To further highjack the thread with more West Wing stuff (), as much as I liked the series overall, the one area where they absolutely blew it was with military terminology. Throughout the series, they repeatedly used incorrect terms for things ("battle carrier group") or used the wrong nomenclature for hardware. I'm not talking obscure stuff, but things that are readily available in common reference materials. I mean, it's one thing for Sam or Josh to misspeak, but to have Leo, Fitz, and other military and intelligence types say those lines really takes me out of the moment. It's the only real failing of the show, IMHO. To his credit, Sorkin hasn't repeated those mistakes in The Newsroom. What I recall from the last season seemed pretty correct.
I really don't think the show deserves a third season, I deplore the ways studios make these kinds of decisions, I have little hope that season 3 will deliver on any of the promises that have remained frustrated so far, and I will make a point of seeing every single episode, preferably with popcorn.
I took a little break (unintentional--I've actually been working a lot and haven't had the time) from my West Wing rewatch. I'm about halfway through Season 4. One thing rewatching the series has reminded me of: I really don't like Dulé Hill as Charlie. The character is written fine, but I don't think he was the right actor for the job. Something about his delivery is just off-putting.
Though I love the character, I'm inclined to agree. Lord knows the Sorkin dialogue is a challenge (there's an interview with Richard Schiff in the extra content on the DVD collection where he describes the Walk & Talk as "in my case, more like Talk & Stumble" and how much he envies Janney and Whitford for being able to rattle off those lines so effortlessly), but Dulé's a bit of a mumbler in any role. Still, he gets away with those big puppy eyes and Charlie's backstory so that there's a tendency to go "Awwww, poor Charlie!"
Wow. I just rewatched the episode where the Genoa story completely falls apart and they fucked up hard. Mac is watching the "raw" footage, yet the Marine general has a black box superimposed over his face. Sloppy. You can't do that "in camera". I remembered noticing it the first go around but forgot about it until seeing it last night. Also, if I had to edit the footage that Gary Cooper brought back from that Africa trip, I would've slit his throat.
Horrible thought: Could Sorkin have been thinking of Bradley Whitford for Will McAvoy? There's the "Muhammad Muhammad al-Muhammad" joke in the pilot (mirroring the scene in TWW that also featured John Gallagher) There's the ceiling falling on the desk scene It's less obvious, but the relationship between Will and Sloan and her awkward attempts to fix him up with women are reminiscent of a lot of conversations between Josh and Sam Yeah, I need more coffee...
Still in the middle of S1 in my rewatch. This time I'm noticing a lot more than the first time. "Bullies" - a mashup of TWW episodes "Night Five" (Will & the shrink/Bartlet & the shrink) and "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" (Will's resistance to a bodyguard/CJ's resistance to SS protection). "5/1" - "It messes with the navigation." Really? This again? Sorkin schticks, but they're like puns - first you groan, then you laugh. You're in familiar territory. It'll never be TWW, but there are few shows I can watch again and again and still find something new. This is now one of them. Despite the fact that most of the women characters are, at least, disappointing.
Yeah, after a second viewing of S2 and a third viewing of S1, my initial reaction still stands: Without Jeff Daniels I wouldn't like the series as much as I do. Not only are many of the other characters written so I don't like them, I don't care for many of the actors. Agreed about the female characters.
That seems to be a common thread with Sorkin's female characters -- they're not always bad, but even the good characters are written with a puzzling inconsistency. CJ and Donna are both strong characters for the most part -- and of course Allison Janney will act the shit out of any role she plays -- but there were times when it seemed like their personalities were just rewritten on the fly to be whatever Josh needed them to be at that moment.
I'm really glad there was no equivalent to CJ here (not that there could ever be an equivalent to CJ, but never mind). Sloan's evolution has been fun to watch, and the real dark horse is Lisa, Maggie's roommate. She starts out as the Desperate Single Chick whose biological clock is ticking so loud it drowns out everything else in the room, but grows up very nicely through the ordeal of, well, being anyone involved with Maggie. In terms of the love quadrangle, rather than borrowing from himself, Sorkin has simply lifted the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream. As for borrowing from himself, I've lost count of the parallels/borrowings from TWW. Sierra-Tucson? "Gather ye rosebuds"? Enough, already! Because this was my second viewing, and I knew how the story arc for S2 turned out, I was looking for ways to poke holes in it and, yeah, there are a few, but structurally some of these episodes are masterpieces. Maybe on my third viewing I'll jot notes and write something more elaborate, but for now I've finished the marathon in time for S3, which I understand is to be only six episodes. Better to end in a good place, I suppose.
