Calling all WingNuts - West Wing Appreciation thread here! Potential SPOILERS!

[FrankelandFilly]

It's been a while since we had a WW thread so here we go again!

Be warned, if you've not watched the whole series, you may come across spoilers.

So, favourite episodes/quotes/characters?

For me, favourite episodes: Two Cathedrals and The Supremes, plus numerous others!

Quotes: too many to mention! Bartlett's monologue in Two Cathedrals; Josh and CJ going head to head on many occasions; Toby's "Did you trip?"

Characters: all of them! Except Mandy

Yeah - at the time santos was 9 points down and Leo testifying in such a huge scandal about a military security leak would have killed the chances of the campaign. The head of the dccc calls him electoral dynamite.

There are loads of theories online about other people being the leak :) I guess I'm coming round to it really being Toby after all.

Should CJ have got into trouble for telling Toby in the irst place?

That's one thing I love about TWW... There are things that go over my head; sometimes just the language/terminology they use but sometimes bigger things like that, and it in no way diminishes my enjoyment of the series.

I showed my husband 'In the shadow of.... Parts 1 and 2' last night to get him into the series as suggested up thread.. Hopefully it's worked! He definitely seemed to enjoy them.

YY, exactly!

I also love that there is so much they never show, and it's fine - we're not expected to know. You know, like we never know exactly what happens with Leo and Jordan, or really what happens with Josh and Amy, which is exactly what it's like in real life, you don't know all the ins and outs of people's relationships.

Ah nice one, Mrs Josh!

Out of curiosity I just asked my (recently converted) husband who his favourite character was and he said: The president, of course! Oh and what's his name, Admiral Sissymary.

It reminded me how much I loved any scene with Nancy, Fitzwallace and Leo. They played off each other so well and were so cynical together.

Yes indeed :)

My favourites are absolutely Toby and Oliver Babbish (sp) but I do love nancy. DH used to be in the army and she is just such a perfect portrayal of a military woman; esp when CJ is so upset about selling arms to Qumar and nancy just shrugs and says 'I'm doing all I can'. I love that one.

I love Nancy. I wish they had kept her around on camera. That scene with CJ is one of my faves too.

I know a lot of people don't like Kate but I also really liked her and CJ in the last season. Crushed the Bechdel Test too

That's one of the great things about The West Wing, you can look at any of the female characters and say "I want to be like her". Even the assistants (Bonnie, Ginger, Margaret, Carol, etc) are portrayed as smart, savvy women, even if Margaret is a little odd

Plus it shows women in powerful roles, National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff, etc, and at no stage does anyone comment in the fact that a women is doing the job.

It's such a great scene isn't it. It would have been so easy to write it as the women getting together and changing minds and policy but he world doesn't work like that (sadly)

I do think series one has some quite sexist moments though, frankel

There were a LOT of sexist moments in the Sorkin years (the first four seasons). I thought things improved a lot later on.

For ex in the early seasons yes you had CJ as press secretary, but she was often put in the position of being really stupid so the menz could explain things to her. Like the freaking census! which is just ridiculous, trust me, your average American knows how the census works, let alone the white house press secretary.

I love the later scenes where CJ and Kate are trying to figure out how to stop genocide in Sudan or deal with Kazakhstan or China, I don't think Sorkin would ever have written those up with two women.

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Oh, god yes ... I love the women on the WW and CJ is awesome, but I can't watch that early episode where Leo and the President go on about how they 'can't get over these women' who, erm ... manage to act almost as if they're as good as men.

That said, I read a really good piece years ago, which explored Leo's sexism and concluded that it worked with him as a character - that he is flawed, and self-important, and makes bad calls, but he's also often a sympathetic character and gets away with things because it's 'expected' for someone of his generation and background. And the author made the point that although this is pretty true to life, it would be unusual for someone like CJ to become his successor, and she is substantially more competent than he is, so that forces you to think about whether sexism shoots itself in the foot. I wish I could find the piece again, but I thought it was a really good argument. Because let's face it, Leo's tenure of the job wasn't exactly marked by stunning success, was it?!

I watched that episode last night, it is dreadful.

I am never sure about CJ becoming cos. it seems such a leap from press secretary, competent as she is.

It doesn't make sense because all these years Josh was deputy COS, wouldn't the whole idea be that he could step up if the COS was out? even if just temporarily

I'm not going to complain though because I think it's great they gave CJ the promotion, there's never been a female COS in real life yet.

Mmm. But Josh would be a rotten chief of staff for Bartlett. He's a good complement to Leo but you never get the impression he's very close to Bartlett or good at understanding his thought processes - whereas he is with Santos.

But when they say 'there's only one real choice' - that seems so unlikely. No outsiders?

My guess is that they're looking at it from the perspective that they had to promote internally. Bartlett was half way through his second term, would an ambitious outsider want to take on a job that would only last a short time? Perhaps that's why the didn't promote Josh, they knew he could go on to be someone else's CoS.

I always thought they should have got whatserface the majority leader's CoS, the one who comprehensively gets te better of Toby - but I suppose she was in Desperate Housewives by then (not sure of dates).

Ye-eess, I guess so, donna, but that I'm not convinced that's a close working relationship. Guess we are saying the same thing.

big - felicity huffman? She's very funny.

Also when CJ was appointed, wasn't Josh out doing Santos's campaign?

Why did you guys have to bring up Colin (aka Jason Issacs)? He is the owner of the worst Belfast accent ever! It makes my teeth itch. I get irrationally annoyed with him for failing so miserable at it.

Eh he probably figured -- it's Americans, they won't have a clue (we don't!)

I do like the way he says 'Belfast' when Josh asks him where he's from -- like, Belfast, you wussy DC yuppie

dreaming his accent was awful, Belfast native here and it physically hurts me to hear him murdering the accent.

That said, I like those episodes because of the parallels made between North of Ireland/British occupation and Palestine/Israel occupation. Very clever writing imo.