The West Wing: Trivia, Questions (Here Be Spoilers)

[Fiderer]

Also admiration and swooning. If you haven't watched all 7 seasons, read no further!

Two Cathedrals - have watched it several times and only just realised last night that Mrs Landingham was driving back to the WH as Bartlet wanted to tell her about the MS.

I love the scenes with young Mrs L and Jed.

Why "two" cathedrals though?

I was never clear over whether they were actually back together - in the flashforward in the Bartlett Library opening, Jed certainly seemed very familiar with what Charlie was up to (didn't need to ask any questions like he did with the others). I would imagine Jed and Charlie keeping in v regular contact anyway but I did get the impression Charlie was part of his everyday life. So I assumed he was still with Zoe.

Did anyone watch the WW when it first aired? And was Leo in the flashforward when they first showed it at the start of season 7? I heard he was and then it was reshot for the dvds. I understand why but irrationally wish they had left it.

No, I'm pretty certain he wasn't in when it first aired, purely by happenstance I'm sure :( I definitely watched it at the time, will have to Google now to see if I can find out.

I'm pretty sure this was written at the time - for some reason the West Wing Continuity Guide just stops a few episodes into Season 7. Thinking about it, given they didn't want to give away the outcome of the election, it would actually have been pretty hard to have had Leo in the scene, which I think is the more obvious explanation.

And - apols for triple post - some more information here.

But wasn't Sam getting MARRIED? when Josh goes back for him???

Yes, Sam was always getting married :) We meant were Charlie and Zoey back together, not Mallory and Sam. I always thought the episodes with Mallory in after Leo's heart attack were particularly shit (for her character) - no lines at all in the one where he is taken to hospital, some passing reference to her baby in the one with his funeral.

I shall stop before I get ranting properly about the dreadfulness of his funeral episode.

I read that the intention was for Vinick to win the election. The indication was that, after John Spencer's death, they thought the fans wouldn't like/be able to cope with both Leo's death and Santos losing.

It's never been officially confirmed, but there are a lot of articles online regarding this theory.

So it's possible, when shooting the flash-forward at the start of Season 7, it was supposed to be Vinick getting out of the car.

Thanks very much for those links tribpot - that has bothered me for ages and does make sense now, that the way they used Leo in that scene would have given away the ending - he would have been arriving with the motorcade or with the rest of them in the library, depending. They did get around that with Josh but Josh's role is left somewhat vague there I guess - its only when you see it again at the end that you can be sure he's being Santos's COS there.

I've read that in a few places too CaveMum - that if the WW was cancelled during the seventh season, Vinick would probably win (and if it continued, Santos). And that John Spencer's death changed that idea - and that some of the cast who were unsure anyway, definately did not want to continue on without him either.

Personally, I always felt that was Santos's foot and stride getting out of the car

Yes but for me, Santos won the day he addressed the congregation before Ronnie Burkes funeral. A triumph. If the plan was changed, it was changed with skill and dexterity.

Celestial I'm betting I could've helped the Congressman relax on Election Day

tripot, yes I meant to say Charlie & Zoey's relationship pre Jean Paul Pierre Claude Charpentier Vicomte de Condé de Bourbon (yes I had to look it up)
I thought that a little jealously in their relationship after that worked wonders .
Yes, I assumed they were together at the end.

Also,
I always wondered why Mallory was with the staff (in the hospital waiting room) when her father had had the heart attack. Okay, so she might have been in the same room with them for comfort. But when Martin Sheen tells them all to 'go say goodbye to his outgoing CoS, why is Mallory trooping in there with everyone else?? She is not staff and certainly shouldn't rank lower than POTUS. Surely in the situ, it would be family then POTUS and work colleagues?
I don't know, maybe it was just me.

tribpot not tripot

There is that scene in the Oval Office between Charlie and Bartlet after the cringe meeting outside Zoey's room where Bartlet misunderstands what Charlie says. He thinks Charlie wants to marry her and Charlie says "No, that's not it..." then turns around and asks if he would have Bartlet's approval.

So I think they do stay together.

Agree with Ample that it was odd that Mallory went with the WW staff to "say goodbye to my former CoS". As his daughter she would have stayed behind and seen him alone surely?

Don't know, Bartlet and Leo were sooo close, like family, so he'd probably be on a par with Mallory, and I wouldn't have thought Josh would have been that much lower. Remember, Leo effectively gave up his family for the WW. They were like family. (Going all gooey...)

OTOH, of course she'd say goodbye alone.

(Wish I had the courage of my convictions...)

Yes but this was Leo had his first heart attack, not when he died. They weren't trooping in to say goodbye to him for forever, but rather when he was leaving his job - so Mallory wouldn't be saying goodbye at all, she'd be staying with him. I guess she maybe went in with everyone else to hear them make their farewells, but more or less it came across as 'crap, we can only get the actress for one afternoon, what can we do that will look authentic?'. They'd almost have been better to pretend she'd just stepped out of the room when the Pres went in or something.

Malory didn't need to be in the scene. TWW viewers are intelligent - are we not? I think we could have assumed as much and so she really didn't need to be there.

And while I'm on the subject of scenes that don't fit,

I really disliked The Wedding
What no Liz? No Zoey? - not even a mention of them iirc (I could be wrong on that point).
I know it was S7 and there was a lot going on at home and out with the campaigns, but really, the lack of sisters? I still don't get it.
Yes, we can come to our own conclusions but even a face here or there would have been better than nothing at all.
I found the entire wedding setup unbelievable because of this.

Oh and what happened to Ainsley, I mean where on earth did she go? I think we each could have our own theory but it would have been nice for the writers to add a little something in there, you know, so that the world made sense!

I really get annoyed when they don't follow up.

Let us think for ourselves, sure, but in the real world people aren't automatically forgotten about.
Sam left for California and his name is hardly mentioned again until Josh meets up with him in S7.
He was a WW employee for years, are we supposed to believe that his name just wouldn't come up with Toby, Josh and CJ?

I don't knock TWW often, I have been a faithful fan since it first aired and I recorded it everyweek on video, but these are just a few gripes

I needed to get all that off my chest

Ample, generally this is part of the Later Years phenomenon of the West Wing, which I bang on about frequently - the soap opera-y storylines like Will and Kate that serve no purpose, etc etc. And yes, The Wedding is a stupid storyline and completely out of character for Ellie, who was always the least 'White Housey' of the three daughters, it's completely implausible she would have wanted to get married there.

With the disappearance of characters, I think there's more a desire to keep options open by not saying 'Sam has moved to California' or 'Ainsley is now at the Hoover Institute'. I think we were potentially meant to believe Sam had returned to a position as a senior counsellor to the Pres once he crashed and burned in the California 47th.

I guess the way US TV shows get commissioned doesn't help - I get the impression they don't often know how many episodes they're actually going to get given to make (you wouldn't have thought this would have been such a problem for TWW but in general) so it makes it very hard to do anything too definitive except at the beginning or end of a season because you might suddenly have to fill in three extra episodes and need plot ambiguity to make that possible. As Sorkin was still writing the scripts as they were trying to film them, I think 'long term planning' was not exactly his middle name in those days :)

Oh plus, it must be expensive to get the actors under contract so you can always have them when you need them, I think this has something to do with whether you're a recurring guest star or a series regular. But you still shouldn't plan a Bartlet girl wedding when you can't get the other two for the episode - but you also shouldn't put a fine actress like the woman who plays Mallory in for completely pointless mini-scenes. It really would have made more sense to make a casual remark about how Mallory was downstairs on the phone to her mother or something, rather than have her appear for 2 mins and no lines and then not be seen again.

You're right, the wedding was annoying. The whole Kazakhstan story was annoying too - I thought S7 was over-heavy on the foreign policy side. CJ and Kate save the world. Again! The writers may have thought it balanced out the domestic election campaign but I don't remember Leo having as much foreign stuff.

In the Wedding episode - worst bit was the Ellie and the East German soldiers story, totally unbelievable but then again I never liked Ellie. The whole Josh and the media buys story and Santos wondering if he should drop Josh was more interesting. Confusing too, but I think that's what it's like and all the heavyweights (Barry Goodwin, Montgomery) could have and would have met up without a convenient wedding they all attend.

Best bit about the wedding is the dignitary bingo and CJ in the Sit Room where they're all in their wedding finery and she says, ""What have we got, Miles? Other than the sensation that we've all suddenly landed in a British drawing room farce?"

Agree with everything everyone has said about the wedding - the least sensible episode of the whole show. There should be nieces and nephews to be bridesmaids! No way she'd get married without her sisters there.

And using Mallory as basically an extra made no sense either.

Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed the Bon Jovi episode we watched last night - it shows a whole different side to Lou, too, as she gets all girlyband flirty

The trouble is .. now I want to watch The Wedding.

What the hell - fire up the S7 DVD!

Good news! Have convinced DH that It Is Time and we are starting episode 1 season 1! Squeeeeee!!

I hope you have not come to a sudden arboreal stop, flowery :)

I just noticed something in The Birnam Woods - it looks like Leo drops something before he goes off into the woods, a panic button or something? Still doesn't explain why no-one gets worried when they can't find him for such a long period.

I wish in hindsight they hadn't have filmed John Spencer acting a heart attack scene :(

I rewound that bit, tribpot. It's a button from his jacket.

Can't watch the rest of the scene.

It was hard to watch even before I knew of John Spencer's death. Far too realistic.

I agree it was very strange they all managed to miss the fact he was missing - surely the secret service would have had some idea that the COS had suddenly disappeared off their radar altogether?