It's been a long, slogging trail through this show and so we have The Last Episode for you here (spoiler it's bad). We also spend another 20 minutes or so musing poorly and waxing misunderstood philosophically about the impact of the show on the culture at large, on Aaron Sorkin himself, and on future projects.We will probably get back together to …

As we close the show down, senioritis sets in not only amongst the outgoing administration, but among your intrepid hosts who spent most of the recording session crosstalking and stepping on each other's bits!!It's a fine thing to try to address the absolutely Kafkaesque disaster of being an incredibly powerful woman navigating a male-dominated ind…

OK now that the show has wrapped up, congrats to Matt Santos on being the new prez, time towait what the fuck there's still 5 goddamn episodes left?? IT'S ALL SO STUPID.RIP to Sinead O'Connor, this one hit me hard for whatever reasonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbre5Fs9m8IStu & Dave

Hi, yeah, first time long time: does Bruno close the deal? This one's for the true sickos among us, full of polls Polls POLLS energy and quite a bit of hornt, as the election unfolds over 90 relatively harmless minutes of campaign staff interactions.Let the careerist jockeying... BEGINMusic from A.C. Newman.…

I am so ready for this to be over. If only WE were two weeks out, rather than... 7 more episodes so let's call it four more recording sessions that will probably land between now and October for a nice round 5 year experience.Please, listener, spare yourself and do not watch these episodes.Music is from Keb Mo…

Come bother me about end-to-end emissions and material processing eCO2 incursions if u wanna get wrecked about nuclear power. So sorry there hasn't been a miraculously ~*mArKEt baSeD sOLuTioN*~ to getting perovskites into every PV cell somehow! We coulda been casting containment buildings for gen3 reactors and trebling down on thorium reprocessing …

Welcome back to more campaign shit that I don't give a fuck about!! With a side helping of "whoa hang on there's still an entire administration in the White House currently?? uh... let's do... World War!"The first episode starts with a direct-to-camera tribute to John Spencer from Martin Sheen. So, we're closing down the arc of Leo being alive IRL.…

These episodes are a slog and a half so we're back to throwing two together at one go, and conveniently, these tidy up the Ellie Bartlet Wedding arc which is tropeish and irritating!We solve racism with a speech, surprise! A nice soothing authoritative President Dad approach to a(nother) World War 3 type situation which is not communicated to the v…

This track leaves out the episode running in the background, in case you have your copy and want to watch along without duplicating the soundtrack!Well, as the West Wing ran out of sauce down the stretch, beset by better television (... marginally better, in the case of Crossing Jordan) on all sides and lacking its initial writers-room oomph, the p…

This track includes the episode running in the background of our commentary, if you don't have access to it!Well, as the West Wing ran out of sauce down the stretch, beset by better television (... marginally better, in the case of Crossing Jordan) on all sides and lacking its initial writers-room oomph, the producers started grasping at straws. Th…

Pseudo content warning we talk about abortion but keep it pretty clean.This shit sucks so much, the campaign is no longer even a fig leaf for shitty TV, don't watch these episodes god damn.Emma makes an only-slightly-planned guest appearance to lend an appropriate voice to a discussion of these writers' ridiculous triangulation and pigeonholing of …

If you're innocent you have nothing to hide so don't worry about defending yourself or using whatever meager power still remains to you!! Even if that's a Shitload of Power, because you're one of the highest-ranking public officials in the history of the world! Just be cool man, I thought you were cool!hahahahahahaWas (Not Was) and George Michael d…

A brief whiff of fresh air as we follow the Vinick campaign around the trail for a while. However, as always there is such little daylight between Democrat and Republican positions on... well damn near everything, the staffs and their approach to issues people care about could just be interchangeable!! Midway through I completely fail at being prof…

No not THAT problem you SICKOSAnother tedious day-in-the-campaign-life episode focusing on Matt Santos checking demographic boxes and generally cleaving to the most anodyne Political Operative Wisdom possible. Thank goodness their team now has both Janeane Garofalo and Marlee Matlin on it I guess, guest star power!!This is when the absolutely most …

We're back baby! We made it... two two-week periods in a row! Fuck yeah.Wish I had anything even approaching as positive a reaction to the material we consider in the first episode of the 7th season of this show. It's bad, folks! I'm so bored, I do not care about how you think campaigning needs to go or what logistics are where or even really about…

OMG we're back!!To finish season 6 FINALLY FUCK YOU SHOW. Neither moves nor covid nor laze of brain shall keep us from finishing this accursed project.Music by RushStu & Dave

Oooooh big bright lights big arenas wow once every 4-8 years we get to do what the Sporps Mans do every weekend!! Let's... MAKESOMERUUUUUUULES!! If I could be candid for a minute, we're at the point of the show where I am noticeably running out of things to say so I apologize for being more incoherent than usual today, I feel like I swung between b…

Fun guest stars abound! Early-00s "atheist" takes mercifully do NOT in this episode, wherein the writers tackle Churchiness and theocrats demanding fealty to both Heavenly and Earthly power in the most kid (literally) gloves fashion possible. The ongoing explication of Senator Vinick's Good Republican status must of course include a healthy dose of…

This episode marks not only the absolute dregs of fan opinion it's probably, I M H O, the one that actually legitimately represents the show jumping the shark. It's got all the hits: exceptionalism, bad costuming, spontaneous language fluency!There's rumors that Fidel is dying, just like there's always rumors that Fidel is dying, and so all of a su…

It's Spanish for "the palabra".Oh boy a whole episode wrestling with representational issues in high-level executive office!! If only we hadn't seen this theory's propositions have their baby brains splattered across the concrete rocks of reality for 8 long goddamn years ultimately leading into the firm entrenchment of a Christofascist rump state t…

Some fun speculation re: how kids would vote, carried in the episode by some excellent child actors giving the Ol' College Try to Toby and Annabeth. Ultimately, they experience the most best possible thing politics nerds (hello Emma) could experience: SENPAI ACKNOWLEDGES THEM. Otherwise there's a buncha random garbage going on as what we surmise is…

Wow, you say that the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea AND Lake Mead is dry? Uh, have you tried No they're not? What if you commissioned a focus group or something?Cliff Calley is BACK and you can hear Stu develop his opinion on the character as he speaks it to himself aloud lol. Our favorite "Good Republican" is gettin' poached from his cu…

Stu says "ultimately" like seventeen times this episode so, I guess be forewarned, it was irritating to edit myself lol.We have a big scrambly mess of an episode wherein the writers seem to be DESPERATELY trying to portray the inner, cynical, overanalyzed mechanics of a bog standard political campaign as cool. They fail. There's nothing fucking coo…

Any day now, Iran will do a Bad Thing, and it turns out today was that day in West Wing Universe. Note that of course any response by the international community will only result in Iran doing FURTHER BAD THINGS. Always Be CentrifugingJohn Marbury is back and yuck, gross. I'm very tired so I have little further sparkling wit to add to the notes. Mu…

I'm positive there are nice parts of Iowa because I've been to a couple of them. There's a t-shirt / dropship company that makes funny screenprinted items in Des Moines. There's a donut company and at least two very good breweries in Sioux City. There's one pub in Sheldon where a great friend named Dara served us a shitload of beer as we tried to k…

Leo returns to the White House and employs himself in very Serious Old Man Ways such as puttering, attempting to garner attention from younger people with more power than him, and watching VHS tapes. Remember VHS, kids?We take brief breaks from the TV cart that was rolled into 7th grade science class to examine Sorkin Sexism as prosecuted by female…

We're goin on location in New Hampshire, the state that's Important For Some Reason! Josh and Matt Santos HIT THE TRAIL, the campaign trail that is! And mill about bouncing their personalities off of one another as they try to get this, heh, "single digit spoiler" campaign off the ground. There's an I N C R E D I B L E phone call, a perfect phone c…

Ha ha great descriptor of the administration's COVID protocols in 2022!Occasionally we see an episode of this show that is just SO alien in even its premises that we have to kinda go "Really?" and this is one of them.What if... CJ Cregg... were (wait for it, go with me here) a lesbian?Because she played sports!! DON'T YOU SEE?? SHE'S TALL!A real ar…

I would simply not diplomatic meeting myself to death. Of course, my name isn't Josiah Edward "Jed" Bartlet, President Of The Universe and ultimate Liberal God-Emperor.Continuing down the China Summit storyline we have some more racism, some more horrible tailoring, and a strange unifying thread of unilateral actions fracturing the ol' White House …

When are they gonna get to the DIPLOMACY FACTORY??Super guest star power drives this episode home: we have the introduction of Arnold Vinick, soon-to-be primary challenger. We have Zoey's birthday party entertainment making hamfisted free speech arguments. And I guess also the surgeon general? Is back.Typical policy-blob chauvinism is about the wor…

When reached for comment, white house communications director Toby Ziegler, recently in hot water for his collar-tuggingly awkward press room flops, just sorta racistly rattled off the following statement:"China BAD, Asian food WEIRD, politics DUMB, these BROADS AM I RIGHT, protocol CORRECT"James Taylor is the most bland, tepid, plain icemilk choic…

Is Delaware even a thing? Has anyone... been to Delaware? Who is Senator Chris "C**ns" Coons? Why are there now TWO government grandpas from there? How??The reference Stu makes out the gate is to the following tweet:https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb/status/1487483303745708040Anyway this episode is about the fallout of the first American casualties …

It's Josh Versus The Internet Round Two: FIGHTA bit of a scattershot episode today that completely enwrongulates the concept of fossil fuel reliance in a globalized marketplace. Tropes about fart-sniffing liberals in the alternative energy industry abound!CJ is getting used to her job, Charlie is given a BUNCH of stuff that is cool because I guess …

Greetings from the plaguelands.We're back and it's fuckin time for CJ to get her DUE because she's been working her ass off get it girl hashtag werk hashtag girlboss!!anyway this was a pretty good episode as far as things go because we get the cast shaken up quite a bit with guest/recurring stars. Also no politics to speak of really.Music by Deer T…

Welcome to Season 6, wow we're really screamin now. We'll eventually pare it back down to one episode per session but the first THREE eps of this season are a complete arc culminating in, surprise, a peace accord between Isra*l and Pal*stine (let's keep this on the DL), and Leo handing off the chief of staff role to CJ. We have little left to say r…

We're bringing season five to a close (finally!) with a bang (literally!). A huge mess of orthodox Israel/Palestine takes, with a great guest appearance by Jason Isaacs, hubba hubba woof woof awooooga. Emma, if she listened to our show, would never forgive me for conflating ID4 with Armageddon. Fitz dies, Donna does not, and we set ourselves firmly…

We're back to our S5 format: two episodes of... well one episode of utterly puerile naivete regarding the economic orthodoxy that's literally killing your constituency, and one episode of tense as hell cool fuckin thriller-ass bioterrorism interjection. In "Talking Points" we have a lot of shit swirling around CJ and Josh with regards to a trade de…

the ultimatemasturbatorynarcissistic episodeOf this fucking show. You should 100% not watch this garbage, it's insanely bad.you SHOULD watch and cackle crack-pingedly at this clip from one of the most-watched CURRENT television disasters:https://twitter.com/LiveOnTheChat/status/1441423559516213248?s=20*walt voice* we, are going, to diemusic from sp…

We made it! After literally almost exactly 3 years (we first published on August 18, 2018) we have arrived at Emma's favorite episode. And true to her promise then, she joined us to chat about the powerful fantasy that this episode promotes. To this episode's credit: It's narratively focused, well-written, powered by insanely good guest stars inclu…

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. It's time to be a racist!It's time to hem and haw.It's time to cram the show full of the neoliberals' flawsIt's time for Jon Podhoretz (again)It's time for DeeDee MyersIt's time for awkward CJ putting out the admin's fires.Thisis whatwecall theELMOSOOOOODE…

A tremendously JPod-tainted international incident threatens the world stage with a NEW nuclear power! Made up buzzwords like "NuDet" (lmao) sell the drama alongside heavy-handed racist stereotypes of the Islamic world. And then... whoopsy doodle, the Vice President deus ex machinas the entire conceit!The second episode is about how baby-brained, o…

Blazing through this season like a wildfire through British Columbia, we're tackling another two episodes in quick succession. Gabby Union makes a spectacular guest appearance not as an East Compton Clover but as a reporter that Charlie screeches from 60 to 0 with for... utterly banal and stupid reasons. It's GABRIELLE. UNION. CHARLIE!The second ep…

Now we're really cranking through this shit: another twofer today because there just isn't really enough to talk about in any particular episode any more. Even though there is a LOT of content? In each one.Assisted suicide sets up a federalism crisis, which is not nearly as funny as the "Civil War was about industry" takes in the second episode. Ex…

Ooh a cliffhanger! Know what communicates that to the audience? Overwrought horribly campy sound effects!We have a ginned up crisis created out of whole cloth by Republican intransigence (surprise!) that is handled by the administration's gumption and willingness to compromise everything they claim to believe in (also surprise!). The chief justice …

The only Disaster that needs Relieving is the script and acting and filming of this episode!It's bad folks, I dunno there's a tornado, and a Greek/Albanian conflict. Also you've got Locke as the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Don't watch this episode and if you have already well I imagine there's drugs enough to drive it out of your brain. Green…

Life imitates art in this episode as we have Tom Skerritt playing an Arlen Specter-alike except switching parties the Bad Way, presaging Specter's move by almost 5 years! A discussion ensues of the relative pros/cons of this party flipflop... and whether it really matters nowadays.Some other things occur and mostly it's just miserable sacrifices of…

Turning some racism dials with the least likely character to indulge in it, the writers bring a bit of Orientalist flair back to the West Wing as they deal with a "crisis" involving a North Korean defector. Josh and Amy somehow absolutely refuse to just Fuck, Donna has cheesehead relatives, Bartlet actually errs on the correct side of stimulative s…

This is a scattered entry in the show's canon that's sort of transitional, even more so than the wrap-up of the cliffhanger from last season. We are introduced to the nominal New Villain, Jeff Haffley. We are shown rather hamhandedly how Zoe is still traumatized and working through her recovery. We have to select a new vice president and Bartlet ju…

Already noting a precipitous decline in quality, the crew is really putting in work to get the show back to at least a baseline of "Sorkin didn't dump this steamy loaf in our lap out of spite". Wrapping up plotlines left and right, maundering through drawn-out conversations that go nowhere... perhaps next week we'll be able to start fresh and the s…

Launching season five, it's the post-Sorkin years! Off to a blazing start as the Evil Bad Red Team takes the driver's seat of the presidency, profaning our sacred Decorum with things like "being honest" and "having a coherent ideology".I'm gonna be honest if my spouse was contemplating extrajudicial murder as an avenue of international imperial dip…