Thursday
Desalinisation
*Spoilers for last night's West Wing below. Do not read if you care what happened on West Wing but didn't see it.*
This episode featured far more of the ensemble than any episode since Josh left to run Santos's campaign. With all of the campaigns back in Washington, the show was able to divide it's time between characters far more effectively than, for instance, the campaign episodes which feature Josh, Donna, Will, Santos, and Russell, almost exclusively. I've said before that those episodes force them to spend too much time with those characters at the expense of the episode as a whole, and the quality of this one really demonstrates that. By not spending too much time for any given character, and coming up with interesting plot lines for almost everyone (except Jed), the show was able to create a far more entertaining balance.
The show also very effectively moved back and forth in time, without using title cards to indicate when things were. Since title cards are annoying, this was pretty great. This is mostly because all of the sequences out of straightforward chronology were in one location, so that any events in that location were obviously outside of the time sequence.
Josh and Toby fighting was not implausible. I can understand people saying that physical violence is very different from anything that has previously happened on the show. This is true in the sense that it has never before been shown. But, Josh, Toby, and Charlie have threatend violence more than once, and there is no question Toby has been in a fight, offscreen. So the issue isn't whether or not Josh and Toby would get into a fist fight (they would), but whether or not they'd fight each other. To that, the most imporant issue is that Toby wants to fight his brother. His brother gave up by killing himself, and Toby equates Josh to his brother in that situation, on multiple levels. Both the surrender and the brotherhood are there between the two of them. Furthermore, Josh is realizing that he made some mistakes in picking Santos and the Campaign in general. Both of them have many reasons to be angry and, more importantly, reasons to direct their anger at each other.
Richard Schiff deserves an award based on that episode. But Allison Janney deserves one even more based on everything she's ever done for the show.
Grade: A.
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This episode featured far more of the ensemble than any episode since Josh left to run Santos's campaign. With all of the campaigns back in Washington, the show was able to divide it's time between characters far more effectively than, for instance, the campaign episodes which feature Josh, Donna, Will, Santos, and Russell, almost exclusively. I've said before that those episodes force them to spend too much time with those characters at the expense of the episode as a whole, and the quality of this one really demonstrates that. By not spending too much time for any given character, and coming up with interesting plot lines for almost everyone (except Jed), the show was able to create a far more entertaining balance.
The show also very effectively moved back and forth in time, without using title cards to indicate when things were. Since title cards are annoying, this was pretty great. This is mostly because all of the sequences out of straightforward chronology were in one location, so that any events in that location were obviously outside of the time sequence.
Josh and Toby fighting was not implausible. I can understand people saying that physical violence is very different from anything that has previously happened on the show. This is true in the sense that it has never before been shown. But, Josh, Toby, and Charlie have threatend violence more than once, and there is no question Toby has been in a fight, offscreen. So the issue isn't whether or not Josh and Toby would get into a fist fight (they would), but whether or not they'd fight each other. To that, the most imporant issue is that Toby wants to fight his brother. His brother gave up by killing himself, and Toby equates Josh to his brother in that situation, on multiple levels. Both the surrender and the brotherhood are there between the two of them. Furthermore, Josh is realizing that he made some mistakes in picking Santos and the Campaign in general. Both of them have many reasons to be angry and, more importantly, reasons to direct their anger at each other.
Richard Schiff deserves an award based on that episode. But Allison Janney deserves one even more based on everything she's ever done for the show.
Grade: A.
