I’m currently watching the whole of The West Wing from the start and blogging my thoughts as I go. So HERE BE SPOILERS FOR ALL SHOWS UP TO SEASON TWO EPISODE SEVEN.
Well, speaking of spoilers, you may have noticed that I haven’t done much in the way of images or links. Unfortunately, that is how it is going to stay, because in the three attempts I have made to look up something related to an episode, I’ve managed to run into spoilers. Not from the articles, but from Google Instant Search autocompleting for me – and YouTube Related Videos.
So, yeah, thanks for that Internet.
I’ve got a queue of things I’ll write about, but in my viewing I’m up to S2E7, “The Portland Trip”, set entirely during a cross-country plane flight. A little bit of a holding episode, as no-one really gets what they want – apart from Bartlet who gets CJ to wear a Notre Dame baseball cap as punishment for a sarky comment about their American football team. As I watch episodes on the train to and from work, there were several moments where I had to cough in order to stifle laughter. “Oh look, photo op” was brilliant.
One of the spoilers I ended up reading was that Josh and Donna do seem to get together – which is clearly inevitable after this episode, where Donna is dressed for a date but pulled back into work and complimented by a tipsy Josh. So even though I know the punchline, the setup should be fun.
I’ll write more about the end of Season One / start of Season Two in a bit, given that they were pivotal to the whole series and, well, because they were three episodes in a row which made it onto my list of Favourite Things In TV Ever. As the show is really in its stride, I noticed several things have been quietly dropped.
The key one, for those who have watched, is the loss of the character of Mandy. I’ll not say it was a shame, as one of the most prominent characters at the start of Season One was invisible by the end. I don’t think it was the fault of the writers or Moira Kelly who played her – she just never seemed to fit in. Was she an antagonist for Josh? If so, why stick her in the West Wing, rather than working outside against them? The whole “piece of paper” subplot that took up an episode or two seemed like a last throw of the dice – I was thinking “of course she is going to write what Bartlet’s weaknesses are – that would be her damned job.”
Mandy only did what Sam did in an episode – explore an alternate position. Sam did it and kept quiet in order to wind up Mallory – and she has quietly disappeared too. I expect she will be back in some form, but that relationship seemed to be building up before hitting a brick wall. Mallory wasn’t even at the hospital after the shooting.
Finally, Sams relationship with Laurie, the call girl was cleared up very quickly, too. Half a season of “will this get out to the public? We’re screwed if it gets out to the public.” and then suddenly “It is public. Oh, well.” No aftermath, no goodbye, no revenge against the waitress “friend” who sold the story for $50,000. Obviously it couldn’t keep going forever, but it would have been nice to have had a conclusion.
Zoe seems to have disappeared too, with Charlie making some comments which seem to indicate he on the market. There is a blog about those two that I need to get around to as well.
7 episodes down in the season, 22 to go. I assume we’re going to get into the meat of the arc now, with a new Senate and Congress after the Midterms. Aynsley Hayes in on board, which I’ll write more about separately.
Out of My Tiny Mind 