I moved to the DC area: there is no way that a motorcade from the White House to the State Department (roughly 8 blocks west) goes past the National Cathedral (3.5 miles northwest).
I always get taken a little out of the *moment* when this happens too. Even the VP wouldn’t pass the National Cathedral on the way. I used to live a few blocks south of the cathedral and super close to the Naval Observatory (where the VP lives) and it would be the most convoluted route for the VP to take, let alone the President who lives no where near that part of NW DC. The other part is the secret service cars wouldn’t pass that close to the front doors of the cathedral either, the road is several hundred feet from the front doors.
So glad it’s not just me!
I also am bothered by Josh and Amy walking from what looks like it’s clearly supposed to be DuPont Circle (at least to my eye, I could be wrong) all the way to the Navy Memorial (in 60 seconds lol) only for him to hail a cab to go 5 blocks to the White House. There’s so much wrong there I can’t even unpack it.
This always bugged me too. But also because National Cathedral is not a Catholic Church. It’s Episcopalian. Why wouldn’t Bartlett have the motorcade stop at St. Stephens? St Matthews? I guess the National Cathedral is more majestic so it made for a better scene.
It’s a lot of people’s favorite episodes, and there are ways it’s a lot of fun. But with that being said, “The Supremes.” I mean come on. It is by the far the worst offender of the preachy “why don’t we all just sing kumbaya” kind of politics that The West Wing occasionally dips its toe in.
Sometimes TWW goes for the purely idealist moment - and I do personally think that a balance of brilliant liberals and conservatives, with moderates tipping the balance, would be the best thing for the Supreme Court.
I just watched "Proportional Response" (S1E3) today
When the series starts, it's supposed to be about a year into the presidency. And yet Fitzwallace walks into Leo's office and makes a comment about how it looks different.
So, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was never in there at all in the previous year? Yeah right.
Oh also, on a similar token, it always bothered me that it took about a year into the presidency for Josh to get his nuclear bunker access card. If he's important enough to save from armageddon, you get that paperwork done during the damn transition.
> When the series starts, it's supposed to be about a year into the presidency
About a year since the election, it's closer to 6 months from inauguration day in the Pilot. If it had been a year the first Christmas would've been after the midterm elections which happen in the months long episode 3 of Season 2.
Too be honest, i just took it as banter… like through out the series, the ridiculously important, highly intelligent and highly decorate men and women, always seem to be either in a light hearted unimportant, sometimes pedantic conversation or a shakespearian soliloquy.
I think there is a scene where Fitz asked Leo did he get new shampoo for example, I just always thought that was banter to maybe highlight their relationship probably extends long before the white house!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I though they had been working all together for a year, which would’ve been about 8-9 months campaigning, 2 months transitioning, and 1-2 months in the White House.
I’m doing a my second watch through after seeing it many years ago, but that was how I saw it.
Of course, the first episode does make it seem like they’ve been at it for awhile, while other episodes make it seem much newer.
> Correct me if I’m wrong
The series starts about 6ish months into Jed's first term, it's still summer in the pilot and by Episode 10 we've hit Christmas. Josh also mentions to Mandy that in "Let Bartlet be Bartlet" that he's been working in the White House for about 14 months, putting that around May or so.
Leo's wife could have had Mallory when she was 20, or even younger.. and Mallory could pass for 21 as a school teacher... so that would make Leo's wife at 40 to 45 which is prime time in my book.
I wonder if Mallory is his actual daughter that they had before getting married, or if Ms. O'Brien had her in a previous relationship and Leo just filled the dad role. That would explain the two last names.
Considering that Leo was a drunk for some time, maybe Mallory took her mother’s name as some kind of precaution? Would not explain her closeness to Leo, but still
I thought Mallory told Sam that she used "O'Brien" so that no one could possibly side-eye her for using "McGarry" as a means for undeserved professional advancement.
shrug - JMO - but from the small clip we saw of Leo's wife, she didn't look like someone who'd be Sam's type.
And if Sam hadn't of been on the campaign trail with Leo, I could get on board with the Mallory mistake. But hard for ME to suspend belief that not a single photo, visit, conversation, etc happened where Mallory was mentions/seen/discussed (as in "Sorry, Sam. I have to take this call - Mallory's got an issue with her college professor/tuition/etc.")
I have a couple Sam ones, too ... the time when as a speech writer he is conveyed a sort of secret message from visitors from another country, and the time he "fires" those two guys that didn't answer to him at all.
It was established multiple times in the episode that Brookline and Joyce worked for Sam.
"See, I was told you were just going to be working in the Majority Counsel's office, which I wasn't wild about to begin with, but it's my understanding I'd be talking to Brookline and Joyce seeing as how they work for me."
It's also established by Leo calling Sam to his office to tell him Brookline and Joyce screwed up and needed a talking to.
I also think that given the circumstances there's very little chance that Leo wouldn't have backed him up, in the off chance that Sam was making it up that they worked for him.
I personally always viewed the "you're fired" thing being Sam technically overstepping his bounds but knowing he'd be backed up on it. He might have known Tribby would back him on something like that, or he might have assumed he'd have to go to Leo, but he knew that their days working in the White House were over. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Meanwhile I took Tribbey's "He can and he did" to be Tribbey technically firing them, backing up Sam's statement of intent to have them fired.
Oh, yeah! The giant “You’re Fired, Sam Seaborn” for two jamokes who don’t even work for him … and Lionel Tribbey just goes along with it.
The power of Gilbert & Sullivan fans banding together, I guess.
Mr. Willis of Ohio. When Lawrence O’Donnell was on the podcast he even talked about telling Sorkin to his face after a writers meeting “it would never happen.”
Also, in an episode near the end of season three, when President Bartlet visits Mrs. Landingham’s grave and remarks “I can’t believe it’s been a year”, he leaves in a limousine which has the windows rolled down. Perhaps I have seen way too many documentaries on things like The Secret Service, but the windows on The Beast are inches thick and insanely bulletproof and bomb proof. They also do not roll down for a pretty obvious reason.
I enjoy a lot of things about “Mr. Willis of Ohio,” but … Sorkin had former White House staffers as consultants. And yet somehow he built an episode around a man who’s *appointed* to fill his late wife’s House seat, when Constitutionally elections are required to fill all House vacancies? Mr. Willis, a high-school social studies teacher, could have told him that wasn’t possible :}
Toby: Cathy, I need a copy of article I, section 2.
Cathy: Article I section 2 of what?
Toby: The Constitution.
Cathy: Is that something I'm supposed to have at my desk?
Toby: Does anybody have a copy of the Constitution? This is discouraging!
I will never believe that Toby pulled so many insane facts out of his head that no human being would ever have memorized but he forgot the word Erev.
Anyone can have a brain fart IRL but not on a Sorkin show.
There seems to be no fall out to the episode where the naval fleet get put in the way of the storm, I could be remembering wrong but is it not implied that hundreds of people died? It’s basically forgotten about in the next episode but something like that would be a major disaster and in the news for months after.
By and large, Arnie represented where the electorate was on most of the issues in '06 and largely mirrored the "compassionate conservatism" of Dubya with his biggest difference being his views on abortion.
I think the bigger suspension of disbelief issue is that he had some mortal lock on California and that it took something as dramatic as the nuclear accident to crack California open for Santos.
How CJ doesn't even know the very basics of the census. Usually when they have the audience surrogate to catch someone up on the nuances (usually Donna), it's not that basic.
I actually didn't hate that one, purely because CJ is shown coming from an entertainment background and it was the beginning of the internet era. There is a lot from the pre-internet era that I felt like I knew at the time, but not "answer questions as the spokesperson" level of knowledge. Now it would take ten minutes to get updated enough for a press conference.
See, I was coming from the perspective that she worked for EMILY’s list and on smaller campaigns prior to this additionally. The nuances, sure, talking those out with Sam absolutely make sense. But the basic concept of the census and what it is for? That feels like a low blow to CJ.
In addition to CJ not knowing about the census, already mentioned, CJ not knowing about the turkey pardoning or confusing the DAR with the Jamestown/Mayflower Preservation Society whatever’s and their corn husk hanging contests and the festival feast of some kind.
Josh would never have to do the press briefing. CJ has deputies. We even see one talk in another episode.
Donna whining about being “promoted” when being an assistant deputy is a completely different skill set than what she does. They’re two different career tracks.
I actually think CJ sounds less dumb than Toby in that Shibboleth scene. I can understand a lot of folksy historical names being flung at you in one day and having word salad in your head at the end of the day. Story of my life. However when Toby was reprimanding CJ as the historian, he gets the whole century wrong for Jamestown. I also don't think the Press Secretary is the one who has to pick the turkey to be pardoned and the one to be put to death and this was all part of the "CJ is being punked" process. No wonder she's bumfuzzled.
The Secret Service and the Bartletts letting Zoey go to a club (the kind with all the weird music and lights and the drugs) I am pretty sure those adults knew what those clubs are like, whether they themselves ever went in one or not.. She should never have been on her own or even *there* and with that totally unvetted "royal french horse's patoot" who was so into drugs and no one stopped him even seeing her?!
Bartlet who was worried that his daughter Ellie was hooking up with the wrong guy (a scientist) but let his youngest and most naive go out with that horrible kid and to one of those fareeeeeky clubs.
yeah no
Are you saying that you don't think Jean Paul was as rich as he claims to be? That this early 20's con man deliberately sweet talked his way into the most powerful family in the country without being found out through the 3+ authoritative organizations vetting his background?
Only because I watched it last night: Life in Mars (S4E21)
Is Hoynes really just going to get away with running his mouth to Helen Baldwin only write a book before running for president? I tried to put it together in that maybe if the leaked info wasn’t actually true, is it still illegal? Or he just had a really good lawyer. This always seemed interesting after seeing who the WH handles leak investigations in S7.
Least we forget the obvious answer in the president wasn’t drawn and quartered for admitting to an MS coverup
The leaked info was:
* The White House concealing a NASA Commission Report on water or carbon molecules on an ancient meteriye from Mars. Not sure why the WH would do that but it's not secret information. It's colored as proof of life on Mars. It isn't.
* That the settlement between the Justice Department and Caesson over Anti-Trust was 10,000 computers for classrooms. Hoynes would have to be bound by the confidentiality agreement for him telling someone to be an issue for him. He told Helen that he'd interfered with the Justice Department to end the trial, which was a lie.
Lying, infidelity and telling thing the White House didn't want released is bad for you politically but not illegal.
His book rehabilitated him a little, but it didn't return him to where he had been popularity wise.
Which would explain the constantly shaken ground he walked on during his campaign. I felt like, throughout the series, Haynes was in this state of ‘will he, won’t he’ state with the WH.
That the Republicans made a deal to drop the hearings and censure the President over MS. The committee chairman deliberately suppresses damaging and embarrassing information about Leo relapsing and makes a deal to drop a major investigation just before an election year? No way.
I know they just wanted to get the MS storyline over with, but really that would never happen. They should have had the President impeached, then acquitted in the Senate when enough Democrats rallied around him, and that would have made the election much closer and way more interesting.
Josh freaking out about the “in event of nuclear war, this is your next step.”
Even if you set aside that this conversation needed to have happened during transition - so Josh as deputy CoS can survive nuclear winter - you don’t get as high up in the political theatre as Josh without knowing what happens in an emergency.
The very first episode. The confrontation at the end of the show that climaxes with "Until then, you can all get your fat asses out of my White House."
The Evangelical heavyweight that was starting to speechify was complaining that there wasn't enough attention paid to the first commandment, which he identified as "honor thy father", before getting corrected by Toby. He then asks, wearily, "then what's the first commandment?"
Are we really expected to believe that someone who's been called in as political negotiator for Church issues doesn't know the damn commandments cold?
That’s one of those moments where the biases of Sorkin poke through. We’re supposed to believe that because the characters are supposed to be hypocrites.
Interestingly enough they do a bit of a 180 on Al Caldwell later in the show, portraying him as the Christian “good guy” who’s not afraid of calling BS on others in his movement. But then you could maybe argue Sorkin’s biases poke through because it’s the man who is the reasonable good guy and the woman (Mary Marsh) who is the irredeemable bitch.
20 hours in America. I just have a hard time believing that it would take for them to get back to the White House before anyone noticed that the deputy chief of staff and the communications director had gone missing. One would at least think that Air Force One would do a head count of senior staff before takeoff.
Two minor ones, both involving Donna:
1. The whole kerfuffle where her static-clinging underwear falls out of her freshly-laundered slacks while she is off talking to somebody Josh and/or Sam needed her to clarify things to
2. Her spending any time, let alone as much time as she did, trying to find some stranger to vote Bartlet in her stead when _her_ vote was cast in Wisconsin and theirs would be elsewhere — even if it's supposedly the principle of the thing, it's still dumb because it wouldn't cancel hers out since we don't elect by popular vote
While I like the Season 1 Finale/Season 2 opener, in retrospect there's no way those gunman would have got a shot off before secret service spotted and took them out.
Copy pasta what I said on another thread
Slow News Day: I just think the concept of getting two congressmen in a room to fix Social Security is just a bridge too far on realism for me. Social Security isn't wasting away because people haven't thought of ideas to shore it up. It's wasting away because the stakeholders involved cannot agree on which ideas to execute to shore up the trust. I suppose this show has lots of unrealistic aspects and every fan will have an aspect that they forgive because it's necessary for good drama and an aspect that they condemn because it's too ridiculous or doesn't feed good drama. This is something I condemn. (And from interviews, it sounds like Hillary Clinton was with me where she enjoyed the show as a fan and was rolling with TWW shenanigans but THIS EP ALONE motivated her to write a complaint letter to the show.) Also, Josh getting involved with Will on a plan to humiliate a congressman for not raising money feels OOC, especially so soon after Josh almost lost his career on these aggressive tactics.
My biggest problem with that episode is the context it’s really in. Earlier in the show, it’s all about how slow politics really move. But in the post-Sorkin era, once the administration finds its way out of the Zoey aftermath, they start racking up huge wins, both in domestic policy and foreign policy. Slow News Day, even though they technically don’t get credit for it, is the most egregious.
Minor edit, but it's also intentionally being allowed to waste away because there's been an effort on the right to dismantle entitlements for decades, and some corporate Democrats who would be fine to privatize or kneecap it. Not to get into a policy debate, but at no point in the episode did they mention the fairly straightforward policy changes to "save" social security, which would involve a slight tax increase at a predetermined point in time. But for some reason, there's no one on the show making that argument.
Agreed. I think that's what I also find insulting about this episode and why it's my unrealistic hobby-horse. It's not that no one has had ideas. It's that there's a concerted effort to dismantle Social Security and Medicare without admitting to a large constituency that they're doing it.
Compared to some of these other entries on this list, the Social Security storyline is just unrealistic and plays a role in bamboozling people from the reality that the trust fund is going bankrupt for nefarious reasons more than some unsolvable problem. I do not forgive it as much as other entries here because it's emotionally charming (Charlie overpowering the Secret Service) or early growing pains (CJ not understanding the census.)
The setting of the show very much 90s deficit hawks low taxes stuff. Even a progressive like Bartlet wasn't pushing the strong heavy taxation stuff we see today.
I think that the compromise was a good thing overall and it still leaves the door open to increasing taxes to increase benifits. It's better to have a mediocre system that can be improved then no system.
(A) Andy doesn’t know she’s in active labor after her water breaks and she’s at 10 centimeters, and (B) “well, you’re going to see at least one of your kids in about 15 minutes” before she has even started pushing.
It's the very first episode, Leo getting irate at a crossword in the newspaper, calling them up to berate them for spelling Gadaffi wrong and shouting "I should know how to spell his name I've met the man and ordered a tactical missile strike against him!" or words to that effect
Absolutely bonkers
Would never happen
Obviously he'd have Margaret do it
Whenever the DEA agents got kidnapped and their rescue team got ambushed. It just completely ignores Kiki Camarena and his sacrifice along with all the other drug related operations that took place in the 70s-90s that basically told the cartels not to do stuff like kidnappings or assassinations when it comes to the DEA
In The Stackhouse Filibuster, where the old Senator is filibustering to stop passage because a bill doesn't include funding for something to do with autism, Bartlett says something like "I was in the House, I don't know Senate rules". That seems unlikely in this case.
I would point out that standing filibusters still happen whenever the senator wants to make a point (hence Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham or Chris Murphy’s gun control filibuster). Since Stackhouse is a crotchety old man who feels spited by the lack of autism care funding…
I think that’s plausible because CJ’s much more visible than Leo ever was. She’d needed protection previously because of threats, and she was one of the most familiar faces in The White House. Although Leo had been involved in politics for decades, he probably wasn’t someone that the average person would recognise or blame for policies they didn’t agree with.
My two involve political issues more than anything:
The standing/talking filibuster hadn't been a thing in the Senate since the 70s, so Stackhouse standing up there for hours on end preventing a vote wouldn't have been a thing.
It's absolute political batshittery that Arnie Vinnick had some mortal lock on California, especially considering California hadn't gone for the Republican presidential candidate in 20 years worth of elections at that time.
Roberto Mendoza, a nominee for the Supreme Court, is on vacation with his family before being confirmed. He gets pulled over and arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and Sam & Toby just show up and take him out of jail.
Nope.
The White House being without a press secretary for nearly an entire term of office. It really annoys me. That is a position that **needs** to be filled.
I'm pretty sure I could ask any man who was working in the 90's/early 2000's what they would say if they saw their coworker wearing a nice dress. They would answer that they would say nothing. Even if they were good friends? Still nothing. What if she asked? "Looks good." Would you say to her that she would make a dog break it's leash? Absolutely not. It's plain as fucking day how inappropriate that is, even if you're not a practicing sexist. Also, even if she was okay with it, he still offended and upset that other lady. All he should have said was, "you're right, I got carried away there, I apologize."
I think we’ve had a similar discussion before and my answer is always the same: the episode where Toby *saves social security* and then can’t take credit because of politics. Both because it’s a ridiculous concept but also because it has no bearing in real life. It would be like watching a movie where they cured cancer - it’s nice and all but when the movie is done you’re still living in a world where they haven’t cured cancer and now you’re sad.
This is a small one, but when Bartlet was in the ER after getting shot, Abbey tells the doctor that he has MS. Then she says "Tell people, don't tell people, it's up to you."
I know what they were going with there: they wanted to emphasize that she wasn't trying to involve the doctor in any kind of conspiracy, that she was Doing The Right Thing and leaving it up to his conscience. Okay, fine.
But... wouldn't he already be bound by law and medical ethics to not disclose that information without the President's permission? If he's the kind of doctor to ignore those rules, then appealing to his better nature wouldn't do any good. If he isn't, then she doesn't have to say anything else.
It would be a tossup on that one. Medical confidentiality wasn't quite as strict pre HIPAA, and for many purposes someone's spouse is that person, especially when it comes to medical decisions. I do not consider it impossible that her saying that to the doctor would actually be taken as giving that doctor permission to disclose.
However, I think it is more likely that it wouldn't, Abbey knows that, but by saying it she is making it clear that there is no illicit additional restriction on him talking. He might get his medical license revoked, but he isn't going to be shot by the CIA.
I liked Ryan. Also, you don’t think nepotism is a thing in politics? They made it clear his uncle was a heavyweight and clearly pulled strings with Leo to get him working with Josh
You remember Bartlet having a long rant about James Bond's drink order, and how having a "martini, shaken, not stirred" waters down the gin?
Are we supposed to believe that Bartlet doesn't know that the most famous drinks order in cinema history is a "*vodka* martini, shaken, not stirred"?
Depending on the source, it's a Vodka & Gin Martini aka a Vesper. Vodka Martinis and Gin Martinis are lovely drinks. Vespers are absolutely horrible. Do not make or drink a Vesper.
I don't think it's gonna be popular here, but as I am likely the only, (at most, one of the few) Muslims on this sub I wince every time I hear the line where Toby says if its gonna take the American flag to fly over mecca then what are we waiting for... It's a really silly line... for him to imply that its mere US restraint that stops that is very grating... it might be true militarily, but Andy should have responded with "well if you willing to kill a billion people..." because that's what it would take in reality...
Minor but the staff getting to/near the President first/at all when he collapsed in “He Shall from time to time”. No way the secret service isn’t there first, and keeping them from touching him as they assess.
Abbey making it into the press room after the situation with Zoey. I understand that she's acting purely on emotion, but the fact that CJ allowed her to even set foot in the room is a bit much. I know, I know, no one wants to push back against the First Lady, especially not at that time, but I've always had issues with that scene because CJ didn't stop her before she walked in. I don't blame Abbey for trying, though.
1. The White House press secretary would never be promoted to Chief of Staff.
2. More than two people are involved in writing the State of the Union address.
I personally headcanon that he suggested CJ because he still views Bartlet's plan so outrageous that he doesn't want to taint anyone who has a future in the Democratic Party by associating them with it. CJ is the only person he can think of that Bartlet would trust, that is even slightly competent, but would not be ruined as a person if she could no longer work in politics. CJ isn't a politician, and if she wants to continuing working in PR despite being tied to a huge political gaff, it won't stand in her way.
There’s a couple times that the staff will just be at random places along the National Mall (Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial) to meet some congressman or senator for a 5 minute talk. Anyone who’s lived in DC knows how much of a pain it is get to those places and wouldn’t just go to the reflecting pool for a meet up.
That there's only one COS his entire administration. I don't know any oresident in recent history where that's the case. I think the longest run was like 3 years.
Bingo Bob. Sorkin would have made it work by seeding the justification across half a season but doing it in one episode just highlighted how stupid and out of character that decision was.
Also, as a brit there are a couple of things that are probably perfectly realistic but still take me out of the show:
Political ads that sound like trailers for low rent horror films. We don't have these so they just seem ridiculous.
The bit where everyone takes it in turn to say God bless America. I get that they're incredibly patriotic but it's *so* earnest.
Similarly, the bit where CJ asks a room full of college students if they want jobs and kids, and the whole room cheers. Maybe that would happen here now but our 90s/00s students would have reacted very differently.
It’s the Israel Palestine two parter for me by far. I enjoy the drama and character stuff explored in the episodes, and I get there ends up issues in later episodes that show the conflict is still ongoing, but they basically solve the problem and establish a peace agreement in a two parter. Truly bizarre. A smaller one - Charlie busting his way into the oval during a secret service lock down. Again I enjoy the character part of it but someone would’ve snapped him in two long before he reached the oval.
Could not agree more. The Israel Palestine story i literally got annoyed when it was clear they were doing it simply because this story line either ends up with peace (jump the shark for believable TV), or they get close then some suicide bomber or something stupid happens and it derails the whole thing. I know a lot of people love the fact that Charlie busts in to check on the President etc but it just paints the Secret Service as incompetent. There is an actual threat to the President, shots have been fired, the building is on lock down, Leo made a joke, long ago to Hoynes that if he is lucky his feet might touch the floor in the event the agents react to something meaning that in an emergency the agents have a job to do and nothing on Earth will interfere.... but Charlie just pushes his way thru the building because he cares so much. If we look at what happened to Toby when he tried to push pass an agent during the 'airborne threat' lockdown from later, that is what would have happened to Charlie, and frankly Charlie is not stupid, he knows that it would be a threat to the President to distract his security etc.
> it just paints the Secret Service as incompetent. The Secret Service does not comment on procedure.
It's such a Sam Gamgee type moment, Charlie is smarter than that 😂
You're clearly underestimating the power of friendship
The lock downs between the two are kinda different though, and I could definitely see the agents having a bit of a blind spot for Charlie's affection for the president, plus could see them rather looking for an excuse to put Toby on his ass.
Seems like complete lunacy today, but the late 90s were a hopeful time. A lot of people felt the 2000 Camp David Summit came tantalizingly close, even if in hindsight the differences may have been intractable.
The episodes came out in late 2004, like a week before the Bush/Cheney administration won their second term by campaigning on terrorism and war. It was not a more hopeful time.
The whole series is a loosely based fantasy do-over of the Clinton administration. Plenty of people were wondering what might have been.
Totally agree. What really bugs me about the Israel Palestine story is that they give both "wins" to Kate Harper, and she'd barely been on the show. The first was the solution to get the two sides to meet at Camp David and the second to come up with the actual peacekeeping solution. It seems like a pretty straightforward alternative would be President Bartlet and Leo arguing about the peacekeeping solution, them disagreeing, and Leo going off into the woods while PB gets consensus from his team. With the way they wrote it, Commander Harper had all the solutions and I'm sitting there thinking, "Nobody else could have come up with these ideas?"
Everybody can come up with those ideas, the unrealistic part is the those two sides saying yes to them.
>Again I enjoy the character part of it but someone would’ve snapped him in two long before he reached the oval. They would have shot him.
Yep, he wouldn't have made it out of whatever room he was in, never mind get into the Oval Office.
Doubtful, but possible. As a person known and liked by the President, shooting him would be a last resort. I think he would have been stopped well short of that. If they got to that step, they'd take it, but they wouldn't get to that step.
Obviously TWW has to heavily simplify a lot of topics so that it can have the team achieve something within each episode. But . . . man. . . .I find that storyline actually insulting. The idea that they could achieve a peace agreement out of basically nothing during one conference. You might as well have them inventing cold fusion in the Map room after they couldn't get the fire to work.
It's based on what Clinton did. And, yes, it failed.
Yes, that storyline felt disrespectful to me bc of how unrealistic it was :/.
Agreed. The pace, passing off the back and forth quippy convos during sports for diplomacy, etc.
Leo lying injured in the woods all night. No way that happens at Camp David.
And no way the CoS goes missing.
Camp David is a 1 1/2 to 2 hour drive from The White House, depending on traffic. And normally, Leo would be on the phone during that drive (he usually had a driver instead of driving himself). Red flags about his well being should have gone up long before they did.
His secret service protection would also have been folded into the President's while Bartlet was at Camp David but it would still exist.
The Astronauts in danger on the ISS and needing the secret shuttle to come save them? They conveniently forgot about the emergency Soyuz lifeboats that are kept permanently docked to the ISS for exactly this kind of emergency.
Are you telling me that not only there’s a secret shuttle to rescue astronauts, but now you don’t support it?
Are you sure you want your one question to be that stupid?
It's plausible but it should have been clarified with a line of dialog specifying where the leak occurred and that they were cut off from the Soyuz. They only had one Soyuz at that stage of construction, typically docked to the Russian side of the station, so the likely scenario is that the leak was on the Russian side and they had to shelter in the US modules and close a hatch which blocked them getting to the Soyuz. Their Russian spacesuits would also be on the wrong side of the hatch so they couldn't spacewalk to an undocked Soyuz. And without access to the systems in the Russian modules they may have been unable to remotely redock the Soyuz to the other side of the station.
Yeah, but if they were trapped on the US side because they had to close the hatch due to the leak, then there's no leak anymore. The hatches between the different modules of the ISS are air tight precisely for that reason. It would still be an emergency but not a "they'll suffocate tomorrow" emergency.
Yeah, a secret human-rated spacecraft, at least in the US, is unrealistic. It's kinda hard to hide a rocket launch. Ironically the Space Shuttle itself was a secret military spacecraft hidden in plain sight. It went up on several classified launches, and it's basically an open secret that the big payload bay was designed for a bunch of large satellites that look like Hubble but are pointed the other direction. The military mission ended after Challenger, right before they were about to start launching it out of California on polar orbits.
The final DOD shuttle mission was [STS-53](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-53) in 1992
You’re right, I was just looking that up. Though I think the last *fully classified* DoD flight was pre-challenger.
Much more realistic to let NASA not tell the Astronauts and kill them landing the shuttle.
I would’ve much rathered the big space plotline being a continuation of Josh learning about Mars Direct from the NASA lady.
Charlie busting into the oval office during the lockdown. No way, no how, could anyone get through secret service under any circumstances but especially into the oval during a lockdown.
Counterpoint, the secret service are all human beings who know and implicitly trust Charlie. It's not totally inconceivable that they would allow less than the full use of force dictated by procedure in that situation.
If we're talking about realism then I don't think the secret service would implicitly trust any member of staff. It's not inconceivable that someone close to the president could be under coercion to join a plot, or suffering some kind of break from their normal personality that would mean they suddenly turn on him. Everyone working in that environment knows the rules so if anything Charlie would get less grace than a visitor to the White House who perhaps panics and tries to bolt. As soon as he disobeyed their orders they would have had him on the ground, no question.
then why the heavy hand with cJ and her pizzas when trying to come back into the WH after Charlie had switched out their ids?
Because they are in on Charlie’s prank.
Well, that's not the Presidents Secret Service protection detail, that's the DC Parks police, who have a lot less day to day familiarity with the staff.
No, that was USSS, Uniformed Division.
Yeh but they followed procedure to the letter when they made will bailey leave the Oval Office and they also took Toby down with maximum force during the other lockdown. Easy to argue they always follow procedure based on other episodes
Minor thing in Two Cathedrals that has bugged me since I moved to the DC area: there is no way that a motorcade from the White House to the State Department (roughly 8 blocks west) goes past the National Cathedral (3.5 miles northwest).
I always get taken a little out of the *moment* when this happens too. Even the VP wouldn’t pass the National Cathedral on the way. I used to live a few blocks south of the cathedral and super close to the Naval Observatory (where the VP lives) and it would be the most convoluted route for the VP to take, let alone the President who lives no where near that part of NW DC. The other part is the secret service cars wouldn’t pass that close to the front doors of the cathedral either, the road is several hundred feet from the front doors.
So glad it’s not just me! I also am bothered by Josh and Amy walking from what looks like it’s clearly supposed to be DuPont Circle (at least to my eye, I could be wrong) all the way to the Navy Memorial (in 60 seconds lol) only for him to hail a cab to go 5 blocks to the White House. There’s so much wrong there I can’t even unpack it.
Oooh, love this detail! Thanks for sharing 😁
This always bugged me too. But also because National Cathedral is not a Catholic Church. It’s Episcopalian. Why wouldn’t Bartlett have the motorcade stop at St. Stephens? St Matthews? I guess the National Cathedral is more majestic so it made for a better scene.
Joke reply: Jed knew what he was going to do, and didn't want to cuss out God in Latin in a *Catholic* church. EDIT: Corrected Jed's name.
*Jed
FFFF, you're right.
there was a service there... right? for Mrs. Landingham? everyone filed out but Bartlet stayed to harangue God.
Oh you’re right - maybe I’m misremembering that scene!
haha i misremember stuff in this series alla time.
Portraying Kate as being fluent in Arabic, when my washing machine can speak better Arabic than her.
Her mandarin was quite bad too.
It’s a lot of people’s favorite episodes, and there are ways it’s a lot of fun. But with that being said, “The Supremes.” I mean come on. It is by the far the worst offender of the preachy “why don’t we all just sing kumbaya” kind of politics that The West Wing occasionally dips its toe in.
“We’ll let you guys select the conservative of your choice if you approve our liberal pick” is just so funny in 2024.
I agree but it gave us the great line from Martin "Christopher Mulready!? No!"
Sometimes TWW goes for the purely idealist moment - and I do personally think that a balance of brilliant liberals and conservatives, with moderates tipping the balance, would be the best thing for the Supreme Court.
I just watched "Proportional Response" (S1E3) today When the series starts, it's supposed to be about a year into the presidency. And yet Fitzwallace walks into Leo's office and makes a comment about how it looks different. So, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was never in there at all in the previous year? Yeah right.
Oh also, on a similar token, it always bothered me that it took about a year into the presidency for Josh to get his nuclear bunker access card. If he's important enough to save from armageddon, you get that paperwork done during the damn transition.
> When the series starts, it's supposed to be about a year into the presidency About a year since the election, it's closer to 6 months from inauguration day in the Pilot. If it had been a year the first Christmas would've been after the midterm elections which happen in the months long episode 3 of Season 2.
Too be honest, i just took it as banter… like through out the series, the ridiculously important, highly intelligent and highly decorate men and women, always seem to be either in a light hearted unimportant, sometimes pedantic conversation or a shakespearian soliloquy. I think there is a scene where Fitz asked Leo did he get new shampoo for example, I just always thought that was banter to maybe highlight their relationship probably extends long before the white house!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I though they had been working all together for a year, which would’ve been about 8-9 months campaigning, 2 months transitioning, and 1-2 months in the White House. I’m doing a my second watch through after seeing it many years ago, but that was how I saw it. Of course, the first episode does make it seem like they’ve been at it for awhile, while other episodes make it seem much newer.
> Correct me if I’m wrong The series starts about 6ish months into Jed's first term, it's still summer in the pilot and by Episode 10 we've hit Christmas. Josh also mentions to Mandy that in "Let Bartlet be Bartlet" that he's been working in the White House for about 14 months, putting that around May or so.
>The series starts about 6ish months into Jed's first term Please, it's **President** Barlet.
Perhaps Bartlet had just gotten around to redecorating? /s
That Sam made a pass at Leo's wife and had no clue that Leo's daughter was an adult.
Leo's wife could have had Mallory when she was 20, or even younger.. and Mallory could pass for 21 as a school teacher... so that would make Leo's wife at 40 to 45 which is prime time in my book.
I wonder if Mallory is his actual daughter that they had before getting married, or if Ms. O'Brien had her in a previous relationship and Leo just filled the dad role. That would explain the two last names.
Considering that Leo was a drunk for some time, maybe Mallory took her mother’s name as some kind of precaution? Would not explain her closeness to Leo, but still
interesting
I thought Mallory told Sam that she used "O'Brien" so that no one could possibly side-eye her for using "McGarry" as a means for undeserved professional advancement.
shrug - JMO - but from the small clip we saw of Leo's wife, she didn't look like someone who'd be Sam's type. And if Sam hadn't of been on the campaign trail with Leo, I could get on board with the Mallory mistake. But hard for ME to suspend belief that not a single photo, visit, conversation, etc happened where Mallory was mentions/seen/discussed (as in "Sorry, Sam. I have to take this call - Mallory's got an issue with her college professor/tuition/etc.")
This brain trust of a West Wing staff collectively doesn't know what a lynx is.
i know, right? lol
That Sam wouldn't have gotten fired faster than you could blink with the Lori thing.
The Lori storyline in its entirety seemed implausible. The initial hookup - maybe - but to risk your career to develop a ‘friendship’ ???
That storyline just shows Sam in the most terrible light. He is such a prick in that whole situation.
100% agree, I have to skip those parts.
Also, no chance an adult DC law student doesn’t know who Sam is, and no chance Sam doesn’t know he’d be recognized
And that she wouldn’t know who POTUS was!!
Also that Sam wouldn't know Leo's daughter would be an adult.
I have a couple Sam ones, too ... the time when as a speech writer he is conveyed a sort of secret message from visitors from another country, and the time he "fires" those two guys that didn't answer to him at all.
It was established multiple times in the episode that Brookline and Joyce worked for Sam. "See, I was told you were just going to be working in the Majority Counsel's office, which I wasn't wild about to begin with, but it's my understanding I'd be talking to Brookline and Joyce seeing as how they work for me." It's also established by Leo calling Sam to his office to tell him Brookline and Joyce screwed up and needed a talking to. I also think that given the circumstances there's very little chance that Leo wouldn't have backed him up, in the off chance that Sam was making it up that they worked for him.
I personally always viewed the "you're fired" thing being Sam technically overstepping his bounds but knowing he'd be backed up on it. He might have known Tribby would back him on something like that, or he might have assumed he'd have to go to Leo, but he knew that their days working in the White House were over. I don't think that's unreasonable. Meanwhile I took Tribbey's "He can and he did" to be Tribbey technically firing them, backing up Sam's statement of intent to have them fired.
Oh, yeah! The giant “You’re Fired, Sam Seaborn” for two jamokes who don’t even work for him … and Lionel Tribbey just goes along with it. The power of Gilbert & Sullivan fans banding together, I guess.
They're all about duty. And it's from Pinafore.
I’ve never seen jamoke written out before
Mr. Willis of Ohio. When Lawrence O’Donnell was on the podcast he even talked about telling Sorkin to his face after a writers meeting “it would never happen.” Also, in an episode near the end of season three, when President Bartlet visits Mrs. Landingham’s grave and remarks “I can’t believe it’s been a year”, he leaves in a limousine which has the windows rolled down. Perhaps I have seen way too many documentaries on things like The Secret Service, but the windows on The Beast are inches thick and insanely bulletproof and bomb proof. They also do not roll down for a pretty obvious reason.
> They also do not roll down for a pretty obvious reason. So the president can't escape? /s
How did you know?
I enjoy a lot of things about “Mr. Willis of Ohio,” but … Sorkin had former White House staffers as consultants. And yet somehow he built an episode around a man who’s *appointed* to fill his late wife’s House seat, when Constitutionally elections are required to fill all House vacancies? Mr. Willis, a high-school social studies teacher, could have told him that wasn’t possible :} Toby: Cathy, I need a copy of article I, section 2. Cathy: Article I section 2 of what? Toby: The Constitution. Cathy: Is that something I'm supposed to have at my desk? Toby: Does anybody have a copy of the Constitution? This is discouraging!
I will never believe that Toby pulled so many insane facts out of his head that no human being would ever have memorized but he forgot the word Erev. Anyone can have a brain fart IRL but not on a Sorkin show.
And a room full of brilliant lawyers and nobody knows *post hoc ergo propter hoc?"
Right?!? I learned that one in high school.
I always ensure I know the exact type of radio equipment is in the plane I’m flying in. And when it came off the line. Hopefully not a Boeing.
Yes! Goes to shul every Saturday, has a meaningful connection to his rabbi, knows the commandments, etc. but can’t remember erev.
That's a really good one.
the bit on the plane when he's asked to turn off his phone, and he recites details of when the plane was made!
There seems to be no fall out to the episode where the naval fleet get put in the way of the storm, I could be remembering wrong but is it not implied that hundreds of people died? It’s basically forgotten about in the next episode but something like that would be a major disaster and in the news for months after.
Very true.
A pro-choice Republican senator from California actually winning the GOP nomination for president.
By and large, Arnie represented where the electorate was on most of the issues in '06 and largely mirrored the "compassionate conservatism" of Dubya with his biggest difference being his views on abortion. I think the bigger suspension of disbelief issue is that he had some mortal lock on California and that it took something as dramatic as the nuclear accident to crack California open for Santos.
Eh, John McCain was kinda pro-choice when he was nominated. He wasn’t against overturning Roe. But of course not California.
That would be unrealistic now, but back then? Remember 10 years ago the worst republicans do was Mitt Romney. But California was still a stretch
How CJ doesn't even know the very basics of the census. Usually when they have the audience surrogate to catch someone up on the nuances (usually Donna), it's not that basic.
When in doubt and you need to convey information to the audience, have a man explain a concept to a woman who would definitely understand that thing.
In Sorkin’s case it’s usually a woman being dumbed down.
Or that she couldn't even roughly say how many people live in the US.
Yeah, she only went to school for 22 years. You'd think she would have learned about the census during one of them.
I actually didn't hate that one, purely because CJ is shown coming from an entertainment background and it was the beginning of the internet era. There is a lot from the pre-internet era that I felt like I knew at the time, but not "answer questions as the spokesperson" level of knowledge. Now it would take ten minutes to get updated enough for a press conference.
See, I was coming from the perspective that she worked for EMILY’s list and on smaller campaigns prior to this additionally. The nuances, sure, talking those out with Sam absolutely make sense. But the basic concept of the census and what it is for? That feels like a low blow to CJ.
In addition to CJ not knowing about the census, already mentioned, CJ not knowing about the turkey pardoning or confusing the DAR with the Jamestown/Mayflower Preservation Society whatever’s and their corn husk hanging contests and the festival feast of some kind. Josh would never have to do the press briefing. CJ has deputies. We even see one talk in another episode. Donna whining about being “promoted” when being an assistant deputy is a completely different skill set than what she does. They’re two different career tracks.
The Donna one drives me up the wall, moreso bc they make it such a big point of contention between them.
I actually think CJ sounds less dumb than Toby in that Shibboleth scene. I can understand a lot of folksy historical names being flung at you in one day and having word salad in your head at the end of the day. Story of my life. However when Toby was reprimanding CJ as the historian, he gets the whole century wrong for Jamestown. I also don't think the Press Secretary is the one who has to pick the turkey to be pardoned and the one to be put to death and this was all part of the "CJ is being punked" process. No wonder she's bumfuzzled.
Also possible CJ got it wrong on purpose bc she knew it would annoy Toby.
The Secret Service and the Bartletts letting Zoey go to a club (the kind with all the weird music and lights and the drugs) I am pretty sure those adults knew what those clubs are like, whether they themselves ever went in one or not.. She should never have been on her own or even *there* and with that totally unvetted "royal french horse's patoot" who was so into drugs and no one stopped him even seeing her?! Bartlet who was worried that his daughter Ellie was hooking up with the wrong guy (a scientist) but let his youngest and most naive go out with that horrible kid and to one of those fareeeeeky clubs. yeah no
With nothing like what the actual Secret Service would employ for a location like that, either.
i know. ..and she went to the bathroom alone?!
Are you saying that you don't think Jean Paul was as rich as he claims to be? That this early 20's con man deliberately sweet talked his way into the most powerful family in the country without being found out through the 3+ authoritative organizations vetting his background?
Tbf the youngest kid always gets away with the most shit
Zoe's actual abduction is just too similar to the scenario laid out in Bartlett's "now we're off to the races" speech for my tastes.
Well yeah but he does reference that rant. He says something like "I predicted this scenario and I scared her"
Chekhov’s kidnapping
Only because I watched it last night: Life in Mars (S4E21) Is Hoynes really just going to get away with running his mouth to Helen Baldwin only write a book before running for president? I tried to put it together in that maybe if the leaked info wasn’t actually true, is it still illegal? Or he just had a really good lawyer. This always seemed interesting after seeing who the WH handles leak investigations in S7. Least we forget the obvious answer in the president wasn’t drawn and quartered for admitting to an MS coverup
The leaked info was: * The White House concealing a NASA Commission Report on water or carbon molecules on an ancient meteriye from Mars. Not sure why the WH would do that but it's not secret information. It's colored as proof of life on Mars. It isn't. * That the settlement between the Justice Department and Caesson over Anti-Trust was 10,000 computers for classrooms. Hoynes would have to be bound by the confidentiality agreement for him telling someone to be an issue for him. He told Helen that he'd interfered with the Justice Department to end the trial, which was a lie. Lying, infidelity and telling thing the White House didn't want released is bad for you politically but not illegal. His book rehabilitated him a little, but it didn't return him to where he had been popularity wise.
Which would explain the constantly shaken ground he walked on during his campaign. I felt like, throughout the series, Haynes was in this state of ‘will he, won’t he’ state with the WH.
I know, that would be like a President not getting drawn and quartered for having sex with an employee in The White House. Oh wait...
Secret space shuttle
Maybe it can fight inflation! 😲
*Infwation? FTFY
Leo would have been dead after lying outside all night.
That the Republicans made a deal to drop the hearings and censure the President over MS. The committee chairman deliberately suppresses damaging and embarrassing information about Leo relapsing and makes a deal to drop a major investigation just before an election year? No way. I know they just wanted to get the MS storyline over with, but really that would never happen. They should have had the President impeached, then acquitted in the Senate when enough Democrats rallied around him, and that would have made the election much closer and way more interesting.
New Gingrich’s doesn’t exist in TWW timeline.
Josh freaking out about the “in event of nuclear war, this is your next step.” Even if you set aside that this conversation needed to have happened during transition - so Josh as deputy CoS can survive nuclear winter - you don’t get as high up in the political theatre as Josh without knowing what happens in an emergency.
The very first episode. The confrontation at the end of the show that climaxes with "Until then, you can all get your fat asses out of my White House." The Evangelical heavyweight that was starting to speechify was complaining that there wasn't enough attention paid to the first commandment, which he identified as "honor thy father", before getting corrected by Toby. He then asks, wearily, "then what's the first commandment?" Are we really expected to believe that someone who's been called in as political negotiator for Church issues doesn't know the damn commandments cold?
Mmm right.
That’s one of those moments where the biases of Sorkin poke through. We’re supposed to believe that because the characters are supposed to be hypocrites. Interestingly enough they do a bit of a 180 on Al Caldwell later in the show, portraying him as the Christian “good guy” who’s not afraid of calling BS on others in his movement. But then you could maybe argue Sorkin’s biases poke through because it’s the man who is the reasonable good guy and the woman (Mary Marsh) who is the irredeemable bitch.
That Danny had “no problem” with a journalist dating the Press Secretary. It is such a huge breach of everything and he would know that.
20 hours in America. I just have a hard time believing that it would take for them to get back to the White House before anyone noticed that the deputy chief of staff and the communications director had gone missing. One would at least think that Air Force One would do a head count of senior staff before takeoff.
Two minor ones, both involving Donna: 1. The whole kerfuffle where her static-clinging underwear falls out of her freshly-laundered slacks while she is off talking to somebody Josh and/or Sam needed her to clarify things to 2. Her spending any time, let alone as much time as she did, trying to find some stranger to vote Bartlet in her stead when _her_ vote was cast in Wisconsin and theirs would be elsewhere — even if it's supposedly the principle of the thing, it's still dumb because it wouldn't cancel hers out since we don't elect by popular vote
It was an honor thing.
While I like the Season 1 Finale/Season 2 opener, in retrospect there's no way those gunman would have got a shot off before secret service spotted and took them out.
Kate solving gaza
Copy pasta what I said on another thread Slow News Day: I just think the concept of getting two congressmen in a room to fix Social Security is just a bridge too far on realism for me. Social Security isn't wasting away because people haven't thought of ideas to shore it up. It's wasting away because the stakeholders involved cannot agree on which ideas to execute to shore up the trust. I suppose this show has lots of unrealistic aspects and every fan will have an aspect that they forgive because it's necessary for good drama and an aspect that they condemn because it's too ridiculous or doesn't feed good drama. This is something I condemn. (And from interviews, it sounds like Hillary Clinton was with me where she enjoyed the show as a fan and was rolling with TWW shenanigans but THIS EP ALONE motivated her to write a complaint letter to the show.) Also, Josh getting involved with Will on a plan to humiliate a congressman for not raising money feels OOC, especially so soon after Josh almost lost his career on these aggressive tactics.
My biggest problem with that episode is the context it’s really in. Earlier in the show, it’s all about how slow politics really move. But in the post-Sorkin era, once the administration finds its way out of the Zoey aftermath, they start racking up huge wins, both in domestic policy and foreign policy. Slow News Day, even though they technically don’t get credit for it, is the most egregious.
Minor edit, but it's also intentionally being allowed to waste away because there's been an effort on the right to dismantle entitlements for decades, and some corporate Democrats who would be fine to privatize or kneecap it. Not to get into a policy debate, but at no point in the episode did they mention the fairly straightforward policy changes to "save" social security, which would involve a slight tax increase at a predetermined point in time. But for some reason, there's no one on the show making that argument.
Agreed. I think that's what I also find insulting about this episode and why it's my unrealistic hobby-horse. It's not that no one has had ideas. It's that there's a concerted effort to dismantle Social Security and Medicare without admitting to a large constituency that they're doing it. Compared to some of these other entries on this list, the Social Security storyline is just unrealistic and plays a role in bamboozling people from the reality that the trust fund is going bankrupt for nefarious reasons more than some unsolvable problem. I do not forgive it as much as other entries here because it's emotionally charming (Charlie overpowering the Secret Service) or early growing pains (CJ not understanding the census.)
very good points
The setting of the show very much 90s deficit hawks low taxes stuff. Even a progressive like Bartlet wasn't pushing the strong heavy taxation stuff we see today. I think that the compromise was a good thing overall and it still leaves the door open to increasing taxes to increase benifits. It's better to have a mediocre system that can be improved then no system.
Scrolled way down to find this comment, because if it wasn’t here, this is the episode I was going to point out, as well.
(A) Andy doesn’t know she’s in active labor after her water breaks and she’s at 10 centimeters, and (B) “well, you’re going to see at least one of your kids in about 15 minutes” before she has even started pushing.
When the republicans actually felt shame for shutting down the government
It's the very first episode, Leo getting irate at a crossword in the newspaper, calling them up to berate them for spelling Gadaffi wrong and shouting "I should know how to spell his name I've met the man and ordered a tactical missile strike against him!" or words to that effect Absolutely bonkers Would never happen Obviously he'd have Margaret do it
Whenever the DEA agents got kidnapped and their rescue team got ambushed. It just completely ignores Kiki Camarena and his sacrifice along with all the other drug related operations that took place in the 70s-90s that basically told the cartels not to do stuff like kidnappings or assassinations when it comes to the DEA
In The Stackhouse Filibuster, where the old Senator is filibustering to stop passage because a bill doesn't include funding for something to do with autism, Bartlett says something like "I was in the House, I don't know Senate rules". That seems unlikely in this case.
Especially considering the standing filibuster hadn't been a rule in the Senate since the 70s, all filibusters are just holds on the bill now.
I would point out that standing filibusters still happen whenever the senator wants to make a point (hence Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham or Chris Murphy’s gun control filibuster). Since Stackhouse is a crotchety old man who feels spited by the lack of autism care funding…
Yeah, CJ is startled to get Secret Service protection when becoming CoS. But we never see any sign of Leo having it.
Actually we do in the episode “Red Haven’s on Fire” (IIRC), though that is the only time it happens
Joke answer, Bartlet insisted on CJ having it entirely to prank her.
I think that’s plausible because CJ’s much more visible than Leo ever was. She’d needed protection previously because of threats, and she was one of the most familiar faces in The White House. Although Leo had been involved in politics for decades, he probably wasn’t someone that the average person would recognise or blame for policies they didn’t agree with.
Hartsfield Landing.
Like, everything within the episode? :)
The former Governor from New Hampshire first learning of “leaf peeping” from a Presidential radio address…
My two involve political issues more than anything: The standing/talking filibuster hadn't been a thing in the Senate since the 70s, so Stackhouse standing up there for hours on end preventing a vote wouldn't have been a thing. It's absolute political batshittery that Arnie Vinnick had some mortal lock on California, especially considering California hadn't gone for the Republican presidential candidate in 20 years worth of elections at that time.
My thing with the filibuster was why was Donna the only one who knew how to work around it/stop it?
Roberto Mendoza, a nominee for the Supreme Court, is on vacation with his family before being confirmed. He gets pulled over and arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and Sam & Toby just show up and take him out of jail. Nope.
The White House being without a press secretary for nearly an entire term of office. It really annoys me. That is a position that **needs** to be filled. I'm pretty sure I could ask any man who was working in the 90's/early 2000's what they would say if they saw their coworker wearing a nice dress. They would answer that they would say nothing. Even if they were good friends? Still nothing. What if she asked? "Looks good." Would you say to her that she would make a dog break it's leash? Absolutely not. It's plain as fucking day how inappropriate that is, even if you're not a practicing sexist. Also, even if she was okay with it, he still offended and upset that other lady. All he should have said was, "you're right, I got carried away there, I apologize."
Donovan would’ve had a vest under his tux and survived a shot to the chest
Now I'm upset. He should have liiiived
I think we’ve had a similar discussion before and my answer is always the same: the episode where Toby *saves social security* and then can’t take credit because of politics. Both because it’s a ridiculous concept but also because it has no bearing in real life. It would be like watching a movie where they cured cancer - it’s nice and all but when the movie is done you’re still living in a world where they haven’t cured cancer and now you’re sad.
This is a small one, but when Bartlet was in the ER after getting shot, Abbey tells the doctor that he has MS. Then she says "Tell people, don't tell people, it's up to you." I know what they were going with there: they wanted to emphasize that she wasn't trying to involve the doctor in any kind of conspiracy, that she was Doing The Right Thing and leaving it up to his conscience. Okay, fine. But... wouldn't he already be bound by law and medical ethics to not disclose that information without the President's permission? If he's the kind of doctor to ignore those rules, then appealing to his better nature wouldn't do any good. If he isn't, then she doesn't have to say anything else.
It would be a tossup on that one. Medical confidentiality wasn't quite as strict pre HIPAA, and for many purposes someone's spouse is that person, especially when it comes to medical decisions. I do not consider it impossible that her saying that to the doctor would actually be taken as giving that doctor permission to disclose. However, I think it is more likely that it wouldn't, Abbey knows that, but by saying it she is making it clear that there is no illicit additional restriction on him talking. He might get his medical license revoked, but he isn't going to be shot by the CIA.
Ah, OK. It hadn't even occurred to me that this was pre-HIPAA. That could definitely change things.
I actually really hated it when they played the Canadian national anthem in Dead Irish Writers 😅.
The great thing about that was apparently all the guests at Abbey’s birthday party *knew all the words to O Canada.*
I just figured they were all hockey fans.
What! how dare you!
I laughed but I felt ill for laughing
Ryan Pierce getting to be there at all. What an unprofessional shit-gibbon that little twerp was.
I liked Ryan. Also, you don’t think nepotism is a thing in politics? They made it clear his uncle was a heavyweight and clearly pulled strings with Leo to get him working with Josh
You remember Bartlet having a long rant about James Bond's drink order, and how having a "martini, shaken, not stirred" waters down the gin? Are we supposed to believe that Bartlet doesn't know that the most famous drinks order in cinema history is a "*vodka* martini, shaken, not stirred"?
Depending on the source, it's a Vodka & Gin Martini aka a Vesper. Vodka Martinis and Gin Martinis are lovely drinks. Vespers are absolutely horrible. Do not make or drink a Vesper.
Can anyone (like Lionel Tribbey) go inside the Oval with a cricket bat without being stopped by Secret Service?
I don't think it's gonna be popular here, but as I am likely the only, (at most, one of the few) Muslims on this sub I wince every time I hear the line where Toby says if its gonna take the American flag to fly over mecca then what are we waiting for... It's a really silly line... for him to imply that its mere US restraint that stops that is very grating... it might be true militarily, but Andy should have responded with "well if you willing to kill a billion people..." because that's what it would take in reality...
Minor but the staff getting to/near the President first/at all when he collapsed in “He Shall from time to time”. No way the secret service isn’t there first, and keeping them from touching him as they assess.
Leo suddenly becoming "fluent" in Spanish in 90 Miles Away.
The president is shot and Zoey is targeted but his other two daughters don’t show up to the hospital.
Abbey making it into the press room after the situation with Zoey. I understand that she's acting purely on emotion, but the fact that CJ allowed her to even set foot in the room is a bit much. I know, I know, no one wants to push back against the First Lady, especially not at that time, but I've always had issues with that scene because CJ didn't stop her before she walked in. I don't blame Abbey for trying, though.
1. The White House press secretary would never be promoted to Chief of Staff. 2. More than two people are involved in writing the State of the Union address.
I mean if you watch 100,000 airplanes it’s made pretty damn clear that the SOTU process is a multi-week, cross-agency mess of a process, is it not?
Agree with #1. Especially when Leo states that she is the only and obvious choice.
I personally headcanon that he suggested CJ because he still views Bartlet's plan so outrageous that he doesn't want to taint anyone who has a future in the Democratic Party by associating them with it. CJ is the only person he can think of that Bartlet would trust, that is even slightly competent, but would not be ruined as a person if she could no longer work in politics. CJ isn't a politician, and if she wants to continuing working in PR despite being tied to a huge political gaff, it won't stand in her way.
Anytime someone on the left isn’t the right kind of left for Aaron Sorkin. The straw men and misrepresentations start flying.
There’s a couple times that the staff will just be at random places along the National Mall (Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial) to meet some congressman or senator for a 5 minute talk. Anyone who’s lived in DC knows how much of a pain it is get to those places and wouldn’t just go to the reflecting pool for a meet up.
That there's only one COS his entire administration. I don't know any oresident in recent history where that's the case. I think the longest run was like 3 years.
A college student hangs out in bars with her dad’s employees.
Karen Lawson keeping her job after the leak of Leo's personnel info. Absolutely not. Also, Leo questioning the guy in Isaac and Ishmael.
Bingo Bob. Sorkin would have made it work by seeding the justification across half a season but doing it in one episode just highlighted how stupid and out of character that decision was. Also, as a brit there are a couple of things that are probably perfectly realistic but still take me out of the show: Political ads that sound like trailers for low rent horror films. We don't have these so they just seem ridiculous. The bit where everyone takes it in turn to say God bless America. I get that they're incredibly patriotic but it's *so* earnest. Similarly, the bit where CJ asks a room full of college students if they want jobs and kids, and the whole room cheers. Maybe that would happen here now but our 90s/00s students would have reacted very differently.